departmental updates
developments in sbs
Each SBS unit has chosen an update to share with alumni and friends of the College.
Communication majors on a field trip to Shanghai as part of their study abroad experience in Nanjing, China.
Anthropology The School of Anthropology is partnering with the White Mountain Apache Tribe’s Heritage Program to offer undergraduates valuable research experience. The three-year program is funded by a $254,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Each summer, eight students spend six weeks learning ethnographic research and geographic information systems theory and methods. Students are contributing to the creation of a Western Apache cultural and historical atlas, and their projects will also be adapted for cultural education classes in reservation schools. Last summer, students completed projects ranging from documenting
clan origin sites to mapping the extent of invasive plant species on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation.
Communication The Department of Communication has been developing study abroad opportunities for its students and now has programs running in Nanjing, China, and Orvieto, Italy. More than a hundred communication majors have taken classes at these locations. In addition, this fall the department will be offering a revised “Intercultural Communication” class in Tucson, taught by new faculty member Maggie Pitts, who
Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan, professors in the School of Anthropology, are excavating the Maya site of Ceibal, located in Guatemala. They have chronicled their experience in an online journal in The New York Times.
THE COLLEGE OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
has expertise in helping students prepare for international experiences. Soon, the department hopes to offer an “International and Intercultural Communication” track within its major and minor. “The environment in which our students will work when they leave the University of Arizona is incredibly international and intercultural,” said Professor Jake Harwood. “International experiences are no longer a luxury for students getting ready to enter the workplace; they are a necessity.”
Gender and Women’s Studies Associate Professor Jennifer Croissant recently received a three-year research grant titled “Collaboration and Climate” from the National Science Foundation. To understand important issues in science policy, one must understand collaboration. Two of the more pressing issues in science policy are women’s participation in science and ethical issues in science. Croissant will be investigating collaboration in the chemical sciences in order to develop deeper knowledge about both women in science and how scientists think broadly about ethical issues and responsibilities in their field. Croissant will observe how different approaches to collaboration among men and women chemists are employed on a daily basis, and what kinds of laboratory organization are conducive to innovative collaboration.
2011 ISSUE
27