The Reporter, June 2008

The Reporter is a publication produced by Western Carolina University featuring news, events, and campus community updates for faculty and staff. The publication began in August of 1970 and continues digitally today. Click on the link in the “Related Materials” field to access recent issues.New Degrees, Buildings, Policy Changes Part ofWCU's Response to UNCTomorrow Adding a bachelor of science in engineering, a master's in environmental science and a doctor of physical therapy to degrees offered at WCU are among the ways Western plans to respond to the most pressing needs of North Carolinians, as identified in the University of North Carolina Tomorrow report. Other proposals in WCU's most recent response to the UNC Tomorrow effort include establishing a branch campus in Henderson County, constructing a College of Education and Allied Professions building and developing the "health neighborhood" component of the Millennia! Initiative. The health neighborhood would be a cluster of health-related academic buildings, research facilities, private businesses and industries, and housing. Many of these proposals may sound familiar, and that's good news for WCU: That means the plans for the furure that Western's leaders have been crafting for years position the university to respond to the needs prioritized in the recently released UNC Tomorrow report - needs such as improving public education and aiding economic transformation. The UNC Tomorrow report is guiding the system's plans and resource allocations, and each UNC institution had to submit a response to the UNC Tomorrow Bardo said initiatives chosen for inclusion in the report can be supported by resources reallocated or obtained for them within the next five years and will produce verifiable or measurable results. They also fir with the university's integrative, intentional learning model set out in the university's Quality Enhancement Plan, and with WCU's commitment to serving the region as a steward of place - a commitment that guided recent changes to WCU's tenure, promotion and reappointment policies. For each major report finding, WCU's response includes "flag" statements- "bold declarations of where the institution can best serve the interests of North Carolina; that is, where we plan to 'plant our flag."' They are statements such as "WCU will expand irs role as the major provider of allied health and nursing education," and "Through its partnerships with the region's schools and irs applied research, WCU will influence public policy and practice with regard to reacher preparation and retention, administrative quality and school performance." "Those statements really get at the heart of where we intend to develop our niches," said Melissa Wargo, director of assessment. Read all of the flag statements and related proposals in WCU's response, which is posted at www.wcu.edu/6264.asp. After the university receives feedback on the UNC Tomorrow response, work will begin on the second phase response due in December. That report identifYing how each will address irs needs. "At Western, we were most of the way down this road already," said Bardo during a campus forum in which he shared WCU's response. UNCTomorrow at WCU response will propose ways to align WCU's mission, the academic planning process, faculty rewards system, and faculty recruitment and retention with UNC Tomorrow. Check out on Page 3 a summary of some of the initiatives in WCU's response. The full report is online at www.wcu.edu/6264.asp Continued on Page 3 WCU Resources Help Western North Carolina Plan for Growth An effort to address growth and development pressures in North Carolina's mountains is tapping Western faculty for organizational and research talent. In June 2007, government representatives from the state's seven westernmost counties - Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Jackson, Macon and Swain - and the Qualla Boundary met en masse. "The intent of the meeting was to gauge interest in promoting responsible development in the western region," said Vickey Wade, director ofWCU's Local Government Training Program. The LGTP and the Southwestern Commission, a government office that assists the region in a number of ways, including community development, organized the meeting. A high level of interest among local governments eventually sparked the Mountain Landscapes Initiative, a project to create guidelines for growth in the state's far west. To introduce the concept, organizers planned a series of community forums where residents could learn about the MLI and offer input on growth and development concerns. ii:Reporter- June 2, 2008 Money from the Community Foundation ofWestern North Carolina, the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, Duke Energy and local governments funded the first phase of the MLI. The Lawrence Group, which offers town planning services and has an office in Davidson, facilitated the forums. Intent on providing as much existing information as possible to forum facilitators, Wade began contacting fellow faculty members who worked in relevant fields, including mapping, water resources and public policy. "It's a shame to have these resources collect dust on a shelf when they can provide primary source information for an initiative like this," Wade said. Professors Gibbs K.notts and Chris Cooper, of the department of political science and public affairs, contributed regional political and economic information