A Message from the Dean - October 2020
Autumn has returned to Edwardsville. As always, hours of daylight have decreased, and temperatures have dropped. Leaves are turning yellow, orange and red and dropping from the trees on the SIUE campus. This fall term, however, is remarkably different from previous ones. No classrooms are filled to capacity. The hallways of campus buildings are uncrowded. There are no large events on campus, such as musical or theatrical performances.
Our efforts to control the spread of COVID-19 have been largely successful. Unlike many other campuses, which have recorded hundreds of infections, fewer than 100 SIUE students and only a dozen faculty or staff members have reported positive test results since the beginning of the semester. Students, faculty and staff members continue to abide by rules requiring the wearing of face coverings and social distancing.
Reduced face-to-face contact and increased stress have been difficult for many members of our community. To meet the challenges posed by the pandemic and by racial injustice, SIUE has added a counselor for faculty and staff in Counseling Services. Karen Banks, MEd, LPC, will focus on supporting colleagues with concerns related to the impact of the current pandemic and racial crises.
COVID-19 has disrupted the routines of campus life, but teaching, learning, research and events continue to occur on the campus and in virtual spaces. SIUE’s third annual Diversity Day made a successful transition to an online environment. Nearly 1,000 people registered for the event, which featured more than 20 presentations and discussions. Many CAS faculty participated in the event. Min Liu, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Applied Communication Studies, for example, examined the social impact of COVID-19 on the Asian American community in the St. Louis area.
If you missed an episode of Segue, SIUE’s weekly public affairs radio program, or if you want to listen again to a program that you heard, past episodes are archived digitally and are now available here.
Congratulations are in order for Lindani Memani, who received the SIUE Graduate School’s Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. Memani is a student in the Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program in the Department of English Language and Literature. Professor Matthew Johnson, PhD, the Director of First-Year Writing, described Memani’s teaching as “inspiring, structured, student-centered, welcoming, interesting and engaging.”
Jennifer Doudna, PhD, the Department of Chemistry’s Probst Lecturer in 2019 and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Emmanuelle Charpentier were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2020 for the development of a method of genome editing. Dr. Doudna spoke on “CRISPR Systems and the Future of Genome Editing” at SIUE on March 26, 2019.
SIUE deserves recognition, too, for its inclusion in Washington Monthly’s 2020 Best Colleges for Student Voting Honor Roll. SIUE is among 157 schools on the list.
CAS students, faculty and alumni continue to earn recognition and educate and serve the academic community. Carol Colaninno, PhD, research assistant professor in the STEM Center and adjunct professor in the Department of Anthropology, was among the speakers at the 2020 Public Summit of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education. Criminal Justice Professor Dennis Mares, PhD, and Emily Blackburn of the Saint Louis Metropolitan Police Department presented to the Bureau of Justice Assistance on their Strategies for Policing Innovation project. The project, SkyCop Mobile Surveillance Unit, won the 2020 Phil E. Keith Project of the Year award from the International Association of Law Enforcement Planners.
SIUE’s Department of Mass Communications and SIU Carbondale’s College of Mass Communication and Media Arts co-hosted the 20th annual Global Fusion Conference. The virtual conference, whose theme was “(In)visibility in Global Communication: Connections & Inequities,” featured 67 presentations by participants from more than a dozen countries.
Congressman John Shimkus, an SIUE alumnus who has served Southern Illinois in the U.S. House of Representative for 24 years, will begin teaching courses for the Department of Political Science in the spring semester of 2021. Students in Shimkus’s courses will benefit from the insights drawn from his many years of public service.
Finally, the College of Arts and Sciences’ Arts & Issues series features a conversation tonight with Professor Ilyasah Shabazz, one of the six daughters of Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz. The author of a memoir, Growing Up X, Shabazz will talk with Timothy Lewis, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, this evening at 7:30 p.m. The theme of the conversation is “Living the Legacy to Empower the Future.” There is still time to register for this free virtual event.
Please read more about these individuals and their accomplishments in October’s This Month in CAS.
Kevin Leonard, PhD
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
