Johannes Schmidt, associate professor of German, visited the OTH Regensburg, a new partner university in Bavaria, Germany, in June 2017. The week was filled with meeting faculty, administrators, and students at the OTH as well as seeing the sights of the medieval historic center of the city. In Regensburg he saw three Clemson students, the first group to study at Regensburg. The week also included a visit to Infineon, a large semiconductor company where Clemson Computer Science student Dani Durham interned for a semester. Jennifer Rogers (Language and International Trade, German) spent the summer semester at Regensburg and will return in the fall to begin an internship with Mercedes Benz. Andrea Wiggins (Modern Languages, German) will stay in Regensburg for another semester.
Clemson student Dani Durham at Infineon. Photo courtesy of OTH Regensburg.
While in Regensburg, “Herr” Schmidt not only promoted Clemson as a study abroad destination for Regensburg students but also gave two guest lectures. “German Economy and Culture in the USA” was presented in German and discussed the historical influence of German culture and Germany’s business presence in the US today, as exemplified by businesses in Upstate South Carolina. Two major German companies with ties to Clemson University were used as case studies. The lecture/workshop “Holocaust Education in the US” — delivered in English — informed attendees what kind of information and how material related to the Shoah is presented in US middle and high schools as well as colleges and universities. The participants also researched and discussed the strong engagement of institutions and museums (like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.) regarding the topic.
The current partnership agreement is to be extended to a full study abroad and faculty exchange program. After his visit, Schmidt said, “The OTH was extremely welcoming and made my visit enjoyable and very informative. I now feel even better sending our students to Regensburg.”
Gabriela Stoicea received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Gabriela Stoicea, assistant professor of German, received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. The annual dean’s awards are peer-reviewed by the college faculty awards committee. Each award comes with a plaque of recognition, placement on the list of awardees in the dean’s office and a cash award.
As one nominator commented, “[Her] classes rank among the very best that the university has to offer. … I found them to be incredibly intellectually stimulating, and other students and I often mulled over ideas from class discussions long after class had ended.”
Another wrote, “She always upheld a certain atmosphere in her classroom that encouraged productive and thought-provoking conversation. She led us as we powerfully worked through seemingly difficult topics, such as societal oppression on the individual or the complexities of moral standards.”
And, from her own teaching statement, Professor Stoicea reminds us all of this very important message: “Contributing to my students’ intellectual formation is a privilege I never take for granted, but one that I work hard to earn every single day.”
Stephen Fitzmaurice received a grant to establish the first South Carolina Educational Interpreting Center.
Stephen Fitzmaurice, assistant professor of American Sign Language, was awarded $1,011,547 from the South Carolina Department of Education to establish the first South Carolina Educational Interpreting Center at the University Center in Greenville. Clemson will partner with the South Carolina State Department of Education and the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind to open the new center.
The center aims to improve the quality of educational interpreters in South Carolina by providing national skills and knowledge assessments, in-service professional development sessions, mentoring and technical assistance to educational interpreters and local school districts.
“As a nationwide leader in preparing educational interpreters,” Fitzmaurice said, “we are excited to receive this award which will go a long way not only to improving the skills of working educational interpreters in South Carolina but towards improving educational access for children who are deaf and hard of hearing across the state.”
Other faculty news:
Luca Barattoni, associate professor of Italian, gave a lecture at the Department of Cinema and Television Studies at Kadir Has University in Istanbul in December 2016. His topic was “The Relevance of the Neorealist Debate to Contemporary World Cinema.”
Joseph Mai, associate professor of French, published an article on how a contemporary French novelist uses literary experimentation to explore ways in which humans and animals are defined in relation to one another: ‘“Un tissu de mots”: Writing Human and Animal Life in Olivia Rosenthal’s Que font les rennes après Noël ?’ appeared in Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal: 49, 3. He also participated in the scientific committee and was an invited speaker at the World Cinema and Television in French Conference, held in September 2016 at the University of Cincinnati.
