Jonathan Addleton, the U.S. ambassador to Mongolia, visited Western’s campus on Thursday, March 4. He met with Western faculty, staff and students and toured the campus.

“We were pleased to welcome Ambassador Addleton to the Western campus and to share with him some of the innovative teaching and research activities taking place here in International Studies generally and with specific regard to Mongolia,” said Doug Nord, director of Western’s Center for International Studies.

Knute Skinner (English, emeritus) had his poems "The Two of Us," "A Great Change" and "Yellow Beer" published in "Staple," No. 72, Winter 2009 and Spring 2010, pp. 146-148.

The Western Libraries at Western Washington University will play host to a talk by Shaw N. Gynan, professor of Spanish and director of Linguistics at WWU, titled “A Week with the Ishir Awatoso: Techniques of Elementary Literacy Instruction in an Endangered Language.”

The event, free and open to the public, will be held at 4 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 25 at the Library Skybridge.

Jennifer Karchmer, an instructor in the Department of Communication at Western Washington University, has just returned from Vancouver, B.C., where she was covering the 2010 Winter Olympics as an independent journalist.

To read Karchmer's coverage of the Olympics, check out her Web site at http://jenniferkarchmer.com/.

Oliver de la Paz is a winner, plain and simple. Want proof? Well, there’s the $1,500 GAP Grant he was awarded last year from Artist Trust, which supports artist-generated projects in Washington.

Sean Eisen Murphy (Liberal Studies) gave a two-hour seminar on "Ancient Jewish Law and Medieval Christian Identity, c.1100-c.1250" Feb. 4 to the research fellows at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Nantes, France, with the additional participation of researchers from the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Ange Guepin in Nantes.

Edward Ousselin (Modern and Classical Languages) has had a number of works published recently. His article “Jean Renoir, l’Allemagne et la guerre : La Grande Illusion et La Règle du jeu” appeared in "Cincinnati Romance Review 28" (2009) on pages 119-134.

Ousselin also has written a number of recent book reviews:

Western Washington University’s debate team, the Western Debate Union, will host a student debate team from Jiatong University in Xi’an, China at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 16 in Communications Facility 120 on the WWU campus.

This event is free and open to the public; the topic of the event’s debate is “Resolved: The United States and China Have a Mutual Interest in Combating Islamic Fundamentalism.”

Faculty members from the anthropology, sociology and environmental studies departments are getting together from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 16, in Academic Instructional Center West Room 204 to discuss the recent earthquake and ongoing humanitarian situation in Haiti, says Scott Miles, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at Western Washington University.

David Curley, chair of the Liberal Studies Department at Western Washington University, will give a lecture titled “About Afghanistan—or, Can We Learn Anything Useful from History?” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3, in the Bellingham City Council Chambers in downtown Bellingham.

Timothy Brook, a professor in the department of history at the University of British Columbia, will draw from his recent book “Vermeer’s Hat” to discuss 17th century Dutch art and its connection to China and the expanding global world in an upcoming presentation on the Western Washington University campus. Brook will give his lecture “Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century: A China Connection?” from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 9, in Communications Facility Room 115.

Lecture is winter entry in CHSS Dean's Lecture Series

David Curley, chair of the Liberal Studies Department at Western Washington University, will give a lecture titled “About Afghanistan—or, Can We Learn Anything Useful from History?” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3, in the Bellingham City Council Chambers in downtown Bellingham.

Joseph E. Trimble (Psychology, Woodring College of Education) had his article "The Virtues of Cultural Resonance, Competence, and Relational Collaboration with Native American Indian Communities: A Synthesis of the Counseling and Psychotherapy Literature" published recently in the journal "The Counseling Psychologist," Vol. 38, No. 2.

The article's abstract reads as follows:

Jeffrey Grimm (Psychology) co-authored a paper with undergraduate students John Harkness and Sierra Webb that appeared in the latest issue of the journal "Pharmacology." The paper was titled "Abstinence-dependent transfer of lithium chloride-induced sucrose aversion to a sucrose-paired cue in rats."

From the abstract:

Western Washington University is home to 21 Public Anthropology Award winners from the Center for a Public Anthropology; all of them hail from Kathy Saunders' Anthropology 201 and Anthropology 253 Cultural Anthropology classes. The students participated in a North American competition involving more than 4,000 students from 28 schools.

Ralph Vernacchia (Physical Education, Health and Recreation) received the Dr. C. Harmon Brown Sports Medicine and Science Award at the 2009 USA Track and Field annual meeting held Dec. 5 in Indiannapolis. He was recognized for his dedication and contributions to sport science, particularly sport psychology, in the sport of track and field.