University News
Arts and Sciences Open House and Employee Recognition December 9
December 7, 2005
MACOMB, IL - - Western Illinois UniversityÂ’s College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) will host its Holiday Open House from 4-7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 9 in the University Union Lamoine Room. The campus community is invited to attend.
A program to honor retiring faculty and college civil service award recipient Carla Oliver, secretary IV in the foreign languages and literatures department, will begin at 4:45 p.m.
Seven faculty members who will be retiring - - six in December and one in January 2006 - - will be recognized.
December retirees include Bem Allen, psychology; David Egler and George Hopkins, history; Brendan Maguire, sociology and anthropology; and Karen Mann and Janice Welsch, English.
Allen, the 2001 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer, will retire with 37 years of service. His teaching and research specialties are in the areas of personality and social psychology, memory and perception. He has received eight Faculty Excellence Awards, was named the Sigma Xi Researcher of the Year (1976), and has earned the College of Arts and Sciences Research Award (1990) and the Affirmative Action Office Award for Multicultural Programming (1999).
Egler, an Asian history specialist who has done extensive research on mid-20th Century Japan, will retire with 33 years of service. He has taught Chinese and Japanese history as well as modern East Asian history and he has earned two Professional Achievement Awards. Egler is the longtime faculty adviser to the departmentÂ’s chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national honorary for history majors. He spent two years teaching at an international college in Miyazaki, Japan; and most of his professional writing is in encyclopedias and Asian journals.
George Hopkins, the 2003 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer, will retire with 35 years of service. Hopkins has given numerous expert interviews to national media outlets, has written numerous scholarly articles and is the author or editor of four books about the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). He is also a specialist in 20th century U.S. history, with collateral qualifications in the history of modern East Asia. He received the departmentÂ’s Distinguished Teaching Award (1976); won an Excellence in Feature Writing prize for an article in "Air Line Pilot" (1978) by the International Association of Business Communicators; and received research awards from the U.S. Air Force Historical Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the WIU Foundation.
Maguire, a sociology professor, will retire with 22 years of service. His areas of specialization include theories of crime, and crime and policing in the media. He was recognized by the College of Arts and Sciences as the Outstanding Faculty Researcher of the Year in 2001, and has earned many Faculty Excellence Awards and Professional Achievement Awards. He also served many years as the graduate student adviser for sociology. Maguire has written numerous professional articles about media coverage of crime and television crime dramas. He is the author of a textbook about criminology and a co-author on a textbook about corrections. MaguireÂ’s paper, with co-author John Wozniak, chair of sociology and anthropology, on the rise of professional wrestling earned considerable attention in the national media.
Mann, who presented the Fall 2005 College of Arts and Sciences John Hallwas Liberal Arts Lecture, will retire after 34 years of service. She co-instructed Western’s first Women’s Studies course, co-created the first department of English course on women in literature, led the assessment team for multicultural courses and participated in a conference presentation on women and war at the National Women’s Studies Association. She has been a member and officer of the Illinois Humanities Council, the state-based affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Mann, a consulting editor for the journal “College Teaching,” is committed to multicultural education. She was presented with the inaugural College of Arts and Sciences Award for Service in 1980, received a national Carnegie Foundation Award for faculty commitment in 1986 and was awarded the WOW (Women of Western) Achievement Award in 2003.
Welsch, who was named the College of Arts and Sciences coordinator of multicultural education and interdisciplinary minors in 2000, will retire with 30 years of service. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Cultural Diversity Cadre and has been a major force in implementing the annual Multicultural Education Conference held on campus. From 1987 until 1995 she was the director of women's studies, and she was also director of Faculty Development from 1995-1999. Welsch was among the 45 Women of Western Centennial Photographic Exhibit which was unveiled during WesternÂ’s Centennial celebration during 1999-2000.
Mario Morelli is a philosophy professor and has been chair of the department of philosophy and religious studies since 1999. He will retire Jan. 31, 2006 after more than 33 years at Western. His areas of specialization include ethics, social philosophy and the philosophy of law. Morelli has served as co-director of Western’s Program for the Study of Ethics, and currently is co-director of Western’s involvement in the American Democracy Project, a joint venture of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the New York Times, which seeks to engage the higher education community -- administrators, faculty, staff, and students -- in discussions and activities about civic involvement. Morelli has received Faculty Excellence Awards, and in his early tenure at Western he was among 12 persons selected nationally to participate in the National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar on “The Philosophical Foundations of American Democracy” (1974).
Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
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