Updated March 2015 HCOM newsletter

Humanities & CommunicationHistory, Oral History & New Media

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Practical & Professional Ethics

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Africana StudiesCreative Writing & Social Action

Writing & Rhetoric

Chicano Studies

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English Subject Matter Preparation Program

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March 2015

Otter Realm AdoptsMultimedia Approach to NewsBy Samantha Gillespie, senior, Journalism and Media Studies

Our favorite newspaper, The Otter Realm (OR), prepares for a year to remem-ber. The OR just launched its innovative multimedia production class this semester and was named a finalist in seven cate-gories for the California College Media Association (CCMA) awards last month. The excitement is understandable as OR student leaders gush to an HCOM news-letter staff writer. “It has been my goal to really have the community know that we are there as a news outlet for them,” said Elizabeth Hens-ley, Otter Realm’s Editor-in-Chief. Hensley is a senior in HCOM with a concentration in Journalism and Media Studies, and Creative Writing and Social Action. Hens-ley, along with Production Manager Alex Hennessey, worked with HCOM faculty and administration to get this new class off the ground and running. “We wanted to expand and do more things with (the Otter Realm) website, social media and multimedia,” said Hen-nessey, HCOM senior, concentrating in Journalism and Media Studies. Hennessey and Hensley knew the best way to stay ahead and impact the community was multimedia. “Where journalism is today,” said Hens-ley, “it is so important to have many dif-ferent facets to a publication. The printed page is not enough anymore.” The new multimedia production class (HCOM 387), now worth four units rather

Otter Realm Nabs Tons of Awesome Awards

Pictured left to right: Sam Robinson, Johnny Bays, Sam Gillespie, Alex Hennessey, Elizabeth Hensley and Estella Porras with the many CCMA awards.

The Otter Realm and Otter Romp won eight prestigious awards at the California College Media Associa-tion’s annual Excellence in Student Media Awards ceremony Feb. 28 and Associated Collegiate Press Best in Show awards March 1. “These awards represent the best in student media in the largest state in the country,” said Barbara Kings-ley-Wilson, president of the Califor-nia College Media Association board of directors. She was indicating the CCMA has more members than other state associations. With such a large pool of members, the contest had more than 800 entries this year. Members of the Otter Realm (OR)and Otter Romp teams, along with faculty advisors attended the CCMA conference and ceremony, which were held at the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Los Angeles.

“We are going to have to buy a lot of frames,” said Elizabeth Hensley, Editor-in-Chief of the Otter Realm and investigative reporter for the Otter Romp. “It may seem cliché, but it is such an honor to be nominated. Mostly, I am excited to connect with student and professional journalists at the conference and share what we have accomplished this year.” The judges said the Otter Realm had: “Solid coverage of hard news and is-sues impacting students. Presentations stood out in appealing way.” This high-quality of coverage and design was recognized by the Associat-ed Collegiate Press as the Otter Realm won Second Place in the Best of Show awards. The award was in the four-year university, less than weekly category and is an international award. The eight awards represent the most

2 HCOM Newsletter March 2015

New Book by Jennifer Fletcher on Teaching Arguments Fills a Critical Need for Middle and High Schools News release: To become college- and career-ready, middle and high school students must learn effective methods of persuasion and argument, according to veteran English teach-er and associate professor Jennifer Fletcher. Filling the need for a teacher-friend-ly professional development resource, Fletcher has written a new book titled Teaching Arguments: Rhetorical Comprehension, Critique, and Response (Stenhouse, February 2015). “This book offers strategic support to teachers who work with students who might be college-bound, but are not yet college-ready,” says Fletcher. “With appropriate scaffolding and en-couragement, I believe all students can succeed at advanced levels.”

Many secondary English language arts classes have shifted their attention to nonfiction to support the literacy tasks students encounter in other content areas—a move spurred by the Com-mon Core State Standards. Teaching arguments is an ideal lens for this shift in focus, yet professional resources on rhetoric in secondary education remain scarce.

