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Sriram Khé

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2004-2005
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2002-2003

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While Fall 2002 was when I started working at WOU, Fall 2004 was when I started working at WOU as a tenured faculty in the Social Science Division.  This activity to recap my work over the “tenured” year reminds me that my professional activities this year are no different from my “untenured” two years at WOU.

 Teaching

My teaching load this year was significantly lower than those of the previous two years because:

• I had a one-section reassignment that enabled me to catch up on my reading and work on a research project; and
• Course-load reduction in lieu of my responsibilities as the Director-Designate of the Honors Program.

The following table provides details on the courses in 2004-2005:

 I taught a summer class, which technically is outside the contractual obligations; it had a decent enrolment of 17, and six of the enrolled were graduate students.  GEOG 407 that I am team-teaching with Dr. Maria Fung has been a wonderful teaching and learning opportunity for inter-disciplinary thinking.  As always, I maintain websites for every course that I teach and also set up mailing lists for every course (such as geog106@wou.edu) so that I can email students news and articles and engage them in discussions outside the class hours.  I am also experimenting with office hours in cyberspace by using instant messaging; my screen name is “amdrkhe” J    

 Research and Scholarship

I wish I had done more than whatever I did. 

·        In September 2004, I presented “Blessing or Curse?” at the 67^th annual meeting of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers

·        In April 2005, I presented “Bell peppers and everyday life: creative ways to teach economic geography” at the annual meeting of the Oregon Geographic Alliance

·        In April 2005, I presented “Practice what you teach: Ethical issues in teaching, and thinking about, geography” at the 101^st Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers.

·        My article, “How I Learned to Love my New Home: A Tale of Two Cities”, was published in the Oregon Planners’ Journal

·        My article on “Practice what you teach” was published as an op-ed piece at Planetizen.com, which is a public interest forum for urban planning.

·        In response to an invitation from the then president of the Association of American Geographers and the Geography Department at University of Oregon, presented a paper on January 6, 2005 at their seminar series.

Am disappointed that I could not put together a paper to submit to a peer-reviewed scholarly publication.

 Service

Institutional

·        I maintain the department’s Web pages, which includes a Web page that lists potential employment opportunities for students majoring in geography.

·        Am the division’s representative to the Faculty Senate. 

·        Continue to work with colleagues on the Social Science Symposium series

·        This year is the first of the two-year term as the department head.  In that capacity, in addition to taking care of “usual business”, I took the lead on:

·        Finding adjuncts to teach courses (one each for every term, and a different instructor each term!)

·        Putting together a proposal for a full-time adjunct for 2005/2006, and this proposal was approved

·        Drafting the job announcement for this full-time position, responding to inquiries, meeting with potential applicants, …

·        Worked with Mark Baldwin in the Registrar’s office and have put together a data base on enrolment in geography since 1994.  We have already started using the data for various departmental decisions.

·        Served on a search committee and assisted the Teacher Education Division recruit a tenure-track faculty (it was a productive and successful search).

·        Served on the task force that looked at institutionalizing undergraduate research at WOU.

·        As the Director-Designate of the Honors Program I have been working with the current director on a number of program-related issues.

 Community

·        Authored op-ed pieces that were published in the Statesman Journal (Jan 29^th, Mar 21^st), in the Register Guard (Apr 17^th), and two letters in the Register Guard (Sep 12^th and Dec 4^th)

 Academic Advising

I suppose that the student advising responsibilities are only to be expected to increase now that I am the department head and a third-year faculty.  The responsibilities of the Honors Program directorship also includes advising students; even though I am yet to formally assume that position I have extensive interaction with students in my “job-shadow” role.  Assessed a graduate student’s comprehensive exam, and am on schedule for two other exams.

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