Job Announcement

Program Coordinator

Western Folklife Center

POSITION: The Western Folklife Center, in Elko, Nevada, seeks a Program Coordinator.  This is an excellent opportunity for an innovative person to add their signature to existing programs as well as to contribute to the creation of new programs.

The Western Folklife Center is a private non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation, presentation, and perpetuation of the rich heritage and contemporary culture of the American West.  This has been accomplished since

1980 through research, documentation, educational programs, and media productions.  The WFC is headquartered in the historic Pioneer building in downtown Elko, and maintains a satellite media office in Salt Lake City, Utah, as well as an Internet presence at www.westernfolklife.org.

The Center is most known for its National Cowboy Poetry Gathering that was begun in 1985 as a regional effort to showcase the tradition of poetry writing and recitation in the ranching community.  Now in its 29th year, the Gathering remains an important meeting place for poets, musicians, writers, filmmakers, gear makers, visual artists, ranchers, cowboys, western activists and enthusiasts. The Center is also known for its media work, creating nationally broadcast radio and video programs. All of its programs are based on fieldwork and research in communities around the West. The Center maintains an archival collection based on its fieldwork, documentation of its programs, and donated work.

RESPONSIBILITIES:  Among the duties of the Program Coordinator is to manage the Center¹s major event, the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering.  The Gathering is a weeklong event featuring educational workshops and programs, daytime and evening performances of cowboy poetry and music, dances, and exhibitions. Responsibilities include overseeing artistic and educational programming, artist communications, editing of promotional brochure and educational program book, and supervising technical, logistical, and event staff. 

In addition to management of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, the Program Coordinator will work with other program staff to design and implement other events, educational programs, exhibitions and activities highlighting western traditional culture throughout the West. 

QUALIFICATIONS: B.A. in folklife studies, ethnomusicology, anthropology, or related field.  Two years experience in event and program management.

Candidates should have an interest in and ability to manage and expand on cultural programs, direct staff and volunteers, prepare and manage budgets, contribute to grant-writing and reporting efforts, and establish community partnerships.  Must have demonstrated organizational, management and leadership skills and be a team player. Also writing, editing skills, and computer skills. Should be good natured and have the ability to work with a variety of people. 

SALARY commensurate with experience along with benefits package. 

ABOUT THE ELKO AREA:

The City of Elko sits at an elevation of 5,060-feet in the Great Basin region of northeastern Nevada and offers a number of outdoor experiences including hiking and camping in the spectacular Ruby Mountains and has a population of 18,000, and an area population of 35,000.  Located in the high desert we enjoy four mild annual seasons.  Shoshone and Paiute tribes, Basque community, significant Latino community, ranching and mining.

Interstate 80 traverses Elko County and by car Elko is 4.5 hours from Reno, NV, 3.5 hours from Salt Lake City, 3 hours from Twin Falls and 4 hours from Boise, Idaho to the north. The city is served by Skywest Airlines, a Delta Connection and two NPR stations (KUNR-Reno & KNPR-Las Vegas).  Assets of the community include the Great Basin College, the Northeastern Nevada Museum and the California Trail Interpretive Center.

SUBMIT a resume, cover letter, and references to: Meg Glaser, Artistic Director, Western Folklife Center, 501 Railroad St., Elko, NV 89801, by June 15, 2012.

Meg Glaser

Artistic Director

Western Folklife Center

501 Railroad St.

Elko, NV 89801

775-738-7508 x225

mglaser@westernfolklife.org

www.westernfolklife.org

Professional Opportunity for those interested in Writing Programs:

USU's Professor Joyce Kinkead has written to suggest that our graduate students might consider getting involved in the Council of Writing Program Administrators.  You'll see from the following links that the WPA has a special program for graduate students, and on the second link, you can see the profiles of students currently being considered for the organizations leadership.  Check it out and consider joining!

http://wpacouncil.org/wpa-go

http://wpacouncil.org/wpa-go-election

Book Review: The Search

Title: The Search
Author: Bobby F. Griffin
Softcover: 191 pages
Publisher: Creative Speaking Bureau (Sixth Printing, 1986)
ISBN-10:  N/A
ASIN: B0007BFNP4, B000MW7FPY, B0007335S4, B0026PZ7XW

An obscure but touching story to say the least, The Search briskly tells the story of a former United States Army sergeant who searches for his befriended young Korean orphan from the Korean War. Ghostwritten by minister and former editor of the Bristol Herald Courier Howard Taylor, Griffin's story starts in late 1951 when he decides to drop out of high school, join the Army, serve in Korea, return home and his subsequent search for the boy 20 years later.

