Laurels / Inside CSULB

Laurels

Lesley Farmer, Educational Psychology, Advising and Counseling, was awarded the Gold Disk Award recently from Computer-Using Educators, which is a nationally recognized professional association. This award recognizes outstanding and sustained achievement in educational technology for teaching and education, and substantial contributions to the association. She also presented two papers at their annual conference in March -- "Visual Literacy for School Librarie" and "Technology Teach Tools." In December, she had her new book titled Technology-Infused Instruction for the Educational Community: A Guide for School Library Specialists issued by Scarecrow Press, a leading library science publisher. She presented three papers before the Association of Library and Information Science Educators at their January conference in Boston. Her topics included the global issues of visual literacy and local implications for librarians; facilitating communities of practice through online continuing education; and advocating technology equity in K-12 school libraries.

Will Hickey, Occupational Studies, was sent to the Harvard Business School by the Government of Kazakhstan in December to study the "Economics of Competitiveness" theory. Hickey will teach and consult with the Kazakhstan Government and U.S. State Department this summer for economic diversification initiatives in Central Asia, and is also advising the Kazakhstan government on localization of work force for Kazakh nationals in oil and gas.

Richard E. Porter, Communication Studies, had the 11th edition of his book Intercultural Communication: A Reader published by Wadsworth Publishing Company in March.

Ron Schmidt, Political Science, served as program chair of the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association (WPSA) in Oakland, March 16-19. At the WPSA's annual business meeting on March 18, Schmidt received a gavel, marking the beginning of his one-year term as president of the association.

Book Review

Hot Popsicles

Charles Harper Webb, English

By winning the University of Wisconsin's prestigious Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry for his book Liver (1999), Charles Harper Webb became eligible to publish in the UW Press Poetry Series. The result is his new collection of 50 prose poems, Hot Popsicles.

“The book tells accessible stories that are often funny, but also carry a fair amount of darkness and, I hope, psychological depth,” Webb said. He writes, in the title poem, “He loves roaring down oak-canopied streets, his truck clanging 'Night on Bald Mountain' as he shrieks 'Hot popsicles!' and the kids who've surged out of their houses, waving Mom's limp dollar bills, stampede back inside, wailing.” This book is in the tradition of Webb's Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology: poems, which are accessible enough for general readers, but complex enough to challenge literary professionals.

“These poems go over well in performance,” he said. “They can be surrealistic and strange, but people seem to relate. There's laughter, but there's pathos too, and psychological insight.”

Webb is a licensed psychotherapist and worked as a professional singer and guitarist for many years. He earned his MFA in professional writing and his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from USC, as well as an M.A. from the University of Washington and a bachelor's degree from Rice University. He joined the university in 1984.