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Sriram Khé

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Report of Service in 2005-2006

This is the fourth of my annual reports at WOU.  These four years have been a wonderful experience—as a faculty, at a university that is 150 years old, and as an Oregonian.  Over the past four years I have been lucky with the professional relationships I have been able to build with colleagues at WOU and at other universities.  I am simply delighted to be able to be a guide in the educational journeys of many undergraduates who are the first ever to attend college from their respective families.

2005-2006 is the first of the three-year term that I have been appointed to as the Director of the Honors Program.  This means that my professional responsibilities and workload are split equally between Geography and Honors.  I will provide the Honors Committee (and the Chair of Social Science Division) a separate report on my activities related to the Honors Program.

Teaching 

This academic year has been a terrific learning experience, in addition to the teaching experience that I have come to expect over the years.  The enriching experiences were particularly because of two courses: GEOG 314: Geography of the Pacific Rim, in Fall 2005; and GEOG 410: Global Issues in Winter 2006.

I offered GEOG 314 because I wanted to provide students with an opportunity to learn about this important geographic realm.  While GEOG 410 is a course that I have taught before—every Winter—this term I decided that I would focus only on the Middle East, instead of on the usual theme of “geography of development”.  Not having been successful in my attempts to convince colleagues in the Division that we ought to offer courses on the Middle East, I decided to use the course on “Global Issues” as an opportunity to engage the students on some of the geographic aspects of the Middle East.

GEOG 410 more than GEOG 314 was a learning experience because, after all, I have not been formally trained on the Middle East and the complex geographic issues of this realm.  However, it was equally satisfying to realize that handling these two new courses was not that arduous as I thought it might be, and nor did it take any huge amounts of preparation—perhaps because of the years of “informal” education about these geographic realms. 

The following table provides details on the courses in 2005-2006:

 In Summer 2005, I taught a summer class, which technically is outside the contractual obligations; it had a decent enrolment of 14, out of which one was a graduate student in the GEOG 518 section. 

 Professional Scholarship and Service

When I list my activities every academic year, I end up with the same feeling: I wish I had done more.  The following were some of the notable events where I was able to demonstrate my understanding of academic concepts, and be recognized for professional abilities. 

• My article, “Our Own Private Idahos”, was published as an op-ed piece at Planetizen.com, which is a professional forum for urban planning.

• At the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in March 2006, I was a panelist (the only one from a teaching university) along with others from “Research I” universities to address the topic of Public Scholarship. 

• My essay, “A Way of Life” was pubished in the Spring 2006 issue of the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, which is a peer-reviewed publication.

• In February 2006, presented at the Division’s Symposium the preliminary analyses of the research work that was partly funded by a grant from the university’s Faculty Professional Development.  My plan is to write a paper on this and submit to a journal over the summer.

• Since July 2005, am the Editor of Pacifica, which is the bi-annual newsletter of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers (APCG).  APCG is the regional division of the Association of American Geographers and has about 750 members.

Service—Institutional

• This year is the second of the two-year term as the department head. 

• I continue to maintain the department’s Web pages.

• Pursued discussions on how to serve students majoring in International Studies: this is a program without a “home” department and, therefore, students tend to get lost in the shuffle.  However, after investing significant time and energy into this, I backed away from leading this project because of my perceptions of (a) my inability to achieve a few targets I had hoped to reach, and (b) the potential for this to get intensely political.

• I serve on the university’s Writing-Intensive Committee; Dewey-Smith Committee; and taskforces related to accreditation and assessment.

Service—Community

• Authored op-ed pieces that were published in the Statesman Journal and in the Register Guard.

• “A Taste of India” was the title of the lecture/discussion event at the Monmouth Senior Center where I was the speaker.

• Served on the review panel for the Statesman Journal’s “Academic All Stars”. 

Academic Advising

This year I tried something I had done in my previous job in California: to take students to the cafeteria and engage in academic discussions and advising over coffee.  However, only two students took up the offer.  But, two students is a start, I suppose.   

Goals for the year ahead

It will be an immensely successful year if I am able to:

• set aside time this summer break to focus only on writing the two papers for which I have already collected the necessary information.
• fine-tune GEOG 410 as a “Geography of Middle East” course so that it can be an even more enriching experience for students and for me.
• step up my participation with professional associations, and my interactions with geographers at other universities.

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