to the process. Findings from the newest version of the WCU Public Policy Institute's WNC Regional Outlook Report, recently updated by Cooper, Kathleen Brennan, of the department of anthropology and sociology, and lnhyuck "Steve" Ha, an economics professor in the College of Business, provided context on the economy and public opinion. A needs assessment based on interviews and questionnaires that Anthony Hickey, a professor in the department of anthropology and sociology, and his students compiled enlightened Cashiers residents. Joni Bugden-Storie and Ron Davis, professors in the department of geosciences and natural resources, had their students provide planners and residents with GIS-based data and maps that helped them better understand the region's topography. From those community forums emerged common themes of conservation, the economy and sense of place. An intensive, weeklong, community-led workshop held in May at Western's A. K. Hinds University Center yielded suggested planning and development guidelines related to mountainside and ridgetop development, water quality, protection of farmland and other natural spaces, affordable housing and economic development. These suggestions were presented to a crowd of about 180 on May 20 in the UC theater. The next phase of the Mountain Landscapes Initiative is the publication of the guidelines- which are purely optional - and their distribution to local elected officials, government planners, real estate agents, developers and people preparing to move to the region. The Southwestern Commission has raised more than $250,000 toward this effort. According to Ben Brown, MLI spokesman, the university will continue to be a "big player" in the initiative, with the department of political science and public affairs, the Institute for Watershed Research and Management and the Institute for the Economy and the Future contributing resources. - By JILL INGRAM UNC Tomorrow at WCU Continued from cover Initiatives identified under "flag" statements in WCU's response to UNC Tomorrow include: • Expand forensic science. • Expand partnerships with community colleges. • Expand the Academic Success Program, which enables students to begin their college experience early and provide a complete first year experience to students. • Enhance the study of languages and culture through partnerships with other UNC campuses and international partners. • Address the nursing shortage by increasing the number of students seeking master's degrees in nurse education. • Implement the Sustainability, Tracking and Rating System, or STARS, to monitor progress toward becoming an environmentally conscious campus. • Implement P.A.C.E., opportunities to increase efficiency and effectiveness identified by the President's Advisory Committee on Efficiency and Effectiveness. • Leverage institutional resources to address critical land use issues, including environmental reclamation, land use planning and sustainable development. • Respond to the Advantage West Vision Plan's call for development of a "think tank" to analyze regional development needs. • Better integrate academic programming with regional visual and performing arts and crafts to enhance the livability of the community. • Boost recruitment and retention activities with historically underrepresented populations in higher education, with special emphasis on the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the emerging Hispanic population. • Advocate for UNC systemwide policy changes such as fully funding summer school. • Expand degrees to include a bachelor of science in engineering, master's in environmental science and a doctor of physical therapy. • Construct a College of Education and Allied Professions Building. • Establish a branch campus in Henderson County. • Develop the "health neighborhood" component of the Millennia! Initiative. • Increase the integration of the Office ofTechnologyTransfer, Center for Rapid Product Realization and the nationally recognized entrepreneurship program to enhance existing business competitiveness and to create new sustainable globally competitive enterprises. Check our the full WCU response at www.wcu.edu/6264.asp. -By TERESA KILLIAN "This is not just UNCTomorrow. This is UNC yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever:' -Chancellor John W. Bardo iii Reporter - June 2, 2001 Staff Forum Elects New Members Twelve new representatives recendy were elected ro Staff Forum ro rwo-year terms rhar begin in July. Newly elected members are: Anne Aldrich, assistant ro rhe provost; Wiley Danner, water treatment specialist in the plumbing shop; Virginia Fowler, assistant direcror of facilities in residential living; Brenda Holcombe, financial aid counselor; Jeff Hughes, director of A.K. Hinds University Center; Kim Jamison, office assistant in athletics; Thomas C. Johnson, chief of university police; Joe McFalls, housekeeping supervisor in residential living; Kenny Pauley, spores turf manager in athletics; Carrie Shuler, housekeeping supervisor in residential living; Donna Welch, executive assistant in student affairs; and Debbie J. West, assistant ro the direcror of residential living. For more information, check out http:/ /staffforum.wcu.edu/. Search Extended for Dean of Education, Allied Professions Retirement will wait for Michael Dougherty, dean of the College of Education and Allied Professions, who has agreed ro continue serving as dean through the end of the fall semester