Tiffany Creegan Miller, assistant professor of Spanish, published a book chapter entitled, “Una sociedad fragmentada: la heterogeneidad maya durante el conflicto armado guatemalteco y la violencia de la ‘posguerra’ en ‘Insensatez’” in the edited volume Horacio Castellanos Moya: El diablo en el espejo, published by Ediciones Eón in Mexico and edited by María del Carmen Caña Jiménez and Vinodh Venkatesh. In other news, Miller also presented work on appropriations of Japanese cultural forms in K’iche’ Maya poetry at the Symposium on Indigenous Languages and Cultures of Latin America (ILCLA) at Ohio State University. She also was invited to be a guest lecturer for a medical Spanish class at Brown University to discuss health care initiatives in Guatemalan Maya communities.
Kim Misener Dunn, lecturer of American Sign Languages, co-authored the peer-reviewed article “Early Reading for Young Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children: Alternative Frameworks,” which was published in April 2016 in the online journal Psychology.
Salvador Oropesa, department chair and professor of Spanish, published the book chapter “Lonely Souls in ‘Solo Dios Sabe’ by Carlos Bolado: Pastoralism and Syncretic Spirituality in Times of Crisis” in The Latin American Road Movie, edited by Jorge Pérez and Verónica Garibotto. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 121-36.
Johannes Schmidt, associate professor of German, was lead editor for a co-edited volume Herder and Religion. Contributions from the 2010 Conference of the International Herder Society at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana (Synchron 2016). The volume includes his own contribution “Light of Nature/Light of Reason. Herder’s and Kant’s Religion Essays.” He is also included in another Herder publication with an article entitled “Johann Gottfried Herder’s Adrastea: History in Relation” (Beate Allert (ed.): Herder: From Cognition to Cultural Science(Synchron 2016).
Graciela Tissera, associate professor of Spanish, presented her research on the supernatural in Hispanic films, “Spirits Trapped between Worlds: The Devil’s Backbone by Guillermo del Toro,” and chaired a panel on film and paranormal phenomena at the Film and History Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in October 2016. Tissera’s students, Jodie Holodak and Rebecca McConnell, participated in the panel to discuss their Creative Inquiry projects related to health and business topics in film and media. Tissera also attended the Film and Literature Conference organized by the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina in November 2016 to present her research paper entitled “Theories of Knowledge in the Fiction of Borges and Cortázar.”
Eric Touya, associate professor of French, published The Case for the Humanities: Pedagogy, Polity, Interdisciplinarity. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, December 2016. Countering the perception that the humanities are unessential, this volume contends that their well-being has not only academic but also cultural, political, and existential ramifications.
The College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities inducted 17 founding members of a new Hall of Fame celebrating alumni, faculty and friends who have made a significant impact upon the educational, research and/or service goals of the college. The induction ceremony was held March 31 at the Madren Conference Center, with 14 of the new members present.
“It was an extraordinary opportunity having so much talent, so much achievement and so much commitment in one room,” said Richard Goodstein, dean of the college. “Each member of this inaugural class will continue to serve as a beacon for all who come afterward. Each and every one will be a very tough act to follow.”
Drs. Ralph Rynes and Patricia (Pat) Wannamaker became the first representatives of the Department of Languages honored at this inaugural ceremony.
CAAH Hall of Fame inductee Ralph Rynes. Photo courtesy of Ralph Rynes.
Prior to his retirement, Dr. Ralph Rynes was a board-certified physician with over 30 years’ experience in treating the neurological aspects of Infectious Diseases. He worked primarily with individuals living with HIV and co-occurring mental health or substance use disorders. He earned a B.A. at Clemson University and an M.A. at the Universität Hamburg in Germany before completing his Doctoral degrees (MD and Ph.D.) at l’Université Denis Diderot. Dr. Rynes completed clinical and research residencies in Neurology and Neuroscience at l’Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris, France, followed by post-doctoral research in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He specialized in Prion diseases and in the treatment of HIV and Hepatitis C as well as the neurobiology of substance use disorders, practicing at the Immunology Center of the USC School of Medicine, the largest infectious diseases clinic in South Carolina.
Additionally, Dr. Rynes provided cultural sensitivity training to other physicians and support staff on Latino, French-speaking African refugee, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender treatment nuances, in addition to providing HIV/AIDS training and cultural sensitivity training for SC Alcohol and Drug Commissions, SC and other state’s Primary Healthcare Associations, the National Association of Addictions Counselors, the SC Health Information Management Association, SC DHEC and a host of national organizations.
