JUNE 1995

VOL. 1, NO 8

COORDINATOR'S CORNER

This month's faculty profile features Dr. Thom Kuehls, Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department. Thom is relatively new to Weber State, and he has been a significant contributor to the program already. We are grateful for his enthusiastic efforts.

It is the time of year for recognition of significant faculty and staff contributions to the university and the extended community. Congratulations to the members of the Women's Studies program who are recipients of awards this spring. Several of us have received Hemingway grants. Two of our teaching faculty, Kathleen Herndon and Tony Spanos, were members of the Site Based Interdisciplinary Teaching Team, which received the University Award for Exemplary Collaboration. My receipt of the Hinckley Fellow Award would not have been possible without the help of many of you in the program. I thank Nancy Haanstad for nominating me, those of you on whose shoulders I stand for allowing me to do so, and the selection committee for considering my nomination favorably. Congratulations also to Nancy Haanstad for receipt of one of the 1994-95 Dello Dayton Awards from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and to Raycine Jones and Freddie Cooper who will spend the next year honing their skills in a leadership training program sponsored by the National Institute for Leadership Development. If I have failed to acknowledge honors received by other faculty or Executive Council members, my apologies; you can tell me when you send your list of accomplishments for the annual report. (HINT!)

Thanks to those of you who braved the deluge of rain on the afternoon of 11 May to attend our meeting and open house in the Alumni Center. We are grateful especially to those students who dropped in.

This will be the last 94-95 edition of the newsletter; publication will resume in September. That issue will contain dates for the autumn retreat(s).

FACULTY PROFILE

Dr. Thom Kuehls was born and raised in Akron, Ohio, where he experienced his early enlightenment. In the third grade, while pondering the spelling of his given name "Thomas," he realized that it made no sense to remove the "h" to make it "Tom." He reports that, since that time, he has become less logical.

Thom's main areas of academic interest are political theory, international relations and environmental politics. He teaches courses in his home department of political science, in the Honours Programme, and in Women's Studies. He has team-taught the Women's Studies core course, "Feminist Theories" (305) with Kathryn MacKay, and this quarter, he is coming into the home stretch on a new political science course, "Women, Politics, and Society," which is cross-listed with Women's Studies. He also represents the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences on the Women's Studies Executive Council. Thom has just finished the copy-editing on a new book, forthcoming in February from the University of Minnesota Press; it is entitled "Beyond Sovereign Territory: The Space of Ecopolitics." He is an avid cyclist and one of his favorite pastimes is riding his road bike up long mountainous roads.

Thanks to all of those members of the campus and larger community who made monetary and/or in-kind contributions to the Women's Studies program this past year. We appreciate your generous support, without which we would be severely limited in our ability to offer presentations beyond our basic coursework. Thanks also to our readers of the newsletter; I have appreciated your feedback on its value. Please let us know of activities we might publicize for you or of other people who might like to be added to our list of subscribers.

There are two Women's Studies minors who will be completing their degrees this month. They are Kim Stone and Johnn Tan. They both will be leaving immediately after the quarter ends, Kim to enter graduate school in Social Work at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and Johnn to become a staff member for the national office of SEAC (Student Environmental Action Coalition) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I asked them to reflect briefly on what it has meant to their education to have pursued the Women's Studies minor. Both felt that they had benefited from the rigorous challenges presented by their Women's Studies courses. These challenges include not only meeting intellectual demands but also facing the need to "think it all through" and put insights into a context that leads to meaningful personal action in pursuit of a society that is more egalitarian, cooperative, and peaceful. They both appreciated the cooperative and participatory nature of the Women's Studies classroom, where they extended and received respect for a (sometimes wide) range of opinions and experiences. They both found that their coursework helped them to recognize where they as individuals fit in the world's hierarchy of power and privilege and to question continually if that is where they wanted to be. Johnn said that his Women's Studies classes helped him "mov(e)... toward ever more consciousness and ... act on that awareness." In his words, "What more could education give to a person?" All of us in the Women's Studies Program are proud that we have played a role in supporting the intellectual development of such committed and conscientious citizens of our global community.

NOTE: AFTER THE SPRING QUARTER ENDS ON 9 JUNE, NORMA WILL NOT BE IN THE OFFICE ON A REGULAR BASIS UNTIL MID-SEPTEMBER. HOWEVER, WE WILL CHECK HER VOICE-MAIL ROUTINELY AND RESPOND TO ANY QUESTIONS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CALL 626-7632 AND LEAVE A MESSAGE IF YOU HAVE ANY CONCERNS OR QUESTIONS.

Calendar

2 June: last day of classes.

3 June: Utah NOW Conference, Salt Lake City, Westminster College, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.

9 June: Graduation Day!

21-25 June: National Women's Studies Association annual meeting, Norman, OK.