as the search continues for his replacement. Dale Carpenter, associate dean of the college, also will remain in his current position. Meanwhile, WCU has contracted with Maya Kirkhope, a senior consultant with Academic Search, to lead the next phase of the search for the new dean. The search firm has placed several deans of education, including the dean at the University of Georgia. Kirkhope will visit WCU in June. Advertising is expected ro begin this summer with candidate interviews in early fall. Provost Kyle Carter said the goal is for the new dean ro begin as soon as possible after Jan. 1. Wendy Ford, dean of the College of Arcs and Sciences, will continue to chair the search committee. Check for updates at www.wcu.edu/334.asp. ~ Reporter- June 2, 2008 Campus Museums Open Furniture Exhibits As the Mountain Heritage Center welcomed visitors to "The Artistry of Plain-Style Furniture" exhibit, the Fine Art Museum prepared to open a complementary exhibit tided "Contemporary Furniture: Innovation in Wood from Appalachian Traditions." The plain-style furniture exhibit, available through Dec. 15, celebrates furniture handmade in Western North Carolina during the 1800s and early 1900s. The contemporary furniture exhibit, which runs from Tuesday, June 3, to Saturday, June 28, features fine furniture created by three regional artists. The exhibit openings coincided with a symposium co-hosted by the Mountain Heritage Center and the Cashiers Historical Society and made possible through the collaboration of the Mountain Heritage Center, Fine Art Museum, Zachary-Tolbert House in Cashiers and The Bascom in Highlands. "Plain-style furniture personifies the values of a 19th-century farming community more interested in function than finery," said Scott Philyaw, museum director. Steve Lott, head coach of the women's golf team, served as a guest curator and, working with a group of generous collecrors, gathered a significant number of furniture pieces never displayed publicly. Among the items are several "Highway 1 0" painred cupboards, whose maker remains unidentified, bur is a popular ropic of discussion among serious antique collectors; a collection of children's furniture; African-American-made furniture; and pieces created by Jesse Bryson Stalcup, a Macon County master carpenter and Baptist preacher. Next door at the Fine Art Museum, the contemporary furniture exhibit will feature work by Jerome Clark of Sylva, John Gernandt of Waynesville and David Scott of Clyde. Clark's furniture reinrerprers tradi tiona! Shaker and arts and crafts styles from a contemporary perspective. Gernandt, whose grandfather and great-grandfather built furniture, said his style is ro ask what he can bring forward from rhe past into 21st century pieces of furniture. Scott builds standard and custom contemporary furniture with hardwoods from the region and around the world. "We are excited to feature three of Western North Carolina's finest contemporary designers and craftsmen," said Martin DeWitt, museum director. "This region is blessed with fine furniture craftsmanship rooted in tradition." New Social Work Department Head Driven by Desire to Help John Q Hodges, the new head ofWCU's social work department, used to worry about the clients he served at a Salt Lake City program for homeless people who had severe mental illnesses. In one case, teens attacked the "kindest, sweetest man you would ever want ro meet," as the man pushed a shopping cart downtown, said Hodges. "He was in the hospital with severe injuries for weeks," he said. His clients were vulnerable and sometimes hard to reach, but Hodges witnessed breakthroughs. "In many cases, it took a year or so of just chatting with someone over free coffee in our day room before they would begin to trust us enough to open up and let us connect them with services," said Hodges. The experience led him to see social work as a kind of hands-on helping profession that enabled him to make a difference to extremely vulnerable people with many needs. So, after earning his bachelor's degree in psychology in 1992 from the Universiry of Utah, Hodges went back to pursue his master's degree in social work and then on to the University of California at Berkeley to earn his doctorate in social welfare in 200 I . He comes to WCU on June 15 from the University of Missouri, where he was an award-winning associate professor of social work. "His teaching and scholarly work in the area of mental health treatment and policies, his energy and enthusiasm, and his strong interpersonal skills will be a welcome addition to our new graduate and ongoing undergraduate programs," said Marie Huff, who is leaving the social work department head position to become full-time associate dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences at WCU. Much of Hodges' research has explored the added value of consumer-run mental health services such as support groups, and mental health courts, which help divert mentally ill diems from prison to treatment in the communiry. "It's both more humane and much cheaper than processing someone through the traditional court system and incarcerating them," said Hodges. "Recidivism rates for offenders who go through mental health court are much lower than those with similar offenses and mental health disorders who go through the traditional system." He also said studying the needs of first-generation college students is an issue that is close to his heart, as he was in the