He now volunteers with Doctors Without Borders in a consulting capacity, and continues to work to mitigate the stigma associated with HIV, Hepatitis C, and mental health and substance use disorders in the U.S. and in Western Europe.
Special interests include Prion diseases, the neurochemical pathways of addiction and specialized treatment issues in LGBT and Latino and African refugee populations.
Prior to retirement, he served on numerous national and international Boards, as well as serving on and chairing the Boards of the Columbia Free Medical Clinic and the Columbia Oral Health Clinic.
Of his induction into the Hall of Fame, Dr. Rynes said, “As a senior at Clemson, I had already forged my career path: MS and PhD at Georgetown, where I had already been accepted, followed by a career teaching Foreign Affairs on the university level. But Dr. Margit Sinka, my German professor at the time, changed all that by encouraging me to apply for a Fellowship to study in Germany. I was accepted, beginning a relationship with Europe and Europeans that continues to this day. I cannot imagine what my life would be like had I not had the opportunity and the encouragement to live and study in other countries. My life is so much richer and satisfying than I could ever have imagined, all thanks to a very intuitive and highly motivated Clemson professor.”
Professor emeritus Pat Wannamaker (center) is inducted at the CAAH Hall of Fame Ceremony. Presenting her with the award are CAAH Dean Richard Goodstein (left) and Chair of the Department of Languages Salvador Oropesa (right). Photo courtesy of Clemson University.
Dr. Patricia W. Wannamaker received both her B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of South Carolina in Columbia. She taught English and German for nine years in secondary schools in the state before finishing her Ph.D. in German and linguistics at Louisiana State University in 1964.
Dr. Wannamaker finished a twenty-five year teaching career at Clemson as founding Director of the Language and International Trade (L&IT) baccalaureate degree program under the funding of the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE).
During Dr. Wannamaker’s time at Clemson, the undergraduate business curricula was generally restricted to 12 hours or fewer of electives that could be used in language study. Dr. Wannamaker knew a Liberal Arts B.A. was the answer!
Studies show that liberal arts grads are well prepared to succeed in business. She envisioned a Clemson L&IT degree that would combine humanistic and technical learning to develop cultural sensitivity as a marketing tool in global business.
She formed partnerships with supporting agencies and multinational firms were also a vital part of the success of L&IT, including the S.C. State Development Board, the S.C. Ports Authority, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the many upstate multinational firms and their parent companies around the world.
Dr. Wannamaker also invested a lot of time and effort in recruiting high school students for visits to Clemson’s campus, and more specifically to provide information to the potential future Language and
International Trade majors.
Since its inception, the L&IT program has graduated more than 1,000 undergraduate students.
Of her induction, Dr. Wannamaker said, “Thank you so much for this great honor you all have bestowed upon me. The Language and International Trade baccalaureate program has exceeded my highest expectation as founding director. Congratulations to all of you for the continuing success of every aspect of the program, including the annual L&IT trade conference which supports the all-important networking aspect of L&IT.”
Robert Floyd Mixon, 85, widower of Louise Brown Mixon, died Sunday, February 19, 2017. Born in Clemson, he was a son of the late George Floyd and Mildred Cochran Mixon. Bob was a graduate of Calhoun-Clemson High School. He was a 1954 graduate of Clemson University and earned a Master’s Degree from UNC-Chapel Hill. A U.S. Army Veteran, he served as a counterintelligence officer in Munich, Germany at the height of the Cold War. He was a Spanish professor at Clemson until his retirement in 1993.
He served his beloved church, Fort Hill Presbyterian, as deacon, elder, trustee, and Sunday school teacher. He will be remembered for his devotion to his late wife and for their loyalty to Clemson sports, especially baseball. Surviving are his son, Greg (Melanie) Mixon of Columbia and grandsons, Eric Mixon, Brian Mixon, and Kyle Mixon, as well as nieces and nephews. In addition to his wife and parents, he was predeceased by brothers, Joe Mixon and David Mixon, and a sister, Dorothy Ann Gage.
The Department of Languages mourns the death of Roger Simpson, a retired Senior Lecturer of Spanish. He passed away on February 4, 2017 at the age of 62.
