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Sriram Khé

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Report of Service in 2006-2007

It is simply amazing that quite a few students who started as freshmen who started at WOU the same time I did—fall 2002—have graduated and moved on.  Five years have gone by amazingly fast, which probably is one more piece of evidence that time flies by when we have fun J 

2006-2007 was the second year that I served the university 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

My original plans, which were factored into the department’s course offerings for the year, were royally messed up when our plans to hire an adjunct, to cover my Honors course release, derailed due to very specific reasons.  This resulted in a geography course load that came at the same time that the Honors responsibility was at its peak—fall term.  I am mighty relieved, more than glad, that I successfully negotiated those difficult scheduling nightmares.

The following table provides details on the courses in 2006-2007:  

 In summer 2006, I taught a summer class, which technically is outside the contractual obligations; it had a decent enrolment of 15, out of which one was a graduate student in the section. 

 As with other years, this past year also I guided students who wanted to work on something other than what was offered in the schedule of classes; the “by arrangement” classes, as we refer to them here at WOU.  In the summer, I worked with an Education major on her paper on education and the Latino demographics in Oregon; in spring I am working with a student on his practicum, and in the fall I worked with two students on their practicum. 

 Tired of the university policies related to student evaluation of faculty and courses (the SIR), I decided to tackle the issue in different ways:

1. In both fall 2006 and winter 2007 I requested the university to conduct evaluations in my classes.  I do not have space to discuss the evaluations in this brief work report.  Suffice to say that the evaluations were positive.
2. Having failed in my attempts to convince the university administration and the union leadership that these evaluations should be made public for students to use, I requested that at least mine alone be made public.  This has been done, and I understand that the option is also now available for interested faculty. 

 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 articles on “Miles to go before my sleep” and “Sex and the city, Pregnancy and the suburb” were published at Planetizen.com, which is a professional forum for urban planning.

·        Presented “An autoethnographic approach to understanding urban sprawl” at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, in April 2007. 

·        Presented “Spatial aggregation of the likes” at the annual meeting of the Oregon Academy of Science, in February 2007. 

·        My essay, “Searching for Tatiyana” will be published in the Spring 2007 issue of the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council.

·        Continued to serve as the Editor of Pacifica, which is published biannually by the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers (APCG).  APCG is the regional division of the Association of American Geographers and has about 750 members.

·        I have been selected to serve a three-year term on the Committee for College Geography and Careers.  This is a committee of the Association of American Geographers.

 Service—Institutional

·        I serve on the university’s Writing-Intensive Committee, and the Dewey-Smith Committee.

 Service—Community

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

 Academic Advising

As a “capstone experience” I treated students in my South Asia class in fall 2006 to a lunch at the Indian restaurant in Corvallis.  The students seemed to appreciate it.

I continue to advice students who have been assigned to me.  A majority of my student advising activities happen through my Honors responsibilities. 

 Did I achieve my goals from the previous year?

Last year I had set up three as targets:

• 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.

 I have stepped up my interactions with, and participation at, professional associations. 

I did fine-tune GEOG 410 and students immensely enjoyed it.  However, I reverted to the “original” topics because there was at least one course in Anthropology that dealt with the Middle East and/or Islam.

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