Mikel Vause

Name:	L. Mikel Vause
Department/Program:	English
Status:	Full-time contract

Education

Your highest degree earned, its concentration/emphasis, institution, year earned:
Degree Concentration/emphasis	Ph. D.
Institution	Bowling Green State University
Year Earned	1986
Certifications/licenses you currently hold:

Teaching Experience

How many years you have been teaching at Weber State University:	21 years
Your total years of teaching (including those at Weber State University:	21 years
From 1997–2003, what are examples of your most significant teaching developments, innovations, etc.
ACADEMIC SPECIALTIES:19th Century British and American Literature, Mountaineering and Exploration Literature, Literature of the Natural World, Western American Environmental Literature, and the Works of Sir A. Conan Doyle.

Research, Scholarship, Creative Activities

From 1997–2003, what are examples of your most significant research, scholarship, or creative activities?

Dr. Mikel Vause is the author of numerous articles, poems and short stories that have appeared in books, magazines and journals like American Nature Writers (Scribners 1996), Climbing, The Climbing Art, The Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, Weber Studies, Popular Culture Review, The Trumpeter, Utah Foreign Language Review, Wasatch Review International, Encyclia, The Junction, Word Works, and rough draft. He had the lead article in The Himalayan Journal #53 (1997). Most recently he has had articles appear in The John Muir New Letter and The Journal of the World Wilderness Congress. He is also the author of a collection of essays On Mountains and Mountaineers (Mountain N' Air Books, La Crescenta, CA 1993) and is the editor of Rock and Roses vols. I and II (Mountain N' Air Books, 1990 and 1999), Wilderness Tapestry (University Of Nevada Press, Reno, NV 1992), and The Peregrine Reader (Gibbs M. Smith, Layton, UT 1997). He has recently completed a collection of poems under the title, I Knew It Would Come to This (Mountain ‘N Air Books, La Crescenta, CA 1999) and an anthology of mountaineering essays entitled The Climbing Life currently under consideration by Utah State University Press. His current projects include a editing the unpublished journals and letters of the British mountaineer, Sir Christian Bonington, CBE, as well as editing the essays of Doug Scott, CBE and the first English man to climb Mount Everest.

Dr. Vause holds a Ph.D. from Bowling Green University and is a Full Professor of English at Weber State University. He has been recognized for his teaching with the Crystal Crest Master Award, The George and Beth Lowe Teaching Award, The Continuing Education Professor of the Year Award, and the Honors Cortez Professor Award and has three been nominated for the John S. Hinkley Award. During his tenure at Weber State University, he has taught yearly in the Honors Program where he has co-founded courses such as A Field Study in American Wilderness Literature and Philosophy, Psychological Themes in Literature, Literature of the Sixties not to mention working with many individual students who have taken his classes for Honors credit and on Honors thesis committees. Along with his work in the Honors Program, He has established a very successful travel study program in England, Scotland, and Wales that has become known as The Dead Poets Tour and is offered bi-yearly. His efforts in travel study has expanded to include a humanitarian trip to Nepal where Honors students, faculty and staff, and alumni working with several physicians and a dentist in a small school and a small medical clinic as well as providing educational and medical support in a number of villages along our trekking route. This trip enjoyed the support of the Swanson Foundation, Treefarm Inc., Bayer Pharmaceutical, Weber State University, and Petzl International, which provided medical and school supplies. Dr. Vause has also taught in the Early College Program since its beginnings. After four years as the Director of the Honors Program, Dr. Vause has returned to his position the English Department.

Dr. Vause is the Co-Director and Founder of the National Undergraduate Literature Conference, which is attended yearly by approximately 180 student from across the United States and has hosted a number of the world’s finest literary figures such as Ray Bradbury, Peter Mattheissen, Richard Ford, Carolyn Forche, Ann Beattie, Carlos Fuentes, and Tobias Wolff. He is a Co-Director and Founder of the North American Interdisciplinary Conference on Environment and Community(now known as The North American Interdisciplinary Conference on Environment and Community) which brings internationally recognized scholars and writers to the Ogden community such as David Mech, Sir Christian Bonington, William Kittredge, and Maurice Horknocker, to discuss a broad spectrum of wilderness and environmental and literary issues. Both conferences have resulted in the publication of books: The Peregrine Reader (National Undergraduate Literature Conference) and Wilderness Tapestry (The Environment and Community Conference). He has served as Chair of the Weber State University Curriculum Committee, twice chair of the English Department Tenure and Ranking Committee, as a member of the Foreign Language Department and Psychology Department Tenure and Ranking Committees, and as a member of the College of Social Science Tenure and Ranking Committee. He has also served on a number of other university, college, and departmental committees. Dr. Vause received the 1999 Distinguished Service Award from The Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, is a member of the American Alpine Club, and has recently been admitted to The Alpine Club (Britain) and named the first non-British judge for the Boardman-Tasker Mountaineering Literature Award, chairing the committee during its 20^th year. Dr. Vause is currently the editor of The Journal of the Utah Academy of Arts, Letter, and Sciences.

Dr. Vause was a visiting scholar during the month of November 1996 and 1998 at Bretton Hall College of The University of Leeds in Sheffield, England where he was also a featured speaker for The International Mountain Literature Festival. He has presented papers at a number of National and International professional conferences such as the World Wilderness Congress in Tromsö, Norway and Bangalore, India. He was a member of the National Advisory Board for ASLE (The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment). Dr. Vause was the 2000-01 President of the Western Regional Honors Council.

Public Service

From 1997-2003, what are examples of your most significant professionally related service to the community (member/officer in professional organizations, consultant, presentations/speeches, etc)

Dr. Vause has served as the Chair of The Ogden Trails Network for the past eight years and. The OTN is a city commission established to design, develop, construct, and supervise the community trails system. He has conducted many community and public school workshops on mountaineering, environmental ethics, and environmental literature. He was a featured speaker at The National Conference of The Land and Water Conservation Fund and The Trust for Public Lands in Washington, D.C. in April 1996. He is a past member of the executive committee of Weber Pathways.