Office of the Provost

Faculty News and Accomplishments: Spring 2023

GRANTS AND AWARDS

Scott Anderson - Art

Scott Anderson received two Gold awards from the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles, one of which was for his poster illustration of Westmont Theatre's production of The Miser.

Sara Johnson - Biology

Sara Johnson is co-principal investigator of a multi-year project through Loma Linda University Health titled "Adventist Health Study: The Next Generation in Transformational Health Knowledge." The project was awarded an additional $200k from Ardmore Institute of Health in January.

Caryn Reeder - Religious Studies

Caryn Reeder's recent book, The Samaritan Woman's Story: Reconsidering John 4 After #ChurchToo, was selected as one of Intervarsity Press's 2022 Readers’ Choice Award winners.

Amanda Silberstein - Chemistry

Amanda Silberstein was awarded a research grant from Organic Syntheses, Inc. to support an undergraduate research student for the summer.

David Vander Laan - Philosophy

David Vander Laan has been awarded the 2022 Alvin Plantinga Prize for his paper "Satisfaction in the End without End," forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion. The prize recognizes theism-related work that exemplifies "clarity, rigor, and originality". The prize was presented to Vander Laan at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting in April.

Dave Wolf - Athletics and Kinesiology

Dave Wolf received the Layton Shoemaker Award sponsored by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA). This award, named for the legendary Messiah College Soccer Coach Layton Shoemaker, "recognizes a coach that honors God on and off the field, and models a strong relationship with Christ to their players." The award was presented at the National Soccer Coaches Convention, held this January, in Philadelphia.

PUBLICATIONS

Scott Anderson - Art

Scott Anderson illustrated the cover of the December issue of MAD Magazine.

Lisa DeBoer - Art

Lisa DeBoer published a review of Julia Voss's Hilma af Klint: A Biography in Current.

Beth Horvath - Biology

Beth Horvath is a co-author with several NOAA colleagues on a new west-coast checklist of Gorgonian Coral species; publication title: List of Deep-Sea Coral Taxa in the U.S. West Coast Region: Depth and Geographic Distribution (ver. 2021), published December. She has also been cited in two other recent NOAA publications, also published in December: 1) List of Deep-Sea Coral Taxa in the Alaska Region: Depth and Geographic Distribution (ver. 2021), and 2) A Comprehensive List of Known Deep-Sea Corals in waters of the United States and its Island Territories (ver. 2021). Beth has also seen a large number of "reads" and citations of her work through ResearchGate recently, achieving in one week more "reads" or citations than any other author in the ResearchGate Network, and in a second week, the second highest number of "reads" or citations. She was featured in the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History's most recent online Newsletter, in the "SBnature Blog" feature, for her work on the Gorgonian Research Collection housed in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology at the museum. The blog article is in response to the 300+ page monograph, in 3 parts (special publication), published by the online journal ZooKeys, July 4, 2019.

Dan Jensen - Engineering

Dan Jensen and students Jared Lush and Josh Guinto had a paper accepted for the American Society of Engineering Education conference. The paper is titled “Using the Kolb Cycle to Enhance Undergraduate Research Experiences”.

Blake Kent - Sociology & Anthropology

Blake Victor Kent was lead author on a study examining religious and spiritual factors associated with racial/ethnic differences in prevalent hypertension. The study, “Religion/Spirituality and Prevalent Hypertension in Five Racially and Ethnically Diverse U.S. Cohort Studies,” was co-authored by team members at the Harvard center where he serves as research affiliate, and published in Annals of Behavioral Medicine. Kent also published a poem, "de(a)ascent" in Ekstasis Magazine's Winter Collection. The poem reflects upon the beauty and wonder of land based on his experience living in Southeast Alaska.

Chandra Mallampalli - History

Chandra Mallampalli, professor of history, recently published a new book, South Asia's Christians: Between Hindu and Muslim with Oxford University Press. The book was completed while Mallampalli was inaugural Yang Visiting Scholar of World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, 2021-2022.

Edd Noell - Economics and Business

Edd Noell published "Present at the Origins: Calvin, Smith, and Religious Beliefs at the Emergence of Modern Economics" in Faith and Economics. He organized and edited the symposium "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" in which this article appeared.

Zig Reichwald - Music

Zig Reichwald published the article "Hensel the Progressive: Narrative Strategies in Fanny Hensel's Piano Trio, Op. 11 and Felix Mendelssohn's String Quartet, Op. 80" in Women Composers in New Perspectives, 1800-1950: Genres, Contexts and Repertoire (Brepols)

Helen Rhee - Religious Studies

Helen Rhee published the article, "Wealth and Poverty," in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Second Edition; IVP Academic). Helen also published the article, "The 'Pious Poor' and the 'Wicked Rich': Early Christian Discipleship around Money, Wealth, and Charity, " in Christian History magazine (147, 2023).

Aaron Sizer - Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts

Aaron Sizer has reviewed two new books: Benjamin J. Wetzel's American Crusade: Christianity, Warfare, and National Identity, 1860-1920, for Fides et Historia; and Gene Zubovich's Before the Religious Right: Liberal Protestants, Human Rights, and the Polarization of the United States, for the Journal of Presbyterian History.

Maryke van der Walt - Mathematics and Computer Science

Maryke van der Walt recently co-authored a paper titled "Two-dimensional EMD with shape-preserving spline interpolation" with Westmont alumnus Wesley Brown (2022). The paper has been published in the Journal of Applied Analysis.

