Dear Alums:
Hard to believe that two more years have slipped away and it's newsletter
time again! We really appreciate the responses of you the alumni,
and it's your appreciation of the "annual" newsletter that drives this
editor to try and accumulate the news of the past year. Some
faculty are so busy that is takes numerous requests to get a faculty
report.
But I know that you want to hear from everyone so we delay publication
until we have all of the reports.
Part of the good news is that the Weissenborn Scholarship Fund has almost
doubled in the past two years, thanks to you the alumni, and a generous
gift from the Weissenborn family in the name of Helen Weissenborn Worthington,
daughter of Al Weissenborn. Helen passed away in 1995 and her husband,
Joe Worthington, and their children, contributed $5,000 to the fund.
Joe's company, Asarco, sent a matching gift of $2,500 in Helen's
name.
The other good news is that we have a replacement for the mineralogy position, Jenny Thomson, who came to us from State University of New York at Albany.
The bad news is that we didn't receive replacements for Jim Snook, Felix Mutschler, Gene Kiver (who is half-time and nearing retirement), or Bill Steele who just retired. This seriously limits the diversity of courses that we can offer to our students. In order to offer the courses that are necessary, it requires that we go back to a teaching load similar to that required 25 years ago. Hopefully, this is a short-term situation.
Ernie Gilmour, Editor
Last year, the big departmental news was the addition of a new faculty member, Dr. Jennifer Thomson, to teach our mineralogy/petrology series for the majors, along with the various GUR courses. Jenny was chosen out of 130 applications, and has had prior teaching experience and a strong publication record. The Geology Club put on a welcoming potluck dinner in late October, and it was well attended and enjoyed by all.
The other faculty news is that Gene Kiver has become half time, in anticipation of his retirement in about four years. Bill Steele took an early retirement to pursue his interest in endangered species of orchids and moved to Minnesota. Jim Snook sold his home here and has retired to Oak Harbor to pursue his boating interest and Coast Guard duties in the Puget Sound area. Jim Hoffman resigned his position as Provost and will become a geology faculty member.
In other departmental news, the number of declared majors is down.
In response to declining class enrollment, the geology department has voted
to teach the upper division geology major courses on an alternate year
basis, beginning in the academic year 1998-1999. With the loss of
three departmental faculty positions and a severe reduction in our library
budget, the department has voted to put our M.S. degree program on hiatus
for
the foreseeable future. The department
also volunteered to become involved in the upper division liberal arts
enrichment courses in order to reach
mandated student to faculty ratios.
In more general news, State Senator Jim West (Chair of the Senate Finance
Committee) late last year
attempted to force a merger of EWU with
WSU, essentially making us a branch campus. This idea was rejected
by the EWU Board of Trustees.
A compromise bill by Senators West and Prince was introduced to the
Senate,
dropping the merger idea but giving
complete control of the Riverpoint higher education center to WSU.
EWU
was to restrict its program offerings
to the Cheney campus. With WSU having degree programs right in
Spokane,
the enrollment at EWU will probably
continue its decline. We'll just have to wait and see what the future
will
bring.
The most important purpose of this newsletter is to maintain our contact
with alumni. We are always
interested to hear from you and encourage
you to drop by any time you are in the area.
Linda McCollum