Also, at Friday's CLA banquet we will honor this year's Outstanding Seniors.

These seniors also will be recognized at the April 9 Honors Convocation.

On April 8, the Purdue Black Caucus of Faculty and Staff is honoring 75 African American students in Liberal Arts for their leadership, service, and academic achievements. This is the 31st annual Academic and Service Awards Program.

Also, 87 Liberal Arts students were inducted into the national honor society Phi Beta Kappa on March 30.

A variety of Liberal Arts student groups, including Theatre and DRIVEN (Diversity and Retention Initiatives through Volunteering, Education, and Networking), also will be sponsoring Spring Fest activities, such as face painting, crafts, and games, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on April 8. The CLA Student Council will be selling copies of alumna Angie Klink's new book, Purdue Pete Finds His Hammer, as a scholarship fundraiser. The activities will be at the CLA tent located at the north end of Memorial Mall.

I wish everyone well as they prepare for the end of the semester.

Cordially,

Tom Adler

NEWS AND RESEARCH

History students give 'synthetic' life to Baghdad

A Purdue history team is assisting Simulex Inc., a Purdue Research Park company, in developing a computer simulation that will help America better understand what matters to citizens living in Baghdad.

Baghdad history team

"History is more relevant today than many people think," says Stacy Holden, an assistant professor of History who studies the Middle East. "Learning history is more than just memorizing dates and facts for a test. Purdue history students learn how to analyze problems, which can help them, and others they work with, acquire a better understanding of the world."

Three years after American forces entered Iraq to remove its regime, Holden and her history students are collecting data on Baghdad's people, neighborhoods, infrastructure, economics, and culture. This information will be shared with Simulex Inc., a Purdue Research Park company, that will compile the information in a computer simulation that will put a face on Baghdad.

"Images on the nightly news do not always tell the complete story about life in Baghdad," says Holden. "The people in this city are struggling to deal with a precarious supply of food and water, not to mention electricity. At the same time, they are trying to go about their daily lives, working away from home, and educating their children. The information we gather can help American leaders understand the social and economic conditions that foster urban insurgency in Baghdad." More

Professor chronicles women's social movements in India

The small groups of rural women in India fighting for change are something the rest of the world needs to take note of, says a social movements expert.

Subramaniam

"Unfortunately, many people in America and Europe are not aware of or know about the vibrancy of women's movements in Asian countries, such as India," says Mangala Subramaniam, an assistant professor of Sociology and Women's Studies.

"And many people especially do not think about rural women in India organizing to fight for rights such as educational opportunities as well as to challenge discrimination based on social inequities of class, caste and gender. Studies of women's social movements outside of the west are necessary in this increasingly globalizing world. Knowledge of other cultures, including social movements, is useful as other countries begin to interact more with South Asia."

The results of Subramaniam's interviews with activists in major cities in India, coupled with a case study of rural women, will be published this month in The Power of Women's Organizing: Gender, Caste and Class in India ($29.95, Lexington Books). More

Writers pick up the 'Pieces' from memoir controversy

The recent fabrications in the best-selling memoir A Million Little Pieces may make publishing more difficult for others who want to write about their life experiences, says a non-fiction expert.

"There has been a lot of talk about truth and memoirs, and without a doubt author James Frey made some egregious errors," says Bich Minh Nguyen, who teaches creative non-fiction writing and whose first memoir will be published this year by Viking/Penguin. "But, the memoir has always been shaped by the awareness that memory is subjective. In a memoir, the writer is not trying to present only the facts, which is what an autobiography can do. Instead, the writer is interpreting his or her experience."

In January, Frey admitted he made up some sections of his popular book, which gained national attention after being publicly endorsed by Oprah Winfrey.

Readers should expect memoirs to be truthful, but they also should go beyond presenting journalistic facts and offer interpretation, Nguyen says. The memoirist is writing from memory, and the mind is not always reliable. More

Report: Improved technologies, payments needed for telehealth

Inconsistent payments to health-care providers and out-of-date technologies are putting Indiana behind neighboring states in the use of telemedicine technology, according to a report released March 9.