As exciting as the premise is, there's not much meat to this story, unfortunately. Upon a routine supply stop in Seoul, Griffin stumbles upon a young shoeshine boy named Ko Yong Jae and, feeling an instant sense of trust in him, hires him, nicknames him "Butch" and takes him back to the camp. After managing to allow the boy to stay so long as he stays out of trouble, Butch earns his keep by becoming the houseboy for Griffin and several other soldiers. They endure a few hardships together but above all, they become close friends despite a language barrier. About a year later, after their friendship developed into a surrogate father-son relationship, Griffin rotates back to the states and loses touch with Butch. Griffin struggles with PTSD back home and frantically opens his own service station and even marries a nice, church-going local girl. From here on the book loses it's mainstream appeal.

This book is saturated with Christian doctrine and religious references that tend to alienate the reader. It slows down the narrative. It's also frightfully repetitive. Not only does the tale of searching for the houseboy get retold five times before the first chapter even starts (counting the cover, back cover, foreword, preface, and prologue), many of the same Bible verses are quoted throughout the story in vaguely inopportune times; Matthew chapter 6 verse 33 is listed at least three times. While I certainly have no qualms with a man's religious faith and the strength that one gathers from it, this book's story is bogged down by it's choice of literary detours.

After a bumpy middle, the story resumes with Griffin suddenly inventing those cardboard floor mats you might have seen at the car dealership. You know, those temporary mats that keep your car's carpet clean from the service technician? Griffin invented that.

Flash forward to sudden wealth, Griffin contemplates going back to Korea to find Butch. After a hesitate travel commitment, he joins a group of religious tourists who plan on visiting East Asian churches. Griffin agrees to come along as a motivational speaker but he also has personal plans to find Butch, despite so many telling him the impossibility of doing so.

Anticlimactically, Griffin convinces a local paper to run a short piece about his plea, Butch's cousin reads it and within a day, they are reunited. Not much of a search, really. Butch has done well for his family and drives a taxicab. The two are reunited. No canvasing the streets. No private detective. Just a small story in an even smaller newspaper.

This part of the tale happens just past the halfway point in the book and yet nothing much else progresses past this point. Butch is elated to be reunited with the former soldier who showed him kindness and Griffin is simply amazed at Butch's presence. That's what gets repeated over. Griffin can't believe Butch is here. He can't believe he's back in Korea. He can't believe this is where such and such happened. The author assumes entirely too much background information and leaves the reader wishing that he were in on the excitement. It's hard to relate to Griffin's nostalgia of being back in Korea because he indulged so little in the beginning of the story. It doesn't have that certain empathetic emotional connection that a good story should have. There are moments that were surely emotional for the two men but because the reader hadn't had a chance to get to know the key players well enough, you end up not really caring that they are visiting some obscure village that you didn't know about. Despite a satisfying amount of personal photographs help to accompany the story, I never really got the chance to feel attached to anyone.

A curious oversight is the age of the two men. Griffin was either 18 or 19 when he met Butch and sized him up at around 10. However, the Korean newspaper listed Butch as being 15 at the time. That only makes them a few years apart when they assumed a father-son type relationship. When they meet up again in 1974, their lack of real age gap shows. I wonder why this wasn't addressed?

Impressively, this vanity publishing has gone through several editions. The most current edition that I could find is from 1986 but the original story was written and published in 1974. Each addition has added another chapter to the epilogue but sadly, there weren't many revelations. True stories certainly don't have Hollywood endings and here is proof.

Ultimately, it's a short, forgettable true story that can be finished in one sitting. I really wanted to like this, but in the end, it felt like an elongated newspaper article soaked in Christian rhetoric. It's a touching story that should have been told by someone else.