Roger was a graduate of Clemson University, where he received his Bachelor’s Degree in Modern Languages and M.Ed. After having taught Spanish at the high school level for fourteen years, Roger began teaching at Clemson University in August of 1999. His teaching responsibilities included Elementary Spanish for which he was a course coordinator.
CAAH Dean Richard Goodstein said that Roger was actively engaged in the life of the Department of Languages and was loved by colleagues and students alike. “The College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities will long feel his loss,” he said. Roger was the Foreign Language Placement Test Coordinator, Hospitality Director for the Department of Languages, and co-editor of the Clemson Polyglot (the department’s newsletter). Additionally, he served on the Declamation Contest Committee; this contest is an annual poetry recitation contest for high school students. He retired in December 2016.
The 45th Annual Declamation Contest on October 22, 2017 will be dedicated in memory of Roger. His unwavering dedication and commitment to the contest, to his colleagues and to his students will always be appreciated and remembered.
Building Healthy Communities in the Dominican Republic fall trip 2016. Photo courtesy of Arelis Moore de Peralta.
Building Healthy Communities in the Dominican Republic is an undergraduate research and study abroad Creative Inquiry (CI) project led by Dr. Arelis Moore de Peralta. The project is an interdisciplinary, holistic effort dedicated to improving the health of Las Malvinas, a poverty-stricken community in the Dominican Republic (DR). Moore de Peralta holds a joint appointment with the Department of Youth, Family and Community Studies and the Department of Languages.
A trip to Las Malvinas in November 2016 allowed for planning and partnership building with the Universidad Iberoamericana, the DR’s Ministry of Public Health, and Las Malvinas community members. Joining Moore de Peralta on the trip were David Vaughn, Professor of Practice, Clemson Engineers for Developing Countries (CEDC), and two of his students who are also program coordinators (Hunter Lee and Jack McLeod); Dr. James H. Spencer, Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Education, CAAH; and Katherine Brown, a CI Project Research Team Leader.
Building Healthy Communities in the Dominican Republic fall trip 2016. Photo courtesy of Arelis Moore de Peralta.
Community members in Las Malvinas hope for an organized community health plan and local government’s involvement in sustainable improvement projects. The Clemson CI project aims to conduct a Community Health Assessment and to develop a Community Health Improvement Plan in Las Malvinas. This experience improves students’ cultural competence and critical thinking skills, and allows them to develop evidence-based learning skills to conduct research beyond the CI class.
Building Healthy Communities in the Dominican Republic will take a spring trip in March 2017.
Alma, a native of the Dominican Republic, earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Spanish at St. John’s University in New York. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Florida and expects to finish her dissertation this year. Her research focuses on the representation of the city in six novels from the Hispanic Caribbean: Santo Domingo, La Habana and San Juan. She is taking a Neo-Baroque perspective to study these cities as elements that stand against an established order and authority in order to create a new identity that governs itself. She plans to continue researching Caribbean literature after finishing her dissertation. Alma teaches elementary Spanish at Clemson. In her free time, she loves to spend time with her husband and to dance.
Toshiko was born and raised in Okayama, Japan. She graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Physical Education from Tokai University, Japan. She teaches elementary Japanese as well as Japanese conversation and composition at Clemson. In her free time, she regularly volunteers to present Japanese culture to elementary and middle school students in the Greenville area. Toshiko lives in Greenville with her husband and their four children.
Erin holds a Bachelor’s degree in World Language Education and a Master’s degree in French linguistics from the University of Georgia. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, and foreign language pedagogy. Erin teaches intermediate French at Clemson. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, playing piano, and baking.
Saori obtained an M.A. in Linguistics with an emphasis on teaching Japanese as a Second Language from California State University, Long Beach. She teaches first- and second-year Japanese at Clemson. Outside of teaching, she enjoys spending quality time with her family and friends. She is also a big fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Associate Professor of Spanish Mónica Rojas de Massei has been appointed to the Provost’s Global Learning Task Force. Read the announcement from Inside Clemson below.
