THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA COLLEGE OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
DE VE LO P M E N TS Fall 2023
WELCOME FROM THE DEAN Welcome to the fall 2023 issue of Developments. This issue coincides with the launch of the public phase of the University of Arizona’s Fuel Wonder campaign. Fuel Wonder is the university’s most ambitious fundraising campaign to date, with a goal of raising $3 billion. The campaign began on January 1, 2017, so many of you have already contributed to helping Fuel Wonder in SBS – thank you! When I was interviewed for the University of Arizona’s Wonder ad campaign, Lori Poloni-Staudinger I was asked what wonder makes me do. I said, “Wonder makes me connect,” which is a fitting statement for the college, as well. We are the college that studies people, and the heart of the human experience is connection. In SBS, we connect student curiosity to fulfilling careers by providing students with transferable skills and handson experiences. We connect faculty in diverse disciplines to advance innovative, interdisciplinary solutions to entrenched social problems. We connect with our community to build bridges between theory and practice. A fundraising campaign is also about connection – connecting your passions to the areas of the college that speak to you and where you wish to make a difference. The College of SBS’s Fuel Wonder goals align with our strategic plan, which focuses on transformation and impact. With your help, we can: • Increase funding for experiential learning opportunities and career preparation for students. • Fund a Student Completion Scholarship Endowment, which helps students bridge the financial gap to graduation. • Increase graduate student fellowships, which also help us recruit faculty, maintain our rankings and provide quality educational opportunities for undergraduates. • Fund research that advances solutions to the grand challenges of our time and supports our community. • Name the SBS Árbol de la Vida Living Learning Community and the Student Lounge in the Student Success District. Thank you to the donors featured in this issue who are helping us achieve these goals: Steve and Nancy Lynn for funding an endowed professorship in the Department of Communication; the late Keith A. Dixon for his transformational estate gift to the School of Anthropology, which supports, in part, graduate fellowships; and Rolf Peters and Sarah Bissell Peters, who fund a student scholarship in the Department of History. Please consider how you can Fuel Wonder in the College of SBS, how you might light the fire in our students and faculty to imagine bigger and to accomplish the extraordinary. Join us in our quest to create a better, more just, world. ~Lori Poloni-Staudinger, Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Elevating Archaeology and Graduate EducationThe Impact of a Profound Gift
Kayla Worthey at the archaeological site called Bizmoune Cave, located in Morocco. It is one of the Paleolithic sites she is studying for her dissertation. All photos by Ismael Sánchez Morales.
Since 2014, a generous estate gift from Dr. Keith A. Dixon has supported archaeology initiatives and graduate fellowships in the School of Anthropology. Recently, the school received another transformational donation, bringing the total gift to nearly $6.9 million. Dr. Dixon was a University of Arizona alumnus who received his master’s degree in anthropology in 1952. Jim Krogmeier, associate vice president of gift planning at the University of Arizona Foundation, said the completion of the gift was the result of careful coordination. “Dr. Dixon worked carefully with his advisors and the UA Foundation Planned Giving team and SBS Development team to put his gift into place,” Krogmeier said. “Together, everyone found a way to achieve this tremendous charitable impact and also accomplish his individual financial and tax planning goals. It was truly a team effort.” From its inception more than 100 years ago, the University of Arizona archaeology program has been a point of pride for the university, consistently ranking in the top five nationwide. Graduate students are essential linchpins to maintaining that quality — they help the school recruit top faculty and improve undergraduate education by providing support for hands-on learning. Because graduate fellowships are essential for recruiting top graduate students, Diane Austin, director of the School of Anthropology, says the Dixon gift has been transformative for the school. “I cannot overstate the value of this incredibly generous gift to our students, faculty and entire school,” Austin said. “This dedicated support for archaeology enables us to stretch undesignated resources to support students from
our other programs.” With student success and support as the priority, the gift is used in various ways: faculty research awards, education programs that complement activities such as field schools, and graduate and dissertation fellowships. Faculty research awards provide a graduate assistant for the faculty member, stipend support for the assistant, and software or materials, if necessary. Students receive mentoring and learn research skills.
Samples from the laboratory at the Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine, in Rabat, Morocco.
