Our Program
New Leadership
With the retirement of two of our esteemed senior professors, several of our key administrative positions have been filled by younger faculty. Jon Hegglund is our new Undergraduate Studies Director. Todd Butler is our new Vice Chair/Scheduler. We congratulate them both and enthusiastically look forward to their leadership.
Focus on Poetry
by Chris Arigo
The English Department has been blessed with a sudden abundance of poets—Christopher Arigo, Jacqueline Lyons, and Linda Russo—who all have books and PhDs. What this means for the department is the ability to teach a greater range of poetry and poetics courses—both creative and academic, and when appropriate, a fusion of both. Already they have proposed and had accepted several new courses, including a “Poetry Lab,” African Literature, History of the Personal Essay, Feminist Poetics, Ecocriticism, Beat Generation Literature, and many more to come in the future. There is a new buzz, an excitement in the air among the creative writing students about poetry and its new prominence in the department. These three poets join an already strong group of poets, many of whom have been teaching here for years, like Linda Kittell and Alex Kuo, both who have had books published in the Fall. With such a diverse blend of poets and writers in the department, there is little doubt that the creative writing emphasis will continue to grow healthily. -Chris Arigo
The Avery Grove
by Michael Hanly
One day early last July a chain-saw crew cut down the two old conifers between Avery and Bryan. Icalled to ask why this was done, and was told it was part of a “beautification project.” All the trees on the other side of Avery Hall would go as well, and there was nothing we could do about it.
So began the episode that those of us who were here over the summer now call “The Trees.” If you look out the window on the north (Bookstore) side of the building, you can see how it ended. The story is long and involved, but all you'll get here is a quick review of what was done to our living space last summer. Nevertheless, please do not mistake my brevity and restraint for anything like satisfaction with the outcome, or with its perpetrators.
WSU Capital Planning and Development (CPD) had entered the final stage in its “Library Road Phase III." Heaven save us from further such “beautification” efforts. The project had already denuded a wide swath of campus from the CUB to Owen to Bryan, and all that was left was what Capital Planning called the "Avery Yard." Their end-game took everyone in English by surprise. Detailed demolition plans had never been publicized, and the pretty charts posted by CPD were universally misunderstood: leafy icons were taken to depict existing trees that would be preserved, but instead showed projected growth of new plantings forty years in the future. Capital Planning now intended to remove all the trees on the north (Bookstore) side of the building without delay. We objected. WSU President Elson Floyd became personally involved on our behalf.
There were meetings and news interviews and protests and thousands of e-mails. Most of the WSU and Pullman community rallied to our defense. In late July we were confident that Dr. Floyd would be able to revise CPD's plan so as to spare all of the fourteen trees in the "Avery Grove." Then, in early August, we were suddenly shown a "compromise" plan that would spare only seven. When we asked why we should give up half of the Avery Grove, the other shoe dropped. Faculty from the Music Department, having for years been in secret collusion with Capital Planning, demanded their prize: a greatly widened space between Kimbrough and Avery to accommodate buses for music camps and the marching band. It seems as though the president felt he could not deny them, given the late stage in the planning process.
And so that whole plot got plowed. After everything we had done to preserve some rare old-growth specimens on this treeless plain, "Louie Louie" and the chain-saw gang won the day. I'm still wondering what the English Department got out of this "compromise," aside from an unobstructed view of Kimbrough Hall. Had our neighbors sought our input early on, we might have found a way to give them their "bus turnaround" while preserving the trees on our front lawn. Such collegial cooperation might have gone a long way toward promoting the WSU Mission Statement's culture of "integrity, trust, and respect." Alas, the blighted faith, and the barren sward!
All of you who had to give up a good part of your “summer off” in this effort, take a bow. Many thanks to George Kennedy, Alex Hammond, and Liz Siler for the endless hours they put into meetings and memos, to Anne Stiles for her stellar website and petition (and to its 1100-plus signatories), to Sarah Lemke and other English majors who set up a "Save WSU Trees" group on Facebook, to Virginia Hyde and Dave Barnes and the other members of the WSU community who wrote and turned out for Liz's “lunches under the trees,” to Jon Hegglund, Patty Ericsson, Barbara Monroe, T. V. Reed, Leslie Sena, Jerri Smith, Sarah White, Annette Bednar, and everyone else who pitched in. We were outmaneuvered and got steamrolled in the end, but along the way we all pulled together, and I was proud of us. It isn't all we wanted, but our efforts nevertheless preserved a legacy for future members of this department: that big red oak and the other trees that still adorn our living space on the north side of Avery.
Continuing Initiatives
Rural Education Community Outreach
We continue to look for partners (an endowment or a program grant) to fund a visiting writer or scholar on a semester-long appointment. The writer woud teach innovative courses in the department and to help organize a rural education outreach program in the small towns surrounding Pullman (i.e., Colfax and Uniontown, Washington; Deary and Troy, Idaho). The outreach program would involve undergraduate and graduate students and faculty with rural communities through the mediums of teaching, creative writing and reading. The position would be sustainable and rotate among writers and scholars of note with an interest in northwest landscape.
Dissertation Fellowships
We are looking for endowments to attract the finest graduate students. Currently, the English Department has no fellowships to support graduate students writing dissertations. These funds would help students have resources for books, Xeroxing, and research. A dissertation fellowship would also offer doctoral students more time to pursue publication venues for their completed work.