Fletcher’s practical book gives teachers engaging classroom activities, writing prompts, graphic organizers, and student samples to help students at all levels read, write, listen, speak, and think rhetorically. She believes that in addition to comprehending, critiquing, and responding to academic argu-ments, students also need to know how writers’ choices are shaped by elements of the rhetorical situation, including audience, occasion, and purpose. “My goal is to increase teachers’ confidence in using a rhetorical ap-proach to argumentation by providing clear explanations of key terms and practices, so that students of all levels of preparation have access to rigorous academic content.” Teaching Arguments was published in late February, and a free full-text preview is available at stenhouse.com/0999. Jennifer Fletcher is an associate professor of English at California State University, Monterey Bay. Before join-ing the faculty at CSUMB, she taught high school English for more than ten years in Southern California.

T A

Teaching ArgumentsRhetorical Comprehension, Critique, and Response

Jennifer FletcherForeword by Carol Jago

Major reopens in fall semester, accepting new applications

HCOM Office: Building 2, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday - Friday, 831-582-3889, hcom.csumb.edu

In 2002, Iris Peppard established the Marina (Calif.) Certified Farmers’ Market, and worked with others to set up Everyone’s Harvest, a non-profit organization that helps bring reasonably priced organic fruits and vegetables to residents in the CSUMB area. The projects were fruition of her work in the Integrated Studies Special Major (ISSM) program. ISSM is a program that allows self-directed students the opportunity to develop an indi-vidualized, interdisciplinary course of study. Students combine two to three academic disciplines to craft a unique course pathway and develop a capstone project that combines the fields. “ISSM put me in the driver’s seat to estab-lish my career path,” said Peppard. “It made me answer questions: What do I want to do when I graduate? How am I going to get myself there?” Peppard, who graduated in 2003, combined what she had learned in Service Learning, Collaborative Health and Human Services, and Business for her project. The ISSM program was on hiatus, but is now once again accepting applications. The goal is to have a new cohort begin in the fall 2015 semester. Students from any major, even those who are undeclared, can apply for the program. Those who wish to enroll in the program must complete an application and interview. Students in ISSM must have at least junior standing when beginning the program, and have a 3.0 minimum grade point average. Students also will need to provide a summa-ry of their proposed course of study that is supported by at least two tenure track faculty advisors, according to Sam Robinson, the new ISSM program coordinator. If you are interested in the program, you should contact Robinson to discuss the details and pick up the application packets. Applications are due March 13. You can reach Robinson by emailing [email protected]. Visit the HCOM website for more details: https://csumb.edu/hcom/about-issm or scan the QR code.


than two, is taking on multiple dimen-sions of the journalism world. They have incorporated television broadcasting and video, social media platforms, graphic design and web production. Based on their specific interests, students are assigned to the respective platforms, though each student must produce at least two videos, according to Hensley. “We want to do a good job of reporting and keeping up with technology. Other California State University newspapers and Journalism Departments are kind of going away from the printed newspaper and real-ly expanding their multimedia abilities and what they do online,” said Hennessey. With the team’s new Webmaster, Tout-oua Vang, and the broadcasting student leader, Lupe Becerra, the dynamics of the class seem to be in full swing. “I’m excited to be the Otter Realm’s new Webmaster,” said Vang, a sophomore Communication Design major with a concentration in Web Design. “I think the production class has been producing a great paper for students. The fact that they want to add more and improve is something the students can look forward to.” Becerra, a senior in Cinema Arts, will help her fellow classmates in video produc-tion from film theory to documentary making to mini- video clips. “I feel that this is a great way to move with the prog-ress of news,” she said. “News is supported

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OR Multimedia Approach to News

by both writing and visuals.” As the class unfolds both Hensley and Hennessey are eager to hear from the community. “Just being out there and being present and letting them know that we have their back,” said Hensley about her expectations for the new direction of the class. “If they have a story, I want them to be able to come to us. Come to us to voice if they are not happy with something. To voice their achievements, and we want to be involved with civic engagement and working with different crowds.” Overall, the goal of this class is not only to produce “awesome content,”but to be a “news hub” for the “student’s voice.”

HCOM student earns Transportation Agency of Monterey Co. award


Bernard Green is helping to create an alternative transportation culture at CSUMB. Green’s work has earned an excel-lence award from the Transportation Agency for Monterey County. The award was among 10 present-ed at a recent TAMC board meeting; they recognize individuals, groups and businesses for efforts to improve the way people get around in Monterey County. Green (pictured at right), a junior Human Communication major from Los Angeles, works as the Monte-rey-Salinas Transit outreach coordi-nator on campus. He was nominated by his supervisor, Anya Spear, for his “creative and tireless work” to promote alternative transportation and coor-dinate outreach efforts to nearly 6,700 students and more than 1,000 employ-ees. “Bernard is helping to create an alternative transportation culture at CSUMB whose benefits, we hope, permeate throughout the county and reach us all,” Spear said. “When the campus needs exper-tise, he does the research. If we need student buy-in, he presents at an Associated Students meeting. If there’s no funding, he applies for a grant,” she said. Bernard Green shares the joy of bi-cycling, and other forms of alternative transportation, with his fellow studentsAmong his accomplishments: • He worked to secure changes to MST routes to better serve the grow-ing student population and then em-ployed creative ideas to communicate those changes to students.• He helped to identify and convert a small car parking lot into a bike park-ing area where 14 bike locker stalls and a bike rack were installed. The project helped to remove cars from the campus core.• He pointed out the need for addi-

tional bus stops along Inter-Garrison Road, and helped to identify an acces-sible location. • He has proposed a design con-cept for a series of separated bikeways connecting Main Campus and East Campus, where 3,000 students and employees live. • He represents the city of Marina on TAMC’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Facilities Advisory Committee; is a certified instructor with the League of American Bicyclists and founded the Monterey Bicycle Project. Courtesy of CSUMB Communications

You can also find the OR on

Twitter: @OtterRealm

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OtterRealm-

News?ref=br_rs

Instagram: @otterrealm

Email: [email protected]

Join in the celebration March 19 at the launch reading of like a woman by Debra Busman. The reading is open to everyone and will take place at Bookshop Santa Cruz begin-ning at 7 p.m.

“like a woman follows Taylor, a working class white girl too tough and too tender for her own good, who helps friends, rescues strays, and carries her battered copy of Ghandi on Non-Vio-lence everywhere she goes. She reads curled up in the sewer drain by Venice Beach under the shot-out flashing Chevron light, yet still fights at the drop of a dime, cuts johns who say the wrong thing, and steals anything she can get her hands on.

“Her girlfriend, Jackson, a young African-American street worker who lives in the back of a junk yard totaled limo, dreams of becoming a writer and receives daily guidance from her recently deceased mama. Joining them are fellow homeless street kids; high-end sex workers with Ph.Ds; Eddie, a butch transves-



Kent Leatham

Leatham has two sets of literary pub-lications that are im-minently forthcom-ing-- they haven’t hit the shelves quite yet, but should do so within the month. • Five transla-tions of medieval Scots-language poems, reworked into modern English, are being published by Ezra: An Online Journal of Translation (http://www.ezratranslation.com, spon-sored by Roger Williams University). The original authors include John Barbour, Richard Maitland, Mark Alexander Boyd, and King James VI, as well as an excerpt from Gavin Douglas’ own translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. Three other translations from this project, which he will speak about at the WIP seminar in April, were published last summer (2014) in the journal Able Muse, guest-edited by Charles Martin.

• One original poem is being published in the final all-poetry issue of Pearl Mag-azine (Volume 47, http://www.pearlmag.com/).

Amanda Snyder

First, an audio literary journal of per-sonal essays, is accepting submissions for its inaugural issue, to be published online this summer. Submissions should be first-person stories that could be classified as personal essays, narratives, or creative non-fiction, and should be 10 minutes or less when read aloud. Interested authors should submit both a text-version and an audio-version of the story (read by the author) via the submit-table link on the journal’s website: firstau-diojournal.wordpress.com. Authors chosen for publication for the inaugural issue will be refunded the $2 submittable fee. Submissions are open until April 1, 2015. Amanda E. Snyder, a lecturer in HCOM, will curate and edit the audio journal, and is especially happy to welcome submissions

from the CSUMB community, including students, faculty, and staff, regardless of their department or affiliation with the university. Questions (not submissions) may be directed to [email protected]. Snyder recently had an essay “The Gray” publised on The Manifest-Station website: http://themanifeststation.net/2015/02/08/the-gray/.

Meghan O’Donnell O’Donnell is co-author of the soon to be pub-lished Women in American History: A Social, Politi-cal, and Cultural Encyclopedia, Peg Lamphier and Rosanne Welch (eds.). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. It is scheduled to be published Sept. 9, 2015. She wrote two articles in the collec-tion, one on Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and one on Anna Elizabeth Dickinson.

More Faculty Publications

Launch reading of like a woman March 19 in Santa Cruztite from Pasadena who runs a ‘Speak-Easy’ for johns who just want to talk; a fierce and loyal Rottweiler named J. Edgar; and Dutch, a barrel-chested, flat butt old cowboy who eventually helps Taylor get off the streets,” is the synopsis on Amazon.com. Busman is an associate professor and co-director of the Creative Writing and Social Action Program at CSUMB. She is co-editor of Fire and Ink: An Anthology of Social Action Writ-ing (2009). Busman is the co-advisor of the NAACP@CSUMB. She was honored with the NAACP Civil Rights Advocate and Ally Award Feb. 26. at the Monterey County branch 4th annual joint NAACP Adult-College Black History Month meeting. An article will fol-low in the April newsletter.



awards won to-date by the Otter Realm. “This is a new phase in the history of the Otter Realm,” said Estella Porras, OR advisor. “The seven awards we won tonight are opening a new path – a new level of achievement – a new way of envisioning the Otter Realm.” Porras’ pride was echoed by Alex Hennessey, OR production manager: “I’m very proud of the entire Otter Realm team for working so hard, and being recognized for seven different awards, which is a huge accomplishment.” Entries represented work from throughout 2014, which includ-ed a special investigative reporting section from the spring semes-ter, the Otter Romp. Sam Gillespie, a HCOM senior concentrating in Journalism and Media Studies was awarded Honorable Men-tion for her article in that special section. The article examined the struggles of Vietnam-era veterans who are trying to upgrade their discharge status. “I am really honored to have even been a finalist,” said Gillespie. “I am really proud of the Otter Romp. We all put everything we had in to it and it shined through.” Judges said the Otter Romp had: “Interesting and varied pieces with engaging layout.” “Earning first place for the Otter Romp is fantastic, especially considering it was the work of just four student journalists; grant-ed they are exceptional student journalists,” said Sam Robinson, Otter Romp advisor. “I am so pleased the judges recognized the hard work of the students and the value of original investigative articles.” Here is a complete list of awards for the Otter Realm and Otter Romp, both of which were in the non-weekly category:Best in Show 2nd Place– 4 year university, ACPElizabeth Hensley, Alex Hennessey, Estella Porras Ad-visor, and Staff

Best Newspaper 3rd Place - Elizabeth Hensley, Alex Hennessey, Estella Porras Advisor, and Staff Issue #1 “Brace for Impact” , Issue #2 “Viva La Hispan-ica”, Issue #3 “Requiem for a Contract”

Best Overall Newspaper Design 3rd Place - Alex Hennessey, Elizabeth Hensley, and Estella Porras Ad-visor: Issue #1 “Brace for Impact” , Issue #2 “Viva La Hispanica”, Issue #5 “Otterpreneurs”

Best Breaking News Story 3rd Place - Tyler Gidney: “Requiem for a Contract”, Issue #3, page 12

Best Non-breaking News Story Honorable Mention- Sam Gilles-pie: “Upgrading discharge status: The real mission impossible”

Best Photo Illustration 3rd Place - Alex Hennessey, Zack Young, and Casey Aubert: “Otterpreneurs” Front page, Issue #5

Best Headline Portfolio 3rd Place - Breanna Brown Headlines: “From Virtuous to Vixen” (Issue #3), “It’s in the Bag” (Issue #2) and “H-2-OH NO” my (Issue #1)

Best Special Issue/Section 1st Place- Erin Hawkins, Elizabeth Hensley, Sam Gillespie, Janine Adams and Scott Horne, Sam Robinson Advisor

Otter Realm earns 8 CCMA and ACP awardsContinued from page 1

Estella Porras, Alex Hennessey and Elizabeth Hensley accept the award for Best Newspaper, non-weekly 3rd place at the CCMA awards.

Sam Gillespie with her award for non-breaking news.

Sam Robinson, Sam Gillespie and Elizabeth Hensley accept the 1st place special section for non-weeklies award on behalf of the Otter Romp team.


The Work in Progress seminars continue. The next presenter is Dr. Ajit Abraham. He will give us a sneak preview of his conference presentation for the CSU Teaching Symposium. The WIP seminar will be March 4, at 2 to 3 p.m. in the HCOM conference room. Everyone is welcome to attend. Kent Leatham is the April 1 speaker. He will present “The Best Laid Plans: Turning language barriers into empowerment opportunities by translating medieval Scots poetry.

WIP seminars continue March 4

Sriya Shrestha presents her paper “The Only Name in Chocolate: Kraft’s Cadbury take-over and the shifting economies of imperialism” at the Feb. 4 WIP seminar.

Grad Fest April 2 “GradFest is a one-stop-shop for graduating seniors. Purchase your cap and gown, order Commence-ment invitations, have your gradua-tion portrait taken, join the Alumni Association and socialize with other graduates.” For more information visit the CSUMB website: https://csumb.edu/commencement/gradfest or scan this:

UC Berkeley Comparative Literature Undergraduate Symposium April 4

News release: The UC Berkeley Com-parative Literature Undergraduate Sym-posium committee of 2015 is organizing its 4th annual conference, and we are currently accepting submissions! The event will take place on April 4 at the UC Berkeley campus and is intended to provide a forum for undergraduate stu-dents of comparative literature and related fields to present and discuss their own research among peers, graduate students, professors, and the public. Past symposia have featured keynote speakers Judith Butler, Harsha Ram, and Eric Falci, as well as undergraduate participation from universities around the country. If you have done relevant research, are working on a critical project, or would like to start something new, we encourage you to apply. The deadline is March 6. Visit the group facebook page for more details: https://www.facebook.com/cal-complit?fref=nf or scan this:

Writers from the Edge presents:Poet/Activist Elmaz Abinader March 5 Arab-American writer and activist Elmaz Abinader is coming to campus on Thursday, March 5, at 7 p.m. in the UC Living Room. She will give a read-ing from her latest book of poetry, This House, My Bones. “To be born a writer and an Arab- American in this lifetime creates an imperative for my work and despite an education that led me away from politically charged writing, my life, my family’s country and the political climate demanded I give voice that nuanced characters and moments that have no complication in the media,” said Abindar. “My work has been inspired by the dislocation of my parents from Leba-

non to the US, and has radiated out-ward to dislocations, occupations, and disenfranchisement of other people in the Arab World and Diaspora.” The event is part of the Writers from the Edge series. The event is free and open to everyone.

Elmaz Abinader


Documents

Updated March 2015 HCOM newsletter