Welcome to the spring semester of 2020! As I write this, it is 19 degrees outside with a wind chill hovering around 10 degrees, so spring seems to be off in the distance, at least for now. Hopefully, these shining stories of the accomplishments our students, faculty and alumni will warm your day.
Our student spotlight falls on SIUE graduate student Dana Lewis, who embarked on a social media campaign last fall for her Public Archaeology graduate course. She worked to help promote the archaeological collections within the SIUE University Museum, where she works as a graduate research assistant. Lewis posted on the museum’s social media accounts highlighting both practices within museum curation and also displaying the “artifact of the week.” Lewis’ dynamic posts attracted interest from archaeologists in the U.S. and abroad.
For our faculty spotlight, we celebrate that for the first time in its 34-year history, the SIUE Arts & Issues series is featuring an SIUE faculty member as its headlining performer. Angela Kim, DMA, assistant professor of piano in the SIUE Department of Music, along with New York-based artists Michael Robert Boswell and Peter John Kearney, will be debuting Chaos Magick on Thursday, Jan. 30, at 7:30 p.m. in the Dunham Hall Theater. This premier performance also will incorporate the work of composer Dan VanHassel and choreographer Kevin Hockenberry, assistant professor in SIUE’s Department of Theater and Dance. Contact Grant Andree at gandree@siue.edu for information about tickets for this exciting event.
Over the past 25 years, alumnus Lieutenant DeAngelo Franklin has made a positive impact on the City of East St. Louis as a member of its police department. He joined the force as a patrol officer in 1994 but has served the department in various capacities, including gang crime specialist, school resource officer and administrative aide to the chief of police. In 1999, Franklin earned the Public Safety Medal of Valor for saving a child from a burning building. Franklin earned his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from SIUE in 2016 and credits his education for supporting the career he has built. Stemming from his passion for history and the role it plays in our current society, Franklin returned to SIUE to earn his bachelor’s degree in historical studies in 2019.
When faculty and students from the Departments of Political Science and Environmental Sciences were selected to present at the 2020 Southern Political Science Association Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in January, none of them anticipated the earthquakes that would rock the small island during their visit. Thankfully, San Juan was not majorly impacted by the earthquakes, and the conference carried on as planned. Read all about the faculty and students involved in the conference in this month’s edition.
Did you know that CAS has a retired faculty member in the SIUE Department of Social Work who is also the founding member of the rock band Head East? After creating a well-established career in the music industry beginning in the 1970s, Roger Boyd, PhD, returned to his education, earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from SIUE in 1997 and 1998, respectively. He became a faculty member in the SIUE Department of Social Work in 2003 after earning his doctorate, and he taught at SIUE until his retirement in 2011. Boyd and his current bandmates are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of Head East with back-to-back shows on Jan. 24-25 at the Wildey Theater in Edwardsville. I’m sure they will be playing their hit song, “Never Been Any Reason”.
Until February, here’s This Month in CAS!
Greg Budzban, PhD
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