"There are some great telemedicine services in Indianapolis, such as outpatient cardiac care at Riley Children's Hospital, continuing education opportunities at St. Vincent Hospital and daily monitoring of chronic diseases for outpatients at Roudebush Veterans Administration Medical Center," says Pamela Whitten, a professor of Communication and faculty scholar at Purdue's Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering. "But these are not enough to reach the patients in the rural corners of the state that often represent the most underserved populations."

Telemedicine is a more efficient method of health-care delivery that uses communication technologies via the Internet and videoconferencing. Whitten says Indiana's telemedicine capabilities lag behind those of other states. More

Online writing lab aids job seekers in preparing resumes, letters

Job seekers wanting to make a 'write' first impression with their grammar and communication skills can benefit by using the resources of Purdue's Online Writing Lab.

"The resume and cover letter are often the first meeting a person has with a potential employee," says Linda Bergman, associate professor of English and director of the Writing Lab. "It's crucial to make sure you highlight your skills, demonstrate your knowledge, and, most importantly, provide an error-free resume and cover letter."

The Online Writing Lab provides a variety of "Job Search Writing" tips including formatting, resume sections, verb usage, word choices, font, keywords, appropriate content, proofing and mailing tips.

"Many college graduates looking for their first job don't understand how a cover letter and resume should correlate," says Tammy Conard-Salvo, Writing Lab assistant director. "Cover letters and resumes are complementary. Use the cover letter to tell a story that emphasizes your skills, then that information or experiences you mention should also be included in the resume." More

FLL to offer biblical Hebrew during fall semester

The Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, in conjunction with the Jewish Studies Program, will offer courses this fall for students and others in the community interested in reading the Bible in Hebrew.

The course, Hebrew 121, Level I, will help students understand the vocabulary and grammar of the Hebrew Bible. Within the first week of class, students will begin reading the book of Genesis.

The goal of the course is to develop fluency in reading as well as to learn the meaning of what is read. The course will be taught by Stuart Robertson, pastor of Faith Presbyterian Church in West Lafayette. Robertson has a doctorate in Hellenistic Judaism and has taught Biblical Hebrew for six years at Purdue. More

EVENTS

Theater season finishes with The Winter's Tale

Purdue Theatre will complete the 2006 spring season with William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, the second production to be staged in the new Nancy T. Hansen Theatre.

Scene from The Winter's Tale

The play, directed by visiting instructor of Theatre Jeff Casazza, will be offered at 7:30 p.m. April 13-15 and April 19-22. The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's romance plays, combining tragedy with comedy. Sicilian King Leontes is tormented with jealousy when he suspects that his wife, Hermione, is having an affair with his friend Polixenes, visiting King of Bohemia. Leontes' obsessive rage destroys everything that he holds dear, but wondrous transformations allow for rebirth, redemption and forgiveness. More

Spring exhibits kick off at Rueff Galleries

The Patti and Rusty Rueff Galleries will feature five exhibits that showcase graduate students' work.

Rueff Galleries, located in the Yue-Kong Pao Hall for Visual and Performing Arts, 552 W. Wood St., are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Gallery exhibits are free and open to the public.

West Gallery exhibits include:

East Gallery exhibits include:

The Galleries' biennial "Sixty Square Inches" competitive exhibition of small-scale contemporary printmaking will take place in the Robert L. Ringel Gallery at the Purdue Memorial Union. This year's exhibit will provide the 15th review of North American graphic artists working in an intimate format. Works in the exhibit are limited to 60 square inches in image size. More

Other Activities

– Brian Leftow, Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion from University of Oxford, will present "God, Vagueness and Logical Truth" at 4:30 p.m. on April 6 in Beering Hall of Liberal Arts and Education, Room 1268. The talk is part of the Department of Philosophy's Colloquium Spring 2006 series. The series is supported by the College of Liberal Arts Dean's Department Enhancement Funds.