- - - - - - -

I stumbled across a molded-shut copy of this book in an abandoned house. I was so interested that I tried to find a readable copy at the local library but couldn't find a ISBN. That's because there wasn't one. The best way to get additional copies, it seems, is to write directly to Griffin at 1051 Island Road, Bristol, VA 24201 or by calling 703-466-8080. I don't know if there ever was an another edition after the sixth (1986) edition but I'd be curious to see if anything ever came of Butch and his family. SWere there finally allowed to move to America?

I should point out that the protagonist was born in June of 1932 and appears to be a good, upstanding man. He should not be confused with the formerly disgraced politian of the same name born in August of 1935.

Please Help with Housing for Incoming Grad Students:

Incoming graduate students have questions about housing in Logan.

* Kristen Hutchings is looking for housing and roommate(s).  If you are also interested in a roomie, contact Kristen directly at kristen.hutchings@gmail.com.

If you’d like to be added to a list of people looking for Logan housing info or roommates, you can email Candi (at candi.checketts@usu.edu) and she’ll add you to this blog list.

Also remember, there is a bulletin board in the Taggart Student Center that lists people looking for roommates.  Good luck.

Call for Proposals

The print is tiny and hard to read, so if you are interested in learning more, please click here to get more info about the WLA Conference.

Hello Everyone!

For starters, CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR GRADUATES!! We are very proud of your accomplishments and so glad to have gotten to know you. Good luck where ever your future takes you!

 

And secondly, the grad program is proud to announce that we now have a facebook page! Please click hereto see our facebook page, be sure to friend request us!! We would like to encourage all of our grad students to post their future endeavors on this page so that we know where our grads are going after graduation and what new accomplishments they have achieved. We will also be posting accomplishments of our current grad students (i.e. success stories, publications, awards, etc.). 

We look forward to hearing from our grad students that we have the pleasure of knowing and also from those that we have released out into the world to do great things with their education.  

Thank you again to everyone and good luck to our grad students who have graduated! 

English Grad Program

Diane Martinez

On May 7, Diane Martinez successfully defended her dissertation titled Developing Global Communication Skills for Technical Communicators in the 21st Century: Researching the language of collaboration and cooperation in the Bologna Process.  Diane also got a tenure-track position at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC, where she will teach undergraduate and graduate courses in their professional writing program.  

Appointments

Just another FYI, you can schedule appointments to meet with Evelyn with Candi Checketts at  candi.checketts@usu.edu (RWST 312G), 797-2729 or with Katelyn Anderson at katelyn.anderson@usu.edu (RWST Main office) 797-2733.

Brock's commencement speech

Thank you, Dean Allen. And thank you all for coming.

I’m humbled by this award, and I want to share this honor with the people I have the privilege to supervise, the real heroes of the USU composition program, the graduate students, lecturers, and adjuncts who teach English 1010 and 2010, USU’s general education writing classes. These courses, and their teachers, seldom get the recognition they deserve. Yet these courses constitute the very core of the humanities, and I am proud of the job these teachers do helping their students to improve the thinking, writing, and reading skills essential to all education.

People unacquainted with college composition might imagine that any good writer, or certainly anyone with a degree in English, could teach first-year writing with a minimum of training. In fact, our new teachers complete 145 hours of instruction and supervised teaching by the end of their first year. We put them through a 40-hour bootcamp before the semester even begins.

These teachers then use their creativity, energy, and training to help students develop a whole alphabet of skills—they analyze, brainstorm, connect, define, evaluate, focus, gather, highlight. Students learn to work together, to mine their own experiences and opinions for ideas and value, to establish criteria and base judgments on them, to recognize logical fallacies like the slippery slope and (my favorite) the poisoned well.  Students discover that writing IS thinking, and that work on their writing translates into improved  thinking and ideas.

Today’s new teachers understand how their work fits into students’ lives and educations  much better than did previous generations of teachers. English teachers used to assume that students would be able to employ in other situations reading and writing skills learned in English class. That assumption turned out to be faulty—the ability to write a good personal narrative in English does not guarantee that a student will write a good business plan or anthropology report. So now we discuss in class how different disciplines have different writing requirements, and we train students to probe, analyze, and question when they’re writing in a new discipline.

