A Message from the Dean - March 2023
As flowers bloom on the SIUE campus and temperatures climb, the end of another academic year rapidly approaches. Spring commencement ceremonies are only five weeks away!
March has been filled with activity in the College of Arts and Sciences. The month began with a concert by the University Concert Band and the SIUE Wind Symphony, featuring the band from Clayton High School in Missouri. Students in the master’s degree program in Art Therapy Counseling in the Department of Art and Design presented their artwork in a show, “Spectrum of Healing,” in the gallery in Art and Design West.
In the middle of the month, Bill Luan, a senior program manager at Google who holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the School of Engineering at SIUE, presented a livestream presentation as part of the Arts & Issues series. The title of Luan’s talk was “Innovation Opportunities in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Businesses and Education.”
The University Dance Organization, the student organization for the dance program in the Department of Theater and Dance, presented its spring concert. The concert featured works choreographed and performed by students in the dance program.
March is Women’s History Month, and Phenomenal Women from the campus and community were honored at a luncheon on March 22. The Department of Music celebrated Women’s History Month with a concert on March 28. The concert featured the SIUE Treble Chorus, performances of pieces written by women composers, and a round table discussion of women faculty members in the department.
Other notable news from CAS includes:
- Trish Oberweis, PhD, professor in the Department of Criminal Justice Studies, is teaching a course in which SIUE students review reports and documents and analyze records in cold case investigations. This course represents an important new collaboration between the Illinois State Police and SIUE.
- Aidan Ferguson, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Social Work, has invented a demographic instrument—the Ferguson Sexual Identity Classification Instrument, or FSICI—to prevent inaccuracies in sexual identity information gathered in research. Ferguson is collaborating in her research with two other assistant professors in the Department of Social Work, Jennifer Erwin, PhD, and Lane Forsman, PhD.
- Allison Simpson, a junior majoring in Applied Communication Studies at SIUE, is one of the first students to take advantage of a course sharing program with Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Simpson is currently enrolled in a course on sports public relations offered in the School of Communication Studies at SIUC.
- Natcha Wongchanglaw, a Master of Fine Arts student in the Department of Art and Design, was presented with the International Photography Exhibition Award by the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) in the United Kingdom. Wongchanglaw was one of 46 photographers selected to display their artwork at the RPS Gallery in Bristol.
- Krista Russell, who earned her master’s degree in environmental science in 2020, has concluded that multiple variables have led to the intensification of corn production in Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. Russell’s research challenges the argument that the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the federal program developed to increase the volume of renewable fuel such as ethanol, has led to more corn production in the Midwest.
Please read more about these people and their accomplishments in This Month in CAS and tune in to Segue at 9 a.m. on Sundays to learn about people and events on the SIUE campus.
Kevin Leonard, PhD
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
