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On March 12, Nancy Lecourt accepted the invitation of the Pacific Union College board to serve as vice president for academic administration, starting July 1, 2006. Lecourt is a professor of English at PUC. She has been teaching at the college since 1979, serving as chair of the department for ten accumulative years. Lecourt has a Ph.D. in English from the University of New Hampshire. “Dr. Lecourt has shown as a professor and department chair at PUC that she has the leadership qualities and respect from colleagues needed to make an excellent Academic Dean. She has been serving this year as the writer for the accreditation reports to our regional accrediting body showing vision as a futurist leader,” said President Richard Osborn. Lecourt will replace current academic dean Ileana Douglas, who is leaving administration to return to the classroom. Douglas has served as vice president for academic administration since 1999. Prior to coming to PUC, Douglas taught history at Atlantic Union College. Next fall, she will begin a teaching appointment in the PUC history department as a professor. The search for a new academic dean began in January. Osborn chaired the search committee along with membership of one board member,...

PUC students, faculty and staff were treated to the scholarly insights of Dr. Robert Alter, a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, for this year’s Longo Lecture. Alter has written 22 books (with more on the way) and has won prizes for his translations of scripture and for his books on the art of Biblical narrative and poetry. Alter’s talk, “An Agenda for the Literary Study of the Bible,” focused on why he believes it is important to pay attention to the literary techniques of the ancient Hebrew writers in both scholarly and personal Bible study. Alter feels that paying attention to the language, rhythms, literary allusions and patterns in the text reveals the religious motivations of the writers. “Words are the instruments through which writers shape their vision of the world,” Alter said. “When you pay attention to the literary articulation, you see what’s going on in terms of the author’s religious vision.” Alter didn’t start out with the intention of becoming a Bible translator, but 25 years ago when he accepted an assignment to write a scholarly article based on the Hebrew scriptures, he discovered all of the translations had problems....

In 10 high-energy performances from February 16 to March 5, three PUC students brought audiences a hilarious presentation of Shakespeare’s works—all condensed into a two-hour performance. Senior television & film and history major Zach Dunn, sophomore English major Caleb Rasmussen, and senior math major David Kanter formed The United Shakespeareans and took on The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), a comedy in two acts written by The Reduced Shakespeare Company. Directed by PUC alum Jim Smith and produced by Resident Artist Mei Ann Teo, Complete Works featured the three actors taking on a wide assortment of roles as they portrayed, dissected and turned upside-down such characters as Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Hamlet and a host of other classics from one of the most beloved playwrights of all time. It’s no surprise that all three of these students are more or less obsessed with Shakespeare. The skill—and endurance—with which they flew through scores of costume changes, songs, dances and a frantically paced synopsis of Hamlet was enough to verify their delight in this opportunity to present all of Shakespeare’s histories, comedies and tragedies in one performance....

For college teachers who have to fit their research endeavors around a busy teaching schedule, an endowed research professorship is a priceless opportunity. This year one of our own professors, Greg Schneider of the psychology and social work department, has been enveloped in just such an opportunity, provided by the Walter C. Utt Endowment. Even now he is engrossed in researching and writing on the history of Methodism and its influence on politics and family, following the research he presented in his influential 1993 book, The Way of the Cross Leads Home. The role of Utt professor is allowing Schneider to focus his time and energy on research and writing while teaching one class per quarter. “I realized that this would probably be the last big gift that would allow me to work on something of this scope and wanted to develop a topic that had been latent in my research and earlier book: the rise of evangelical political activity and influence,” Schneider explains. “If it weren’t for the Utt Chair this project would be dead in the water.” Awarding an endowed history professorship to a psychology and social work professor may seem a little unusual. But Schneider explains that...

Judith Pizarro is still a student, but her name has been showing up in national news. Now studying for her Ph.D. in health psychology at UC Irvine, this 1997 PUC graduate did a master’s project on Civil War veterans that is now catching the eye of the media. When Pizarro first heard about the grant from the University of Chicago for Civil War data, she thought, “This is funny—what could you do with that?” But the more she looked into it, the more she realized what a solid, accessible data source the university’s information provided. For 15 years, the National Institute of Health has funded the University of Chicago in amassing Civil War data, and the painstaking medical assessment interviews that the government did on the Civil War veterans are an invaluable resource. So with two colleagues, Pizarro set out to explore the effects of traumatic war experiences on nervous and physical disease and mortality among the veterans. Their discoveries, which indicate that post-war health was influenced by the level of military trauma experienced and the age of the soldiers, seem also to reflect the more recent experiences of Vietnam soldiers. “We don’t have access to these kinds of records...