USU’s English 1010 and 2010 students benefit from another crucial shift in the teaching of writing, a quiet revolution based on the insight that writing is a process. When I was learning to write, whatever happened between the teacher’s prompt and the student’s product was a mystery for the student alone to grapple with. Decades later, we still haven’t figured out the right way to write—the mystery is still there--but we now have hundreds of strategies for approaching writing projects and conquering writing problems. These strategies transfer—a student who learns in English 1010 to interview effectively or to ask librarians for help or to outline in a productive way can easily take such skills to the next writing situation.

Once you see writing as a process, you see process everywhere—in how we become friends, how we acquire habits and skills, how we adapt to new places, how we get our degrees. There’s mystery at the heart of many processes; we often look back and ask, with the Talking Heads, How did I get here? For those of you graduating today, the degree is a symbol of a life-changing accomplishment but also of your engagement in the processes of Utah State University, taking courses, getting to know peers and professors, creating social connections, developing a sense of community, learning to learn, maybe even coming to enjoy writing. Those are the things that you’ll carry with you. I’d like you to join me in giving a round of applause for all the hard-working composition teachers at USU who have helped the graduating class better understand and enjoy the mysterious and wonderful processes of learning.

National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship Program

We are pleased to share information on the application process for the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation and Postdoctoral Fellowship Programs. Please help us widely distribute information on the two fellowship programs to qualified candidates, listservs and other electronic sources by using the paragraphs below. Thank you for your assistance.

The National Academy of Education (NAEd) invites applicants for the following fellowship programs:

National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship Program
The NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship Program seeks to encourage a new generation of scholars from a wide range of disciplines and professional fields to undertake research relevant to the improvement of education. These $25,000 fellowships support individuals whose dissertations show potential for bringing fresh and constructive perspectives to the history, theory, or practice of formal or informal education anywhere in the world. Fellows will also attend professional development retreats and receive mentorship from NAEd members and other senior scholars in their field. This highly competitive program aims to identify the most talented emerging researchers conducting dissertation research related to education. The Dissertation Fellowship program receives many more applications than it can fund. This year, up to 600 applications are anticipated and about 25 fellowships will be awarded. Additional guidelines and the fellowship application form will be available on our website later this summer.
Website: http://naeducation.org/NAEd_Spencer_Dissertation_Fellowship.html<http://pull.msg-edu.com/p/8324-39DC/58641289/html001-naeducation.org.html>

National Academy of Education /Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
The NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Program supports early-career scholars working in critical areas of educational scholarship. Fellows will receive $55,000 for one academic year of research, or $27,500 for each of two contiguous years, working half time. Fellows will also attend professional development retreats and receive mentorship from NAEd members and other senior scholars in their field. Applicants must have had their PhD, EdD, or equivalent research degree conferred between January 1, 2007, and December 31, 2012. This fellowship is non-residential, and applications from all disciplines are encouraged. Up to twenty NAEd/Spencer Fellowships will be awarded. Additional guidelines and the fellowship application form will be available on our website later this summer.
Website: http://naeducation.org/NAEd_Spencer_Postdoctoral_Fellowship.html<http://pull.msg-edu.com/p/8324-28E9/58705278/html002-naeducation.org.html>

Contact Information:
Philip Perrin, Program Officer - Professional Development Programs
E-mail: info@naeducation.org <http://pull.msg-edu.com/p/8324-2658/58603163/html_mailto003-naeducation.org.html>
Website: www.naeducation.org <http://pull.msg-edu.com/p/8324-DF6C/58705282/html004-www.naeducation.org.html>

The National Academy of Education greatly appreciates support and funding from the Spencer Foundation to provide and administer these fellowship programs. For more information on the Spencer Foundation, please visit http://www.spencer.org <http://pull.msg-edu.com/p/8324-D1D8/58603159/html005-www.spencer.org.html>

National Academy of Education
500 5th St, NW #308
Washington, DC 20001

Are you applying for 3rd year teaching support as a GI? The deadline has been extended to May 25th. See here for application from and instructions.