SUPPORTING ARCHAEOLOGY FIELDWORK AND MUSEUM COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT
The Dixon funding also supports the processing of collections from past field schools held at the University Indian
Ruin and the Silver Creek Archaeological Research Project, or SCARP, where graduate and undergraduate students received hands-on experience collecting data and learning about fieldwork. Rebecca Harkness, a fifth-year anthropology Ph.D. student, is a research assistant with the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology at the Arizona State Museum. She oversees undergraduate students and instructs them in post-excavation tasks, which include organizing and transporting materials and data from the University Indian Ruin and SCARP field schools to the museum, followed by strict adherence to the museum’s collection cataloging method, which is resource-intensive. Harkness explained that Dixon’s gift directly supports this materials management and student instruction on how to work in a professional museum environment. “Many of the field school collections don’t come with funding to take care of them,” Harkness said. “This gift allows me to step in and oversee collections with the help of undergraduate interns and get them to curation standards without using up staff resources.”
tion between climate change and cultural shifts — through the analysis of animal teeth and snail shells from Morocco. “The [fellowship] allows me the time to focus on a single task,” Kayla said. “More than just providing more hours in the day to complete a dissertation, I believe the fellowship is also greatly improving the depth and creativity of my work by creating a space in which I can spend longer spans of time thinking, asking questions and finding new ways to move forward in my analysis and writing.” Kayla’s advisor, Regents Professor of Anthropology Mary Stiner, said funding for the end stage of graduate education, to work undistracted, is rare. “Unfortunately, this final stage in graduate education is the least funded as a rule,” Stiner said. “Even very resourceful students who obtain financial support for their research from competitive grant programs often find themselves without financial support for the last big step — many quiet but intense months of writing and editing the dissertation. The Keith A. Dixon Dissertation Write-Up Fellowship is one of the few exceptions. Filling this gap in support for Ph.D. students is a wonderful investment in their future and a credit to the programs that trained them.”
“The fellowship is greatly improving the depth and creativity of my work.” - Kayla Worthey NURTURING RESEARCH AND DISSERTATION WRITING
In-depth research, peer and mentor collaboration, and significant contributions to the field come from graduate fellowships funded by donors like Dixon. The Keith A. Dixon Graduate Fellowship provides an incoming student with a full year of support, including a stipend, health insurance and tuition waiver. Most recipients go on to multi-year funding. Students also need extra support at the end of their graduate careers. Writing a dissertation can be one of the most overwhelming facets of getting a Ph.D. degree. Diane Austin says students “often get bogged down in everything else they are doing,” to the point they struggle to devote consistent time to writing. The Keith A. Dixon Dissertation Write-Up Fellowship provides graduate students with some much-needed relief. Kayla Worthey is a fellowship recipient and anthropology Ph.D. student, currently writing her dissertation on paleoenvironmental reconstruction and the potential correla-
Kayla Worthey examines samples of animal teeth from the Rhafas archaeological site in Morocco.
CHAMPIONING COMMUNICATION THROUGH GENEROSITY:
Leading by Example
Nancy and Steve Lynn during a 2019 trip to the Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
Steve Lynn has a calm, direct manner and is generous with his words — not surprising, considering his career has centered around communication and interacting with people. His community service and university engagement accomplishments reflect that commitment to the public: 10 years as chair of the SBS Advisory Board and co-chair of the Innovation Circle (formerly known as the Magellan Circle). He is a member and former chair of First Things First, an organization addressing early childhood development. Additionally, he serves as a member of the College of Medicine Advisory Board and holds the position of immediate past chairman of the University of Arizona Foundation. This kind of commitment and involvement comes intuitively to Steve and his wife Nancy, whose gift of the Steve and Nancy Lynn Endowed Professorship in the Department of Communication is a natural manifestation of the value they place on communication and the university that equipped them both for success. They established the professorship in 2015 and recently extended their giving, in part, to help the college launch the public phase of the Fuel Wonder campaign. Nancy, a retired high school guidance counselor, studied elementary education at UArizona. Steve has a bachelor’s degree in political science and a minor in communication. As an undergraduate, he enjoyed group discussion, debate and deductive reasoning so much that he went on to earn his master’s in communication. One of Steve’s first jobs was with the City of Tucson, working in Housing and Community Development on a program designed to use federal funding to ameliorate the
root causes of inner-city poverty. This role, coupled with his ability to speak Spanish, afforded him the opportunity to communicate on a deeper level with the community he was serving, and he realized then that good communication is multi-faceted. “It’s not just the language. It’s about being respectful — saying and doing things consistent with cultural standards,” Steve said. Steve’s communication savvy didn’t start with that job. It started during his time at UArizona and he says these skills are part of his professional toolbox to this day. “One of the things I’ve done for probably 50 years now is independent consulting on communications,” Steve said. “I still use some of the communication models we studied in graduate school to show people visually what happens when they try to communicate with each other.” Steve understands that good communication bears fruit and makes an impact. Little wonder Regents Professor Chris Segrin, head of the Department of Communication, was chosen as the first Steve and Nancy Lynn Professor. “Chris is such a good guy, and the students love him,” Steve said. The endowed professorship has helped Chris continue a series of studies on neighborhood disadvantage, problem drinking and mental health. His team found that people have the greatest influence over their mental health based on where they live and how they engage with others — essentially, through interpersonal communication. Chris’ research shows what Steve has known about people and business for a long time: communication is
everything. Chris also investigates loneliness, social anxiety, depression, marital struggles and family communication. The endowment also allows him to provide his graduate students with crucial research opportunities such as co-authoring research papers and projects he calls, “learning laboratories.” He says preparing the next generation of scholars is critical. “The training and mentoring of graduate students are a super important thing to me, especially at this point in my career,” Chris said. “It’s great to see how enthused they get over having resources to support the projects they are interested in.” Chris puts in significant effort to champion and collaborate with his department, composed of dedicated and capable faculty and graduate students. The Department of Communication is small relative to the output of published research and the number of stu-
brilliance into the fun, fantastic career he’s had.” “I feel very strongly that the preparation I received at the University of Arizona is critical to whatever success I’ve enjoyed in my career,” Steve said. “Giving back has never been about the amount as it was about the ability to connect back to the university.” No doubt the Lynns will continue their legacy of generosity and community engagement — impacting the university, the City of Tucson and perhaps even further. “I can’t imagine how many people Steve and Nancy have touched with their philanthropy,” Chris said. “It’s a great thing they’re doing for us, showing what real generosity looks like and what effects it can have.”
Department Head of Communication, Chris Segrin. Photo by Molly Condit, Great Bear Media.
dents in its degree programs. With 15 core faculty members, the department serves more than 1,000 communication majors, over 700 communication and public relations minors, and graduate students. It is ranked in the top 25 and as one of the most productive communication departments in the country, with four faculty among the top 2% most influential communication scholars of the last 60 years. “They are very good at what they do,” Steve said. “A lot of that is because Chris is a really good department head.” The admiration is mutual. “I think Steve is an innately sharp, brilliant man,” Chris said. “The training in communication helped channel that
“I still use some of the communication models we studied in graduate school to show people visually what happens when they try to communicate with each other.” - Steve Lynn
PRESERVING THE PAST, EMPOWERING THE FUTURE Sarah Bissell Peters and Rolf Peters at the University of Arizona
Rolf Peters and Sarah Bissell Peters grew up in Tucson, in families who modeled the importance of education and community service. Rolf lived in the Sam Hughes neighborhood, and Sarah spent her childhood in West University. They both attended St. Michael’s School and, later, Tucson High School. Even then, they knew not all their fellow students had the same access or support they did. “We knew we were fortunate to have parents who supported our studies, that there were a lot of kids at Tucson High who didn’t have that same kind of home life and educational opportunities,” Sarah said. Their parents lived out the values of learning and serving. Rolf’s father, Charles M. Peters, began his career in library science at the University of Arizona in 1966. Rolf’s mother, Sue, taught English at Saguaro High School. Sarah’s mother, Nancy Bissell, a Women’s Plaza of Honor honoree, co-founded the Tucson-based Primavera Foundation. The couple wanted to offer students the same educational opportunities they had. One fortuitous day on the golf course in 2017, Rolf met Ken Dildine, a former University of Arizona Foundation vice president of planned giving. Rolf asked how he and Sarah could honor his parents and support students through donations. Now every year, in honor of his parents’ birthdays, Rolf and Sarah support scholarship endowments in the Department of History, School of Information and the SALT Center. “My parents were always very involved and pro-education — it was at the forefront of everything,” Rolf said. “We wanted to make sure we were giving students who wouldn’t have a shot, a chance at access and support.” The Charles M. Peters Endowed Scholarship, named in honor of Rolf’s father, is awarded to a full-time history student who demonstrates need.
Liliana Toledo Guzman is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of History, specializing in Latin American history and ethnomusicology. A first-generation college student originally from Mexico, she chose the program for its reputation and studies professional Mexican women musicians from the 1920s-1950s. She says funding from the Charles M. Peters Scholarship Endowment allowed her to continue her studies during the pandemic, which was especially challenging as an international student. “I had the chance to conduct remote research thanks to this endowment. Having that resource in a time of world crisis was priceless,” Liliana said. “Without this support, I would have searched for [different funding], which was challenging in 2020. Being awarded this scholarship meant continuity in my education without interruptions.” Liliana met Rolf in the spring of 2023. “I remember that Rolf’s father’s profession affected him to the point that … he can see [history’s] social value from his personal and professional point of view,” Liliana said.
Liliana Toledo Guzman
Rolf is the CEO and co-founder of Agmotion, a commodity trading and risk management company based in Minneapolis. Sarah spent her career in interior architecture and design. Rolf believes a knowledge of history makes one eminently employable in the private sector — no matter what field. “When you read history, you learn about human nature. If you learn that, you can figure out how to do a better job marketing technology,” he said. “If you want to major in finance, take a few history classes and you realize you can learn about the past financial crises and the mistakes people repeat.” Rolf added, “A liberal arts education teaches you how to think, and that’s a critical skill if you are going to be in almost any aspect of business. That’s why we gave — we wanted to keep history alive.”
Board Q & A: Rowene Aguirre-Medina
Rowene Aguirre-Medina, Roy Medina, and Innovation Circle Scholar Zoey Rubinoff
Rowene Aguirre-Medina is an Innovation Circle member and graduate of the University of Arizona. She and her husband, Roy, fund the Mary Bernard Aguirre Professorship in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies in honor of Rowene’s great-grandmother. Recently, Rowene was named SBS Advisory Board chair. Here, she talks about her values and what she hopes to accomplish in her new role. How do your volunteer passions manifest in your role on the SBS board? My lifelong avocation has been working for equity and education for women and girls. I was first drawn to the College of SBS by Gender and Women’s Studies. Once involved, I saw how so much of what we do touches my life. I believe that the social and behavioral sciences can change the world in real and measurable ways. What key initiatives or projects do you hope to champion as chair? Our new strategic plan is a concise, clear roadmap for SBS as a college and is the best way to support Dean Lori Poloni-Staudinger. I would also like to see us, as a board, work on increasing Innovation Circle membership. Can you share a memorable anecdote from your journey to becoming chair? One day, I received an invitation to the dedication of the Women’s Plaza of Honor, because of the tile Roy and I placed there to honor my great-grandmother. That day, I began my journey back to the university and found a place for my volunteer passion and experience. Volunteering with SBS and the board has been a very rewarding experience for me.
Board Q & A: Luis Parra
Luis and Cecy Parra
Luis Parra was raised in Nogales, Arizona, and is an Army veteran with deep roots in the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands. The first in his family to graduate from college, he majored in psychology at the University of Arizona. Later, he earned a law degree and has been practicing law for 21 years. He lives with his family in Rio Rico and owns a business immigration law practice in Nogales, Ariz. A six-year member of the SBS Advisory Board, he was recently appointed vice chair and discussed how he hopes to contribute to the board’s vision and continue his commitment to the Borderlands community. What motivated you to take this role? I’m passionate about preserving and promoting the history, heritage and sustainability of our Arizona-Sonora Borderlands. The College of SBS understands that it’s about more than just being neighbors — it’s understanding the complexities of how we are tied at the hip. What key initiatives or projects do you hope to champion during your tenure as vice chair? Firstly, I will assist our chair in whatever ways she thinks are best to reach our goals and priorities. Secondly, I want to continue recognizing the humanity of Southern Arizona’s immigrant and asylum communities and support research on their socioeconomic impact. How do you hope to impact the SBS Advisory Board as vice chair? I want to help strengthen ties between SBS and the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands region. I also hope to contribute to meaningful dialogue within the SBS Board to establish imperatives that promote and impact our Southern Arizona community.
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ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT:
Mary-Caitlyn Valentinsson
Mary-Caitlyn Valentinsson at Universal Parks and Resorts
Mary-Caitlyn Valentinsson earned her Ph.D. in anthropology and linguistics in a joint program from the University of Arizona in 2019. Her dissertation research was on fandoms. In 2022, she took a position with Universal Parks and Resorts in Orlando, Florida, where she works as a manager of ethnographic research.
Written by: Laurie Galbraith Designed by: Mackenzie Meitner
Here are highlights from her recent SBS Q&A: “My job is to put the methods of anthropology and linguistics together so I can step into [the guest’s) shoes and see the world from their perspective,” Mary-Caitlyn said. “This job was a huge surprise. A friend of a friend sent me this job listing and said, ‘I know you researched media and pop culture, and you have all this training in linguistics and anthropology.’ I thought, how hilarious would that be if I got a job at a theme park?” The anthropology and linguistics departments are two of the top-ranked in their respective fields, she said. “They are a real superpower…skilled in teaching their students how to tackle complex and nuanced problems.” Mary-Caitlyn added, “As an academic, you are trained to be fairly moderate with the claims you make. That said, you cannot take that same approach when you are selling yourself as an asset to a company. You must find a way within your comfort zone to frame yourself as the hottest stuff out there and it would be foolish to pass up on a candidate like you. In other words, now is the time for delusional self-confidence!”