–The Tippecanoe County Historical Association and Purdue's Interdisciplinary Film Studies Program are partnering for History Circle Movie Club. The series, which is free and open to the public, features a movie, which is followed by a discussion led by Ben Lawton, professor of Italian and chair of the Film Studies Program. Crash is showing April 10, and Il Conformista (The Conformist) is showing May 8. Both events are at 6 p.m. at the West Lafayette Public Library, 208 W. Columbia St.

– Purdue Libraries has gained access to two databases of historical publications, "Eighteenth Century Collections Online" and "American History & Culture Online." The full-text searchable online collections, totaling approximately 180,000 volumes, increase library holdings by 10 percent. The first collection includes almost every significant book published in the United Kingdom and its colonies during the 1700s.

The diverse collection includes books, bibles, sermons, sheet music, advertisements, and books covering history, geography, science, technology, medicine, law, philosophy and literature. The post-Columbian American collection spans more than 400 years and covers subjects including exploration, trade, colonialism, westward expansion and Native Americans. The collections are expected to be valuable research tools for Liberal Arts faculty and graduate students and some undergraduate students. For information, contact Lawrence Mykytiuk, history bibliographer and reference librarian.

FACULTY & CLA HONORS

– A graduate student was honored at the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education's annual meeting on Feb. 17 in Indianapolis. Tetyana Pylypiv Shippee, a doctoral student in Sociology and Gerontology, was the recipient of the first Association for Gerontology in Higher Education's Student Paper Award for her paper titled "Living and Learning in the Bridge Program: Learning from Student Residence in a Senior Retirement Community." Shippee was the first student to live at Westminster Village, a West Lafayette retirement center, as part of the Bridge Program established by the Center on Aging and the Life Course.

– Robert May, professor of History, gave the inaugural lecture for the academic year at the University of Costa Rica. May also presented and participated in a number of activities in Costa Rica relating to his book Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America, which was published in 2004.

– Mohan J. Dutta, associate professor of Communication, has been selected as the winner of the 2006 Kentucky Conference on Health Communication Lewis Donohew Outstanding Scholar in Health Communication award. The honor is in recognition for Dutta's contributions to the culture-centered approach to health communication and research contributions to the health communication field.

– Joy Santee, a second-year doctoral student in Rhetoric and Composition from Perry, Iowa, was awarded the East Central Writing Association Tutor of the Year Award. The honor is from the East Central Writing Centers Association. Santee tutors in Purdue's Writing Lab, where people learn about grammar, punctuation, writing style, formatting and content for research papers, Web pages, resumes and Power Point presentations. The lab also has an online component.

EXPERTS IN THE NEWS

Associated Press –
Peace activists prepare for war anniversary
(Jeremy Straughn, Department of Sociology and Anthropology)

Chicago Tribune –
The majority keeps silent during primary elections
(James McCann, Department of Political Science)

Indianapolis Star –
Learning their colors
(Mia Smith Bynum, Department of Psychological Sciences)

Ottawa Citizen and CanWest News Service –
TV messages captivate viewers with pop-culture treasure hunts
(Glenn Sparks, Department of Communication)

Journal and Courier –
Purdue students chronicle Tippecanoe County history
(Susan Curtis, Department of History)

Journal and Courier –
Purdue professor, History Channel look at Hollywood
(Randy Roberts, Department of History)

Pasadena Star News –
Straighten up: Good posture is key to strengthening back and other muscles
(Ken Baldwin, Department of Health and Kinesiology)

Indianapolis Star –
Top grossers: More guts and more gore mean more money at the box office
(Glenn Sparks, Department of Communication)

Journal and Courier –
Ancient silk road conveys powerful new alliance
(Stacy Holden, Department of History)

Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette –
State Medicaid to cover telemedicine
(Pamela Whitten, Department of Communication)

Additional Stories:
Robert May, professor of history, was featured in the Costa Rica media, including the newspaper La Nacion, for participating in a series of events marking the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of the American William Walker as president of Nicaragua.

A complete list of Liberal Arts experts in the news.

This edition of Liberal Arts eNews is available online.

Previous editions of this newsletter can be found on the Liberal Arts eNews home page.

Any story ideas or news tips can be sent to Amy Patterson Neubert at the Purdue News Service, 494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu