SU Research Brochure

Scholarly Excellenceat Seattle University

All photos by John KeatleyPhotos include the campus of Seattle Universityand locations in and around Seattle.

Want To Know More About These Facul ty Scholars?To see videos and learn more about the Seattle Universityfaculty in this brochure, visit www.seattleu.edu/research.

For more informat ion about SU’s research, contact :Nalini Iyer, PhDDirector of the Office of Research Servicesand Sponsored Programs(206) [email protected]


Message from the Provost

I am pleased to present a selection of the creative and scholarly work of

members of the Seattle University (SU) faculty.

Outstanding teaching is sustained by active involvement in research, scholarship

and artistic endeavor. SU scholar-educators teach more than 7,700 undergraduate,

graduate and law students. They publish award-winning books and major scholarly

articles and engage in cutting-edge research in their fields of study.

This university’s reputation for academic excellence rests significantly on faculty

scholarship. From finding ways to improve water safety in developing countries

to exploring animal rights and creating imaginative theatrical productions, our

faculty’s work addresses the most pressing cultural, ethical and scientific issues

of our time.

The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health,

among others, have supported SU faculty scholarship. In the last two years, SU

received nearly $7.5 million in external funding to support a variety of projects.

As scholar-educators, SU faculty members mentor future generations of artists

and researchers by collaborating with students and sharing intellectual passions

with them. Drawing from the Jesuit, Catholic vision of this university, our faculty

members integrate teaching, scholarship and community engagement with the

larger goal of educating leaders for a just and humane world.

Isiaah Crawford, PhD

Provost, Seattle University

Richard Delgado, JD

Richard Delgado is the author of more than 180 journal

articles and 29 books and is one of the most cited legal scholars

on race and the law in the nation. Delgado was among those

who sought to bring civil rights into the modern age with

critical race theory (CRT), a body of scholarship that explores

how racism is embedded in laws and legal institutions.

Delgado and others—including the late Derrick Bell, who

was considered CRT’s intellectual father figure—say CRT

casts doubt on many long-held assumptions by suggesting

racism is not an aberration but part of the fabric of American

society. Most forms of racial discrimination are nearly invis-

ible to those who perpetrate them, according to Delgado.

A guest on numerous national television and radio talk shows,

Delgado frequently writes with his wife and co-author Jean

Stefancic, a Seattle University research professor. His influential

books include Latinos and the Law, The Latino/a Condition, Race

and Races: Cases and Resources for a Diverse America and Justice at

War: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights During Times of Crisis.

Eight of Delgado’s books have won national awards,

including six Gustavus Myers Awards for outstanding books

on human rights in North America, the American Library

Association’s outstanding academic book and a Pulitzer Prize

nomination. His works also received praise in The Nation, The

New Republic, The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall

Street Journal.

Legal scholar and New York Times opinion columnist Stanley

Fish, in describing Delgado’s book The Rodrigo Chronicles:

Conversations about America and Race, says “Richard Delgado is a

triple pioneer. He was the first to question free speech ideol-

ogy; he and a few others invented critical race theory; and

he is both a theorist and an exemplar of the importance of

storytelling in the workings of the law.”

Delgado, an SU faculty member since 2008, says he’s best

at writing, especially carving out new terrain, followed by

teaching and interacting with young, questioning minds. He’s

motivated by the idea of bringing a well-crafted text or new

idea to an appreciative reader or learner.

Currently, he serves as series co-editor for two series, The

Critical Educator and Everyday Law. His long list of law review

publications includes everything from “Of Cops and Bumper

Stickers: Notes Toward a Theory of Selective Prosecution”

to “Can Lawyers Find Happiness?” and “Why Universities

are Morally Obligated to Strive for Diversity: Restoring the

Remedial Rationale for Affirmative Action.”

UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR

S C H O O L O F L A W

S C H O O L O F T H E O L O G Y A N D M I N I S T R Y

Leticia Guardiola-Sáenz, PhD

Leticia Guardiola-Sáenz finds new ways to make Christian

Scriptures relevant to contemporary audiences. The author

of nearly 50 publications, papers and lectures is a co-editor

of The Peoples’ Companion to the Bible and The Peoples’ Bible: New

Revised Standard Version, both published by Fortress Press.

A Seattle University faculty member since 2008, Guardiola-

Sáenz says the Bible, while a sacred text, is not itself purely

divine. She takes a less traditional approach and brings a

broader cultural and ideological lens to her interpretations of

the Bible. To do so means she gives careful consideration to

historical events at the time scripture was written. And she

takes into account the context of the reader—what current

world and local events might influence a person’s take on

the scripture. She also says scripture can’t be read as stories

detached from someone’s personal experience.

Gender studies and how men and women’s roles are presented

in scripture are among her interests. For example, when the

early church moved from the home to the public arena there

was much more control of women. That cultural change also

affected the role of women within the church and how they

are represented in later writings of Christian Scriptures.

Guardiola-Sáenz’s work also brings a modern-day cultural

and regional interpretation to a reading of the Gospel, aimed,

at least in part, at inspiring minoritized readers from the

Mexican-American borderlands to become change agents

for greater interdependence between the United States and

Mexico. Her paper, “Border-crossing and its Redemptive

Power in John 7.53–8.11: A Cultural Reading of Jesus and

the Accused,” describes how Jesus in the Gospel of John is

constantly crossing geographic, cultural and religious borders

and the implications this has for readers who have boundary

questions in their own lives. The paper is part of the book,

John and Postcolonialism: Travel, Space and Power.

A practicing Baptist at a Jesuit, Catholic university where

12 different religious communities are represented on the SU

School of Theology and Ministry faculty, Guardiola-Sáenz

seeks to pursue interfaith dialogue and to read sacred scrip-

tures from other religions, both to understand them better

and to bring more light to Christian theology.

S C H O O L O F T H E O L O G Y A N D M I N I S T R Y

A S S I S T A N T P R O F E S S O R O F C H R I S T I A N S C R I P T U R E S

Joseph Langenhan, PhD

The way chemist Joe Langenhan sees it, undergraduate re-

search is the pinnacle of academic excellence. Partnering with

students in his groundbreaking research and mentoring them

as they grow from novices into experts is just as important to

him as his own scholarship.

Langenhan is himself a formidable scholar and the holder

of two patents related to cancer-fighting drugs. He is also the

author of 24 peer-reviewed articles in leading science journals

such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and the

American Chemical Society Medicinal Chemistry Letters.

A member of the faculty since 2005, when he began his

search for a university that would make use of his skills,

Langenhan’s mission was clear. He sought a small school

where undergraduates are the singular focus of science

programs. As a university that intentionally chooses to

concentrate on interdisciplinary research in the sciences for

undergraduates, Seattle University fit the bill and provided the

diverse academic environment for him to excel at the junction

between biology and organic chemistry.

What he and students can do to affect human health

continues to inspire him. Together, Langenhan and his

students alter the structure of biologically relevant molecules

to understand how they work, then find ways to change their

functions. They might synthesize 100 molecules, do biological

testing, apply a drug to human cancer cells and look for its

potency and selectivity. It’s a bad sign if a drug kills all the

cancer cells, an indication the drug might kill normal cells, too.

Langenhan’s peer-reviewed publication in the American Chemical

Society Medicinal Chemistry Letters, “A Direct Comparison of the

Anti-cancer Activities of Digitoxin MeON-Neoglycosides

and O-Glycosides: Oligosaccharide Chain Length-Dependent

Induction of Caspase-9-Mediated Apoptosis,” compares two

anticancer approaches he developed with his students.

Langenhan and his students also conduct research involving

new antibiotics, which constantly require changes to battle

ever-mutating infections. With infections, viruses and cancers,

the search for new drugs never ends, says Langenhan, which

sometimes frustrates students. His response: that’s why it’s

called research, not search. Doing it again and again is part

of the quest.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY

C O L L E G E O F S C I E N C E A N D E N G I N E E R I N G

Daniel Dombrowski, PhD

Philosopher Daniel Dombrowski writes some of the most

important books and scholarly papers in his discipline, which

he modestly calls “a series of footnotes to Plato.” His prolific

efforts include an astonishing 130 published journal articles

and 17 books, including one he worked on for 30 years.

A self-avowed truth junkie and faculty member at Seattle

University since 1988, Dombrowski’s books and scholarly

articles span topics that include animal rights, civil disobedience,

vegetarianism, abortion and athletics. Among his more than

100 national and international presentations, he received an

invitation to present a paper at Oxford University, “Homer,

Competition and Sport” and another from Harvard Law

School to speak on his Catholic, pro-choice position in the

abortion debate. His Oxford lecture was based on his book,

Contemporary Athletics and Ancient Greek Ideals, published by the

University of Chicago Press. Dombrowski says that’s the book

he wrestled with for three decades. His book suggests sport is

a form of play—not preparation for war or a commodity in

the marketplace—that should be taken seriously, yet not so

seriously that athletes cheat or use illegal performance

enhancements to win.

When he searches for meaning in old traditions,

Dombrowski’s teaching and scholarship frequently explore

the concept of God and God’s existence. Cambridge University

Press published his book on the neoclassical defense of the

ontological argument for the existence of God.

Another of his books, Babies and Beasts: The Argument from

Marginal Cases, considers the criteria for possession of moral

rights and concludes that any animal with the capacity to feel

intense pain would qualify for those rights.

Dombrowski edits the journals Process Studies and Process

Studies Supplements, its electronic counterpart, both published

by the Center for Process Studies at Claremont Graduate

University. He also serves as a member of editorial boards

or boards of directors for the Journal of Animal Ethics, Studia

Whiteheadiana, Christian Vegetarian Association, Oxford Centre

for Animal Ethics and Catholics for Choice, among others.

From the first philosophy course he took at the University

of Maine at age 18, Dombrowski knew his life’s work should

be that of a teacher–scholar in philosophy. It’s a decision he

never regrets.

P R O F E S S O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y

C O L L E G E O F A R T S A N D S C I E N C E S

Gregory Prussia, PhD

Holly Slay Ferraro, PhD

Two Seattle University scholars are stars in the field of

business management but they approach research from

different vantage points.

Gregory Prussia is an ace numbers cruncher who quanti-

tatively pursues questions of leadership, organizational safety

and more. Holly Slay Ferraro, an ever-curious qualitative

researcher, prefers to collect stories—especially those related

to race, gender, aging and organizations. Ferraro’s style is

conceptual and interpretive; Prussia’s is analytical.

For Prussia, scholarly work is almost always in collaboration

with others who rely on his statistical techniques and expertise

as a quantitative analyst. Prussia’s contributions include nearly

30 conference presentations and more than 20 publications,

including the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies and

the Journal of Applied Psychology, on topics such as organizational

change, leadership and coping with job loss.

As a scholar, it’s Ferraro’s mission to offer a new lens to

think more inclusively in the workplace and empower students

with new approaches to understanding the workforce.

A member of the faculty since 2007, Ferraro’s research often

wrestles with issues of professional identity as well as the

influence of social identity—race and gender, for example—

and their sway over career outcomes. She recently wrote an

article for the journal, Human Relations, that examines how

stigmatized cultural identities impact professional identities.

Midlife career transitions and decisions are among her

current research interests, including age-related discrimination

and how goals and motivations change with age. Ferraro

suggests older workers still want to contribute in significant

ways, but not necessarily by moving up the career ladder. She’s

also looking at family businesses where intergenerational

dynamics pose identity challenges when founding generations

aren’t prepared to step down.

Perceptions of self-confidence and group confidence are

among the research interests of Prussia, on the SU faculty

since 1993. One of his works points to how self-confidence is a

key link in leadership behavior and performance outcomes. He

currently is developing an instrument to measure performance

management and researching what motivates people to want

to cross an organization’s virtual boundaries.

This pair is on the leading edge of ever-shifting workplace

phenomena, tackling even some of the age-old questions

from a fresh perspective.

PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT

A L B E R S S C H O O L O F B U S I N E S S A N D E C O N O M I C S

C O L L E G E O F N U R S I N G

Jean Tang, PhD

Jean Tang finds unexpected ways to reduce human suffering

and, in the process, receives considerable acclaim for her work.

Tang’s scholarship targets vulnerable populations—older

adults and those with mental disorders, in particular. Her

goal is to empower patients to have greater control over

their own health.

A Seattle University faculty member since 2005, Tang

received a research fellowship sponsored by the National

Institute of Nursing Research to explore individualized care

for at-risk aging adults.

In one research project, she discovered music isn’t espe-

cially effective for lowering blood pressure or promoting

sleep for older adults. For an article in the European Journal of

Cardiovascular Nursing, she explored alternative ways to manage

stress with a 12-minute CD offering guided audio relaxation,

a self-help tool that significantly lowers blood pressure. Tang

says that while it’s not a replacement for medication, there’s

exciting documentation to indicate that brain and heart plas-

ticity is possible, even at an advanced age. Managing their own

health decreases symptoms for older adults and gives them a

greater sense of autonomy, according to Tang.

Recently she was awarded a competitive Claire Fagin

Fellowship and spent 18 months on leave from her SU

teaching responsibilities at the University of Pennsylvania,

supported by a collaborative effort of the American Academy

of Nursing and the John A. Hartford Foundation. Nationwide,

the Hartford Foundation funded just nine Centers of

Geriatric Nursing Excellence, each of which had only one

Claire Fagin fellow. SU forged a partnership with the University

of Pennsylvania, which made it possible for Tang to pursue

this fellowship focused on geriatric nursing and healthy aging.

In the mental health field, Tang is a leader in advocating for

better treatment of people with Attention Deficit Disorder/

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. After surveying

nurse practitioners and naturopathic physicians across the

United States, she discovered inadequate strategies for

treating those with ADD/ADHD. While there were similarities

between the two disciplines in their treatment approaches,

conventional medicine focused on medication management

while naturopathic medicine emphasized nutritional support.

She now promotes interdisciplinary collaboration, which she

says provides patients with better care.

Tang says her body of work demonstrates how nursing

is an applied science that empowers patients to lead more

fulfilling lives.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF NURSING AND ADULT PSYCHIATRIC MENTAL HEALTH NURSE PRACTITIONER

C O L L E G E O F N U R S I N G

Manivong Ratts, PhD

As Manivong Ratts pushes the boundaries of the practice of

counseling and psychology, he continues to gain recognition for

his efforts to promote social justice counseling. Ratts urges

counselors and psychologists to consider the relevance of

advocacy, prevention and outreach efforts when working with

those without power and privilege in society. He contends

that counseling professionals need to expand the focus of

their work to include community engagement.

Traditional psychotherapy, typically in an office setting,

frequently overshadows advocacy in the community, according

to Ratts, yet combining advocacy with a more conventional

approach is important and necessary when working with

marginalized client populations. Too often counseling helps

people adapt to oppressive structures, he says, rather than

promotes change in the environment so clients’ lives can

be fulfilling.

Ratts says his scholarship centers on integrating social

justice into counseling research and practices. Since joining

Seattle University in 2006, he has been published in such

peer-reviewed journals as the Journal of Counseling and Development,

Professional School Counseling and Counselor Education and Supervision,

among others. In an article for the Journal of Multicultural

Counseling and Development, he suggested integrating multicultural

and social justice forces in counseling.

Being on the fringes of society is a chronic stress factor that

can lead to both psychological and physical health problems,

Ratts says. He points to a study by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight

Education Network that suggests heterosexual norms can

lead to increased negative psychological and social

development for LGBTQ youth.

In 2010, Ratts was lead co-editor of a book for the American

Counseling Association, Advocacy Competencies: A Social Justice

Framework for Counselors that provides counseling professionals

with a framework for carrying out social justice initiatives in

different settings, populations and areas.

Ratts, a past president of Counselors for Social Justice, a

division of the American Counseling Association, also serves

on the editorial boards of the Journal of Counseling and

Development and the Journal for Social Action in Counseling and

Psychology. Recently, he released the DVD, “Four Approaches

with One Client: Medical, Intrapsychic, Multicultural and Social

Justice Models of Helping,” through Alexander Street Press.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF COUNSELING

C O L L E G E O F E D U C A T I O N

Serena Cosgrove, PhD

M A T T E O R I C C I C O L L E G E

Sociologist Serena Cosgrove documents how women can

and do change societies. In the process, she raises awareness

about the contributions of women leaders for a better world.

Her research overall explores ways women transform the

world and brings to light what may go unseen even in their

own societies, such as gender inequalities. The causes and

solutions of global poverty are other driving forces for

Cosgrove, who is co-authoring a textbook on the topic with

one of her colleagues at Seattle University’s Matteo Ricci College.

Among her other projects, she hopes to bring together

women nonprofit leaders in the Americas with women leaders

in Africa to explore what they have in common as indigenous

leaders, peace activists, feminists and environmentalists. It’s an

ambitious aspiration she is well positioned to achieve.

Cosgrove is one of two SU faculty members to receive

a Fulbright Specialist award in 2012. The program, which

links American academics with colleagues at host institutions

overseas for short-term collaborative projects, will take her to

the sociology department at the University of Zambia for six

weeks. While there, she will support faculty efforts to balance

teaching, research and publications and continue her own

research on how gender affects development projects and

women’s civil society leadership in Zambia.

Recently, she completed her third trip abroad with students

to study efforts to ameliorate poverty in the global south.

Ten students accompanied Cosgrove and her co-author Ben

Curtis as research fellows on a trip to Ghana to document the

effectiveness of microcredit efforts in rural western Africa.

Fieldwork and research in Ghana, she says, are real-world

experiences that give students an advantage when they seek

positions in international development.

Her past work focused on how women leaders transform

Latin America. Based on almost a decade of ethnographic

research and 20 years of working throughout Latin America,

her 2010 book, Leadership from the Margins: Women and Civil

Society Organizations in Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador delves

into how differences of gender, class and ethnicity inform the

organizing strategies of Latin American women.

Cosgrove’s future research plans include an investigation

of gender violence in Sub-Saharan Africa, comparing Zambia

and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HUMANITIES

M A T T E O R I C C I C O L L E G E

Rosa Joshi, MFAKi Gottberg, MFA

Carol Wolfe Clay, MFA

There’s tremendous synergy among this trio of theater

professionals who ignite the imagination.

A prize-winning playwright with training as an actor,

Ki Gottberg directs and produces a range of theatrical

productions in addition to teaching acting and playwriting.

She received a playwriting fellowship from the National

Endowment for the Arts along with numerous commissions

and awards for her work. Gottberg, a Seattle University faculty

member since 1988, says both acting and playwriting call for

a voice of authenticity about the intricacies of life.

Scenic designer Carol Wolfe Clay enjoys manipulating

theatrical space and creating that powerful moment when the

audience first experiences the visual world of the play. Since

joining the SU faculty in 1986, she designed more than 50

productions. Her scenic work is a regular feature of many

Seattle theater productions, including six professional shows

in a recent 18-month span, and she brings her students along

as assistants whenever possible.

Rosa Joshi is a director who likes digging into plays that

explore the extremes of human behavior, whether classical or

contemporary. Her all-female theater collective, upstart crow,

casts only women actors, an unusual twist for what Joshi

acknowledges is a male-dominated profession. Joshi, a

member of the SU faculty since 2000, credits Clay and

Gottberg with being especially formative to her career.

The three regularly collaborate on projects, including a

September 2012 production of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus,

which Rosa directed, Ki acted and Carol designed. Gottberg

and Clay both won Footlight awards from the Seattle Times,

Gottberg for a 2009 solo show and Clay for best set in 2011.

Gottberg and Clay have collaborated on many projects, most

recently the original new play with puppets, little world, which

won a grant from the City of Seattle mayor’s office in 2011.

All have a hand in professional theater and find opportunities

for their students in off-campus theatrical productions.

Gottberg says Seattle-area theater groups are partial to SU

students as interns because of their breadth of experience

working with professionals in the field. Clay, Gottberg and

Joshi are artistic collaborators whose work has brought

significant attention to Seattle University’s contributions to

cultural life in Seattle.

PROFESSOR OF FINE ARTS

PROFESSOR OF FINE ARTS


ASSOCIATE CHAIR AND ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF F INE ARTS

Phillip Thompson, PhD

The worldwide attention Phillip Thompson gains for his

humanitarian engineering efforts speaks to his unending

desire to find new solutions for the problems of water and

sanitation in developing nations.

His creative problem solving drew notice from the Bill &

Melinda Gates Foundation as well as the Bullitt Foundation.

Thompson, an SU faculty member since 1997, has served as a

consultant to both and continues to receive numerous grants

and awards from organizations such as Engineers Without

Borders USA and the National Science Foundation.

Thompson’s goals at Seattle University and elsewhere are

ambitious. His papers related to water, several of which outline

a reasonable strategy for solving the safe water crisis, have

been published in Environmental Science and Technology, Business

and Society Review Water Environment Research and other journals.

In addition to reviewing the technological solutions, he

discusses how to build partnerships between medical

clinics and local businesses, which can lead to reliable and safe

water for the broader communities of developing countries.

Thompson has completed water projects in Thailand,

Nicaragua, Jamaica and Zambia. In January 2010, he received

an e-mail from Wes Lauer, one of his civil and environmental

engineering colleagues at SU, who was in Haiti working on a

project when the devastating earthquake hit. While waiting for

a flight out of Haiti, Lauer wanted to assist in the relief effort

with a water filtration system for Port-au-Prince, the quake

epicenter, so he contacted Thompson. Lauer and Thompson

had installed a similar system in Thailand. Thompson knew

what was needed, found all the parts locally, packed them in

a Samsonite suitcase and shipped it to Haiti where his work

continues today.

Thompson doesn’t mince words when he speaks of the

necessity to fix problems with water and sanitation in Haiti,

just 700 miles from the Florida shore. He estimates $50 million

would provide safe water for all Haitians. However, he’s a realist

who recognizes the many challenges and describes considerable

chaos among the groups working for clean water—hundreds

in Haiti alone—that aren’t coordinating their efforts.

In addition to his work on improving water quality,

Thompson has an interest in decentralizing waste treatment

in the developing world and in rural or even urban American

settings. He’s also working with students to study wind energy,

biogas from animal and food waste and solar projects for

generating and storing energy.

PROFESSOR AND CHAIR, CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

C O L L E G E O F S C I E N C E A N D E N G I N E E R I N G

Janet Ainsworth, JD

Janet Ainsworth earns international recognition in the

legal community for her work on linguistics and the law. This

respected scholar travels the world to make presentations on

the value of applying linguistics research to legal matters.

A former public defender, Ainsworth received the outstand-

ing service award from the National Association of Criminal

Defense Lawyers and several outstanding teaching awards

from the School of Law, where she has been a faculty member

since 1988.

Topics such as false confessions to crimes and difficulties

interpreting Miranda rights given by police in the U.S. to

criminal suspects before interrogations draw Ainsworth’s

interest. Her work includes roughly 40 scholarly publications

and more than 50 presentations at conferences and colloquia

around the globe. Her article, “In a Different Register: The

Pragmatics of Powerlessness in Police Interrogation,” first

published in the Yale Law Journal, frequently gets cited, excerpted

and anthologized. Another scholarly writing, “Categories and

Culture: On the ‘Rectification of Names’ in Comparative Law”

published in the Cornell Law Review, became a point of pride for

her as well.

Among her research interests is an examination of the law

from a cross-cultural perspective. She found the Chinese legal

system to be an especially fruitful area for consideration of

linguistic issues and mistaken ideas about communications.

She finds that legal translations and interpretations can’t be

divorced from issues of culture.

Ainsworth is working on two books commissioned by

Oxford University Press. One book focuses on consent and

coercion in the law. The other addresses linguistic ideology and

the law, a set of assumptions about how people communicate

and how they ought to communicate.

S C H O O L O F L A W

J O H N D . E S H E L M A N P R O F E S S O R O F L A W

Thomas Taylor, PhD

Social historian Thomas Taylor, a faculty member at Seattle

University since 1988, focuses his scholarship on world

travelers and how they shape understanding across cultures.

Taylor’s major ongoing project is Journeys in World History, his

forthcoming, comprehensive textbook of more than 1,000

pages that presents a history of the world through the

experiences of travelers. It’s a work that has occupied him for

more than a decade.

Travelers, Taylor says, are historical actors. As he tells their

stories, he not only teaches the discipline of history and

brings his scholarship to life in the classroom but also draws

students to his research projects.

In his class “East Meets West: Travelers’ Accounts,” Taylor

explored how travelers shaped the modern world. He had a

long-standing fascination with Englishman Thomas Stevens

who, over three years in the mid-1880s, became the first

person to circle the globe on a bicycle. Taylor continued his

scholarly aspirations and with the support of a College of

Arts and Sciences Dean’s Fellowship, he invited one of his

students to become a research assistant on a project that

examined the bike as a symbol of Western modernization in

Stevens’ time.

They divided the project by what interested each of them

most and began to pore over old magazine and newspaper

stories about Thomas Stevens. As the work progressed, the

student began to write like a historian and her sections of the

story came to life. Their research grew into a jointly authored

article, which they submitted to a scholarly journal for review.

Taylor continues to spur his students in writing about world

history as seen through the eyes of travelers.


CHAIR AND ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, DIRECTOR, GLOBAL AWARENESS PROGRAM

Seattle University is nationally recognized for its academic excellence, service to

community and social justice.

The White House honored SU with a 2012 Presidential Award for community

service, the highest recognition by the federal government to a college or university

for its civic engagement, service-learning and volunteerism. More than 4,500 students,

faculty and staff volunteer or participate in service-learning courses annually.

SU is a top producer of U.S. Fulbright Scholars, according to the Chronicle of Higher

Education, with a total of 21 in the past decade. Over the same time span, eight SU

students received the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship,

a multi-year funding program that supports graduate-level researchers in the physical

and social sciences.

Consistently over a decade, SU can boast a position in U.S. News & World Report

rankings among the top 10 universities in the West.

Founded in 1891, SU is a Jesuit, Catholic university located on 50 acres in the

heart of one of the city’s most diverse neighborhoods, just a short walk from

downtown Seattle. The university’s eight colleges and schools provide more than

3,000 classes in 130 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The faculty-to-

student ratio is 1 to 13, with an average class size of 25. SU draws students from

every state and 89 nations and has Washington state’s most racially and ethnically

diverse undergraduate population.

A B O U T S E A T T L E U N I V E R S I T Y

All photos by John KeatleyPhotos include the campus of Seattle Universityand locations in and around Seattle.

Want To Know More About These Facul ty Scholars?To see videos and learn more about the Seattle Universityfaculty in this brochure, visit www.seattleu.edu/research.

For more informat ion about SU’s research, contact :Nalini Iyer, PhDDirector of the Office of Research Servicesand Sponsored Programs(206) [email protected]


Documents

SU Research Brochure