Pacific Union College » Academics » Department Happenings

Biology & Religion

Aimee Wyrick, biology, and Myron Widmer, religion, attended the Geoscience Research Institute's (GRI) second Conference on Teaching Origins. The meeting was held in early August in Colorado Springs. Aimee presented a paper entitled "Using surveys to start the conversation on science and origins." They participated in an all-day fieldtrip including a visit to an historic fossil quarry where "type" specimens of T. rex and other "really cool" dinosaurs were excavated. Aimee also had a chance to drive to the top of Pike's Peak — which she calls "quite an experience!!"

Visual Arts

Alexander Carpenter presented a paper, "'Glocal' Adventism, Social Media, and the Jesus Meme," for the Global Internet Evangelism Network, sponsored by the GC and NAD in Orlando. He was also a production assistant on a short live action film, The REAL Escape, that will be shown at the Columbia University graduate film festival.

Records

The Records Office is pleased to announce that Jonathan Bradley has joined our team as the new Assistant Registrar/Degree Audit Coordinator. Many of you already know Jonathan because he has worked for PUC’s Public Safety Department for the past 11 years and is a PUC alumnus with a BA in Communication. In his new role, he'll deal with degree audits, graduation and diplomas, transfer credits, and veteran’s benefits.

Nursing

Gladys Muir went on a mission trip to North Peru with dental students from LLU, a pediatric nurse practitioner, and a few doctors. As the certified nurse-midwife of the group, Gladys saw women for OB and gyn complaints; she found a 2.5-kilogram pelvic/abdominal tumor in one lady who had walked over five miles for care. They were able to arrange and pay for her to have it removed.

Music

The Music Department welcomes two new faces to our musical team. Dennis Hunt is teaching percussion, trumpet and banjo through PCCA and shares his expertise with the college students by teaching Percussion Techniques and directing the Big Band ensemble. Joy Fackenthall joins the PCCA and music department team as a piano instructor. Her husband, Peter is the new PUC Prep principal.

At the annual River Festival in Napa on September 6, Asher Raboy was awarded the Key to the City of Napa by Napa Mayor Jill Techel and commendations from Representative Mike Thompson, the Friends of the Napa River, and Assemblywoman Noreen Evans. Raboy started the River Festival, which is the Friends of the Napa River's biggest fundraising event, 20 years ago.

English

After traveling in Serbia/Bosnia/England/France/Italy, Mei Ann Teo ended the summer with a most interesting country — Canada. She was in Montreal at the end of August for the Montreal World Film Festival, where her short film NOT HERE screened to standing-room-only cinemas.

Correction

It will come as no surprise that the "ictoria Mukerji" noted last month was actually "Victoria."

Visual Arts

Victoria Mukerji (anthropology) is in Goa, India, for a year to finish anthropological fieldwork/research. She was asked by the Andrews University International Development Program to teach an intensive graduate course in development anthropology at East African University Baraton, Kenya. There, she had about 50 humanitarian aid and development master's students. "I heard the most remarkable stories of my career from these fabulous people and experienced the most incredible hospitality and sincere humanity I have felt within the structure of the Adventist Church," she says. "It was truly epiphanal." She adds that she "can't wait to incorporate my experience into my next year's curriculum at PUC."

Various Departments

The annual PacificQuest was fun — as it always is — this year for a group of young students. Lindsay Petersen (modern languages) and Aimee Wyrick-Brownworth (biology) led out, and Lindsay, Vola Andrianarijaona (physics), Aubyn Fulton (psychology) and Charlene Bainum (psychology) taught classes in French, physics, and psychology.

Records

The Records Office is seeing some staffing changes. Marlo Waters transitioned into the position of Registrar on August 1, taking the place of the now-retired Susi Mundy. Kathy Mattison has joined the team as the new Assistant Registrar. Kathy worked for the Records Office for many years and is returning after three years as an elementary school teacher.

Nursing

The nursing department welcomes new faculty member Laurie Parson, who will coordinate the preceptorship program and teach in the clinical setting. Laurie and her husband lived in Placerville until the beginning of 2008, when they bought a sailing catamaran in Florida and spent most of the rest of the year moving it to the West Coast through the Panama Canal. Laurie attended PUC from 1989 to 1991, and her husband is a nurse at the Clearlake Hospital. They have two cats, Abby and Zibby.

Music & Albion

Linda Philpott (music) attended the Digital Photography Workshop held at Albion in July, and learned all sorts of new stuff about taking awesome pictures. You can even check out some of her pictures on her blog at www.musingdiversions.blogspot.com.

Rachelle Davis (music) reports that she "spent two excellent weeks at the Conductors Institute at Bard College in New York (two hours up the Hudson River from NYC in Annandale on Hudson) expanding my conducting vocabulary."

Library

Adu Worku was a guest speaker at the 11th annual African Cradle Ethiopian Heritage Camp in Scotts Valley from July 30 to August 2. African Cradle is a California non-profit adoption agency that specializes in adoption counseling and post-adoption support. Adu shared traditional Ethiopian music and games at the camp.

Computer Science

Bruce Ivey and Robert Ordonez attended a workshop in Boston July 20-24 on teaching computer science using somewhat unconventional tools. Robert attended last year and learned even more in the advanced track this year. "We're already using the curriculum and tools in one of our classes, and will now expand that to include the whole freshman-year sequence of CS courses," he reports.

Biology

With many PUC families, Bryan Ness went to Oshkosh for the Pathfinder camporee this year, and he was cast as Tarshish in the play "Esther, The Courage to Stand," of which they performed one act per night from August 11 to 15.

Aviation

Aviation welcomes Kaye Varney to a new role, now that Bill Price has retired. Kaye was the assistant director of aviation last year, and now she's the director and the designated faculty person in the aviation program.

Various Departments

Gilbert Abella (library) and Richard Gore (housing) just returned from the PUC Mission trip to Mozambique, Africa. Richard was the Construction Supervisor and Gilbert was the Spiritual Leader with a team of ten PUC and PUC Church people including two PUC college students, with Suzie Fox (retired Dining Commons director) as the Team Leader. They built a church and held VBS and offered health talks and provided the first Sabbath Service in the new church for the village of Xai Xai.

Physics

Vola Andrianarijaona recently retuned from the ICPEAC (International Conference on Photonic, Electronic, and Atomic Collisions), held this year in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he and his collaborators did a poster session. He was also invited to give a talk on the 24th of July.

English

This month (and half of September), Janet Borisevich Mezenov is in Russia on several missions. She's visiting her relatives in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia, once again, this time to see the new Borisevich clan member named after Janet's father, Sergey. She's teaching at the Archangelsk State Technical University, polishing the English skills of professors and graduate students. She's havingprivate tutoring in Russian by one of the University's professors. And she's continuing her data collection for research on the Linguistic Features of Physician-Patient Communication in Northwest Russia.

Church, Etc

VBS was a bigger-than-usual event this year with about 140 kids in attendance and 60 helpers! Keith Neergaard (business), Susan Bussell (nursing), Robert Ordoñez (computer science), Cesar Garcia (plant services), and Bev Helmer (girls dean) were some of the PUC faces spotted among the crowd (along with the church staff, of course), as well as a couple current students and recent grads.

Pitcairn Island Study Center

Herb Ford, director, reports that the Pitcairn Islands Study Center (PISC) in the library recently served as a facilitator between the NASA Space Center and Pitcairn Island in coordinating the Pitcairners' participation in a space experiment from the International Space Station (ISS). On May 15, the ISS released a large amount of ammonia crystals into the atmosphere. NASA scientists felt that photographs of the diffused ammonia cloud could provide significant fundamental knowledge of the processes of freezing and evaporation ("sublimation"). Pitcairn and Easter islands were the only two inhabited lands in the Pacific Ocean from which the cloud and the ISS were visible to the unaided human eye. The PISC, at NASA's request, coordinated motion picture and still photography of the ISS and trailing cloud by the Pitcairn islanders. NASA later reported that at least one of the Pitcairn pictures, when enhanced with special NASA equipment, will provide valuable information from the experiment.

English

In June, Mei Ann Teo, as lead resident artist for Lyrical Minded, created a video time capsule project with Edgewood, a facility that provides live-in and support services for children who are abused and abandoned. Mei Ann is also performing this summer with the Theatre of Yugen in the FuryFactory Theatre Festival in San Francisco and the INFANT Experimental Theatre Festival in Serbia and will attend (with support from a Herber Grant) the LaMama International Director's Symposium in Italy.

English & Enrollment

The last weekend in May, resident artist Mei Ann Teo and enrollment counselor Cambria Wheeler presented a screening of Red Books to the Seattle chapter of Adventist Forum, and hosted the talkback session.

Chaplain's Office

Roy Ice recently returned from speaking for the South England Conference's Camp Meeting, which was held in Prestatyn, Wales, UK. He spoke nightly in the high school tent, and had the pleasure of shaking hands with the Governor General of Jamaica, who was also there at the camp meeting.

Psychology & Social Work

On May 2, Greg Schneider, alumnus Zach Dunn, and alumna Elisabeth Reeves teamed up to bring to life by way of readers' theater an historical dialogue among the founders of St. Helena Hospital: Dr. Merritt G. Kellogg (Greg), William A. Pratt (Zach),and Ellen G. White (Elisabeth). The occasion was the hospital's "Vineyard Mission Day," an event that welcomed the new SHHC CEO and that aimed to remind hospital personnel of the heritage and mission of their institution. "It was a pleasure to be of use to our colleagues at the hospital, and especially a pleasure for the Red Books veterans to work together again," says Greg.

Physics

Vola Andrianarijaona and some of our physics and biophysics major went to the Advanced Light Source located at UC Berkeley this quarter.

Music

Lynn Wheeler recently served as chair of two accreditation teams for the National Association of Schools of Music, evaluating music programs for the University of South Carolina at Aiken and Bethany College in Lyndsborg, Kansas. "During the visit to Bethany College it was great getting to work with a team member, Dr. Peter Cooper, from Southern Adventist University," Lynn reports.

English

Mei Ann Teo directed a special sneak preview of Bryonn Bain's one-man show LYRICS FROM LOCKDOWN in NYC at the Gallatin Theatre at NYU on May 4, and brought the show to San Francisco for a brief two-night sell-out run at the Climate Theater. She received a Theatre Bay Area CA$H Grant for her work on this project.

Communication

Contract teacher Julie Ann Kodmur, a Napa Valley publicity and marketing consultant, is teaching Promotional Writing for the Media and brought in special speakers in April and May including author Jon Dodge, marketer and former fashion journalist Heidi Godoff, and (via Skype at the library) Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Flynn Siler. They've also had field trips and sessions with directors of marketing and communications at Meadowood and Napa Valley Vintners and with the owners of Woodhouse Chocolate.

Biology

Brian Wong authored the article "Chinese Medicinal Herb Scutellaria barbata Modulates Apoptosis and Cell Survival in Murine and Human Prostate Cancer Cells and Tumor Development in TRAMP Mice," which was published in the Journal of Cancer Prevention in May. Biology major Dinh Nguyen was the second author.

WASC

On April 16 and 17, WASC-PC chair Aubyn Fulton, WASC writer Steve Waters, and WASC Accreditation Liaison Officer Nancy Lecourt attended the WASC Academic Resources Conferences in Hollywood, California. They learned much useful information in preparation for our upcoming Capacity and Preparatory Review visit in October, and they enjoyed finding the stars of their favorite Star Trek actors in the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard.

Visual Arts

Thomas Morphis, professor, was sole juror for the 36th Annual Religious Art Exhibition at St. John's Lutheran Church in Sacramento. This national exhibition was on view March 14-29 and featured artworks in all media with a spiritual theme.

Students

Revo PUC II is May 10! To show your support for the Napa Valley Food Bank and the hard work -- and tons of passion -- our students have poured into this, you can join the movement by attending the Revo event or contributing online at Give to PUC (select REVO). Online donations go to the Revo event itself (and to continuing it next year), while funds raised at the event all go to the Food Bank.

Public Relations

The PR office has also started a general PUC Twitter -- and a PUC Facebook page, as well. Both can be reached through the Facebook and Twitter icons now featured on the bottom right side of the PUC website.

Nursing

Joan Hughson went to her 45-year reunion at San Fernando Valley Academy in Northridge, California, in April and was pleasantly surprised when they awarded her Alumnus of the Year. Joan attended San Fernando all four years before coming to PUC for a year.

Library

The library has recently added two new avenues of communication to interface with faculty, staff and students. The first is a new cell phone (707-815-6858) that we will use to field questions by either voice or text messages during normal library reference hours.

The second is the free Twitter.com service that has started to surge in popularity. Since January, the library has been "tweeting" information about library happenings, PUC news, relevant information access and research news, etc. at http://www.twitter.com/puclibrary. You don't have to sign up for a Twitter account; you can simply visit that URL periodically like you do Google News. If you want to communicate back to us on Twitter, simply sign up and send messages to @puclibrary. Patrick Benner has conducted internal training for the library staff on using Twitter and if there is any interest in further training for faculty/staff, e-mail pbenner@puc.edu, send a text to our cell, or send us a tweet and we can arrange a group or individual session.

Health Services

Don't miss the "For the Health of It" interactive health fair at the Dining Commons on Thursday, May 14, starting at 11 a.m. Last year we had over 40 booths and this year, Sandy Sargent hopes to expand the fair even more. The vendors will represent local and national programs and companies and many will have free samples, products for sale, services, and information -- and they'll all provide hands-on ways to learn about the many, many aspects of health.