Thursday, March 3, 2022

Whitman College and its partners in the Northwest Five Consortium (NW5C—Lewis & Clark College, Reed College, University of Puget Sound, and Willamette University) have completed a productive Year 1 and are now in Year 2 of a Mellon Foundation-funded grant to revitalize the humanities through community engagement. The work addresses five identified themes of common concern: 

• Historical and contemporary manifestations of racism and exclusionism
• Incarceration and restorative justice
• Indigenous peoples and colonialism in the Northwest
• The role of arts and humanities in addressing climate change
• Partnerships for public health

Over the spring and summer of 2021, a number of faculty and community partners across the Northwest participated in professional development workshops on best practices in community engagement, and attended learning communities that built cross-campus relationships. In December, the faculty steering committee awarded its first group of community-engaged learning mini-grants to seven projects, including a joint project from Whitman and Lewis & Clark College:

 

Counternarratives: Confluence Project, Maya Lin, and Beyond. This project contributes to the legacy of the Confluence Project by expanding on its archives creating a new exhibition that brings together further archival material with relevant works by (Indigenous) contemporary artists. The new exhibition will make space for young Indigenous voices and provide an immersive exhibition with audiovisual and material exhibits that make the significance of the Confluence Project tangible for a broad public.

 

Projects are scheduled to run through the summer. Additional workshops are planned for the spring, and the next call for community-engaged learning project proposals will be this summer. For more information, visit the NW5C website or contact Emily Anderson, NW5C coordinator, at andersoe@whitman.edu.

Photo: Print made from Lee Moorehouse negative held at the University of Oregon. Whitman College and Northwest Archives, WCMss 261, Native American Collection, Box 1.

 

In preparation for the building of the Long Tent in April, Whitman is hosting an extraordinary series of experts, elders and scholars to teach us about the tribes, cultures and ecosystems of the Plateau region. This unique series launches next Tuesday, March 8 at 6 p.m. in Olin Auditorium.

 

Whitman is honored to host Fred Hill Sr. from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), who will speak about the place of song, dance and ceremony in Plateau cultures in relation to the Long Tent as a ceremonial space. Hill is an educator at the Nixyáawii Community School and in the CTUIR Language Program and is one of the few life-long, fluent speakers of Sahaptin language. He is a recognized figure in the longhouse ceremonial tradition, is a big drum powwow singer and often serves as master of ceremonies at powwow gatherings. It is our great privilege to have Hill on campus to speak to us about Indigenous Plateau culture and ceremony. Please plan to join us Tuesday evening as we begin this in-depth learning opportunity about our place!

Noteworthy

Aguilar-Ramirez Receives Graves Award

Aaron Aguilar-Ramirez, assistant professor of Hispanic studies, has been awarded a Graves Award in the Humanities. This biennial award, based at Pomona College, recognizes a junior faculty member who demonstrates outstanding accomplishment in the teaching of the humanities. Aguilar-Ramirez was nominated by Whitman for his work in building a more inclusive and equitable Hispanic studies curriculum. With Graves funding, he will attend two academic conferences for teachers of Spanish and travel through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to connect with instructors who run the best Spanish as a Heritage Language programs in the country. The long-term goal of this project is to develop a more robust course catalog tailored for heritage learners of Spanish.

Stratton Work Inducted into Hall of Fame

This week the Association for Computing Machinery's Technical Committee on FPGAs inducted the paper "FCUDA: Enabling efficient compilation of CUDA kernels onto FPGAs" by Associate Professor of Computer Science John Stratton and his coauthors into its Hall of Fame. At its publication in 2009, the paper was given the Best Paper award at the Symposium on Application Specific Processors, and this new recognition acknowledges its enduring impact. The presenter of the award noted it was the first demonstration of a particular class of heterogeneous programming language on an FPGA, and was notable for automating each step of the process and releasing the software implementation publicly as an open source project. This work was eventually adapted into commercial tools from Xilinx/AMD and Altera/Intel, which are in use to this day. 

Omair Represents at Global Peace Summit

With financial support from ASWC, first year Mohammed "Franko" Omair recently attended the Global Peace Chain Summit in Dubai. Omair writes, "This experience is one of the life-changing ones that I'll not forget. The conference brought people together, different nationalities, backgrounds, ages, etc. to discuss world issues. We had Ukrainians, Russians, diplomats and youths, all of us met for discussing the political and environmental challenges. 

 

This was a great opportunity for intercultural exchange and international understanding and it brought a different picture of the world to me. I was honored to participate in the diplomatic panel and to lead the dialogue and the youth concerns to the diplomats attending the session. It was a brilliant experience and I brought a unique perspective as a Palestinian, a UWC alumnus and a Whitman student."

Announcements

Apply Now to Live in the IHC in Fall 2022

Are you looking to live with people who share your interests? Do you want to live in a house on campus? Then apply to be part of the the Interest House Community (IHC)!

 

Each IHC house offers 4-8 students an opportunity to live in beautiful houses with a cozy living space where they are encouraged to participate in the community, Whitman, and beyond.

Learn more about the IHC in today's info session at 4 p.m. in Jewett or come explore each of the amazing houses on Saturday, March 5 from 2 – 4 p.m.

 

Applications for the Fall 2022 interest houses are open now and must be submitted before spring break.

Vicki Bennett, a multi-media artist and filmmaker who also performs under the name People Like Us, is currently featured in the Sheehan Gallery in a show called "MIND MAPS." She is joining us on campus all the way from the UK to offer a series of exciting, collaborative events this week:

 

Thursday, March 3 at 5:30 p.m. in Kimball Auditorium: a film screening with Vicki Bennett followed by a Q & A with the artist and Negativland's Jon Leidecker (popcorn and beverages provided).

 

Friday, March 4 at 7:00 p.m. in Young Ballroom: a screening of "The Mirror" by People Like Us followed by a live show called "We Can Really Feel Like We're Here" from special guests Negativland and Sue C

 

Saturday, March 5 from 8–10:30 p.m. on KWCW: People Like Us and Negativland on the campus radio station

Have an event you'd like to share with campus? Submit the information to the Events Calendar.

“Whitman Today” is produced by the Office of Communications and is emailed Monday through Friday to Whitman College staff, faculty and students. All times are listed in Pacific Daylight Time. 

 

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