Provost convenes global learning task force
By Sharon Nagy, Ph.D. Vice Provost for Global Engagement
To support the implementation of the ClemsonForward call to infuse global learning throughout the curriculum, Provost Bob Jones has formed a Global Learning Task Force comprised of faculty from across the university. The Global Learning Task Force will spearhead a faculty-led process to identify global learning outcomes and develop an implementation plan for the delivery and assessment of Global Learning in the undergraduate curriculum. With the support of the Offices of Global Engagement and Undergraduate Studies, the Global Learning Task Force will prepare a recommendation for the Provost and ClemsonForward Steering Committee by the end of the spring semester 2017.
June Pilcher, alumni distinguished professor of psychology, was selected through a call for applications to serve as Faculty Fellow for Global Learning and to chair the Global Learning Task Force. Representatives from Clemson University’s six colleges plus the libraries serve on the committee. During the fall semester, they were engaged in initial meetings to set a timeline for the project and collect initial information on global learning both at Clemson and at peer institutions. Toward this end, task force members attended conferences on ‘Global Learning and the College Curriculum’ in Colorado and the Annual Colloquium on Engineering Education in Rhode Island.
The task force representatives include: Dr. June Pilcher (Chair, BSHS), Dr. Lisa Benson (CECAS), Dr. Vince Gallicchio (CoS), Dr. Pam Havice (CoE), Dr. Michal Jerzmanowski (CoB), Mr. Ed Rock (CU Libraries), Dr. Mónica Rojas de Massei (CAAH), Dr. Dil Thavarajah (CAFLS), and Dr. Melissa Vogel (BSHS).
During the coming spring semester, the task force will solicit feedback from campus stakeholders through multiple avenues including a survey open to all faculty members, meetings with key faculty committees, and college focus groups before finalizing and delivering the plan to the ClemsonForward Steering Committee.
For more information about the ongoing work of the task force, please contact your college representative listed above.
A group of alumni, former faculty, exchange students and current students are beginning the process to form a Clemson Club in Japan. They recently gathered in Tokyo with a group of about 12, including former faculty members Toshiko and Yuji Kishimoto, at an izakaya (a Japanese gastropub) for drinks and food and then went to an Italian bar. They closed out the evening with another mixture of cultures: a traditional Japanese-style event closing punctuated with the cadence count (see the video below):
Jeannie Davis, College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities
September 19, 2016
Stephen Fitzmaurice Image Credit: Clemson University
CLEMSON — Stephen Fitzmaurice, assistant professor of American Sign Language interpreting at Clemson University, has been awarded $1,011,547 from the South Carolina Department of Education to establish the first South Carolina Educational Interpreting Center at the University Center in Greenville. Clemson will partner with the South Carolina State Department of Education and the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind to open the new center.
The center aims to improve the quality of educational interpreters in South Carolina by providing national skills and knowledge assessments, in-service professional development sessions, mentoring and technical assistance to educational interpreters and local school districts.
“As a nationwide leader in preparing educational interpreters,” Fitzmaurice said, “we are excited to receive this award which will go a long way not only to improving the skills of working educational interpreters in South Carolina but towards improving educational access for children who are deaf and hard of hearing across the state.”
Clemson University is home to the only interpreter program in South Carolina and is the sole institution in the state offering a baccalaureate degree in American Sign Language.
“Clemson’s new center for educational interpreting will pave the way toward a better education for deaf and hard of hearing students in South Carolina and beyond,” said Richard Goodstein, dean of the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities, home to Clemson’s American Sign Language program. “It is core to our mission as teachers — doing everything we can making sure every child in the classroom has a chance to access the lesson.”
Lack of qualified educational interpreters is a problem nationwide and no less so here in South Carolina. Proficiency levels for many interpreters working in public schools in South Carolina are well below national levels and only 30 percent have passed the exam that measures nationally identified skills and knowledge competencies for work as educational interpreters.
Educational interpreting is not an easy task. An interpreter must listen to the message, quickly extract from it all the important parts and transfer that information into American Sign Language. When done poorly, information is missed or distorted and deaf students can quickly fall behind their peers.
In South Carolina, the state legislature and school districts are tightening minimum standards for hiring educational interpreters, which in a state so severely lacking in proficient interpreters makes it even harder to fill all the vacant positions. Having a bad interpreter is a problem. Having no interpreter at all is a problem of a different kind.
“In the Department of Languages, we are extremely proud that we are bringing Deaf culture to the core of the diversity effort at Clemson,” said Salvador Oropesa, chair and professor of the Department of Languages.