first generation in his family to earn a college degree. "While first-generation college students might need some additional socialization and help in acculturating to college life, they bring with them many strengths, including hard work, strong family support and an emphasis on the value of a college education," said Hodges. "I look forward to working with other first-generation students at WCU as well as conducting more research on this topic." -By TERESA KILLIAN Professors Contribute To 'Encyclopedia of Appalachia' What is a moonlight school? How are heirloom vegetables grown? How can a family graveyard have artistic value? WCU professors answer these questions and more as contributors to the recently published "Encyclopedia of Appalachia." "The encyclopedia is a herculean endeavor to peel back the layers of misinformation on Appalachia and deepen the scholarship on the mountainous states that extend from northern Alabama to New York," said Jeff Biggers, author of "The United States of Appalachia." The I ,832-page encyclopedia consists of 34 topic sections, each edited by recognized experts in the field. Jean Haskell and the late Rudy Abramson, co-editors, began deciding topics and authors in 1995, eventually choosing, along with dozens of others, WCU professors Anna Fariello, leader of Hunter Library's Craft Revival Project, Mary Jean Herzog of the department of educational leadership and foundations, and Curris Wood of the department of history. Others from WCU who contributed writing or editing to the volume include: Tyler Blethen and Richard Starnes from the history department; William L. Anderson, John L. Bell and Max R. Williams, retired history professors; Harold Herzog from the psychology department; Michele Glover and Suzanne H . McDowell from the Mountain Heritage Center; Sharon L. Jacques from the nursing department; James Manning from the communication, and stage and screen departments; Kevin Pennington from educational leadership and foundations department; Nancy Carol Joyner and Karl Nichols, retired English professors; Robert B. Pittman, a retired education professor; Karl Rohr, a former history instructor; Newton Smith, an English professor; and Jane L. Brown, an anthropology instructor. The encyclopedia, which covers such diverse topics as land, food, religion, art and government, was started by the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services at the East Tennessee State University and was published by the Universiry ofTennessee Press. The Center for Appalachian Studies and Services and the Appalachian Regional Commission raised money to try to place one copy in every middle school and high school in distressed and at-risk counties. Approximately I ,000 books have been distributed so far through the Books-InSchools program. "The encyclopedia is an outstanding contribution to our knowledge about Appalachia," Blethen said. "Before it, there was no one place where we could go to find reliable answers to all kinds of questions about the region." :i: Reporter - June 2, 2008 Newsfile Carol Burton, assistant vice chancellor for undergraduate studies; Melissa Canady Wargo, director of assessment; and Scott Philyaw, associate professor of history and director of the Mountain Heritage Center, presented a session titled "Small Changes, Big Rewards: Integrating the Disparate Threads of Undergraduate Education" this spring at an Association of American Colleges and Universities' Conference in Austin, Texas. Philyaw and Burton also recently provided a keynote address titled "Integration with Intentionality: Small Changes, Big Rewards" at lenoir-Rhyne College's spring faculty meeting in Hickory. Joni Bugden-Storie, assistant professor of natural resource conservation and management, co-authored a poster titled "Mapping Existing River Cane Sites Within Jackson County, North Carolina, Using Visible Aerial Photography; which recently was presented by WCU senior and co-author Carey Burda at the Association of American Geographer's Meeting in Boston. The research was initiated by a grant provided by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians through the Revitalization ofTraditional Cherokee Artisan Resources. Sugden- Storie also was co-author of a second AAG conference presentation titled "Mapping of Non-tidal Wetlands Using ALOS Palsar Polarimetric Radar Data in Carteret County, North Carolina." Provost Kyle R. Carter was inducted as the first honorary member of the Mu Epsilon chapter of Alpha Sigma lambda national honor society during the annual ceremony at A.K. Hinds University Center. Alpha Sigma lambda recognizes academic excellence for nontraditional students. Carter was selected for his commitment to academic excellence and his efforts in addressing student needs, said Pat Brown, national president of Alpha Sigma lambda and dean of educational outreach. Bethany Davidson, visiting assistant professor of entrepreneurship, recently served as a guest adviser for ideablob.com, an online community where small business owners and entrepreneurs share business ideas in exchange for feedback and advice from the community. ~ Reporter- June 2, 2008 State Funds WCU Energy Efficiency Projects WCU has received $125,000 as one of the recipients of the state's first Energy Efficiency Reserve Fund grants designed to help state agencies, University of North Carolina system campuses and N.C. community colleges implement power-saving projects. Western's energy management office in