Meredith Whitnah - Sociology & Anthropology

Meredith Whitnah published "Evangelical Organizations’ Responses to Domestic Violence: How the Cultural Production of Religious Beliefs Challenges or Enshrines Patriarchy" in the Review of Religious Research. She also organized a session on gender, religion, and power and presented a paper on the #ChurchToo Movement at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Telford Work - Religious Studies

Telford Work contributed a chapter for the Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Theology, on the topic of ecumenism (efforts to improve unity among Christians) among charismatic and Pentecostal Christians.

Sameer Yadav - Religious Studies

Sameer Yadav published an article in the journal Religious Studies entitled “The Characteristic Damage of Analytic Theology: A Response to William Wood”. Yadav also has an article forthcoming in the Journal of Analytic Theology entitled “All Shall Love Me and Despair: Mark Murphy on Divine Holiness.”

PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Jonathan Hicks - Theatre Arts

Jonathan Hicks completed his first three-year term as Secretary-Treasurer from 2020 to 2022 and was subsequently elected to another three-year term as Secretary-Treasurer for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), Local 442 in Santa Barbara. In preparation for his second term in office, Jonathan attended the IATSE Officer Institute to obtain his Secretary-Treasurer certification. Two of his responsibilities as Secretary-Treasurer are sitting on the Executive Board of the Local, as well as leading contract negotiations with the Business Agent of the Local.

Jeff Schloss - Biology

Jeff Schloss was invited to work with the project development task force convened by Stanford for an interdisciplinary research initiative on “Oxytocin, Mammalian Sociality, and Human Fourishing,” and met with program development and project review councils for the International Society for Science & Religion, Templeton World Charity Foundation, and the Issachar Fund.

PRESENTATIONS

Andrea Gurney - Psychology

Andrea Gurney spoke “On Flourishing and Relational Wellness” at the iFlourish conference for women in Santa Barbara in January. She also presented two talks at the Evangelical Covenant Order’s (ECO) National Gathering in Newport Beach. The first was a plenary address, “Rising Every Time We Fall: Stress, Coping, and Attributes that Lead to Resilience”. She also led a breakout session on “The Upside and Inside of Anger and How to Use it for Good”.

Michelle Hughes - Education

Michelle Hughes served as a round table panel member on the theme of disruptive and courageous care at the 3rd Annual Faith Integration in the Academy Virtual Conference hosted by Southern Wesleyan University in December. Colleagues from Fresno Pacific University, Southern Wesleyan University, and George Fox University also served on the panel.

Paul Mori - Music

Paul Mori participated in a community conversation about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Paul Mori, whose grandparents and parents were all incarcerated under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, spoke on a panel with two internment camp survivors, Roke Fukamura and Hideko Malis, in February at the Santa Barbara Public Library’s Faulkner Gallery.

Tatiana Nazarenko - Provost's Office, Theresa Covich - Voskuyl Library, Jana Mayfield Mullen - Voskuyl Library, Tim Loomer - President’s Office, Sarah Skripsky - English

The workshop proposal "Sustaining Librarian-Faculty Collaborations for Information Literacy: Two-shot Instruction Model and Assessment at a Small Liberal Arts College" by Jana Mullen, Theresa Covich, Sarah Skripsky, Tatiana Nazarenko and Tim Loomer was accepted for the 2023 WASC Assessment Resource Conference held in April.

Edd Noell - Economics and Business

Edd Noell presented "Smith on Malevolence in Economic Institutions" to the 49th Annual Meeting of the History of Economics Society.

Rick Ostrander - Westmont Downtown

Rick Ostrander gave a presentation, "What Does Faith Have to do With Academics?" in January at the Michigan Christian Study Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Helen Rhee - Religious Studies

Helen Rhee gave two invited lectures, "The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas" and "No Pain, No Gain: Early Christians on Pain and Suffering" at Greenville University in Greenville, Illinois.

Jeff Schloss - Biology

Jeff Schloss was invited to speak on “Empathy, Oxytocin, and Self-Relinquishment,” for a panel at Arizona State University’s biennial Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Meeting (for real!). He gave an invited presentation on “Cosmos or Chaos?: Evolution, Good Creation, and Questions of Telos,” and served on a panel with Cambridge paleontologist Simon Conway Morris on “Creation or Coincidence” at the De Nicola Center for Ethics & Culture Conference on “And It Was Very Good” at University of Notre Dame.

Ronald See - Psychology

Ronald See presented a lecture "Modulation of drug seeking by oxytocin in animal models of addiction" at the Israel Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Eilat, Israel in December.

Edward Song - Philosophy

Edward Song recently presented his paper, "Fairness, Acceptance, and the Benefits Problem," at the American Philosophical Association Central Meeting in Denver, Colorado.

Jim Taylor - Philosophy

Jim Taylor presented a paper entitled "Concepts of God and their Origins" at the 2022 Mountain-Pacific regional meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs in October.

David Vander Laan - Philosophy

David Vander Laan presented the paper "What Efficacious Divine Action Need Not Be" as part of a panel discussion at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting in April.

Sameer Yadav - Religious Studies

Sameer Yadav participated in a consultation on Miroslav Volf’s forthcoming book Roses in the Smokehouse at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.