UAF: Office of Equal Opportunity

Meghan has begun working as coordinator for UAF's office of equal opportunity, which is responsible for monitoring and managing university adherence to equal opportunity, affirmative action, sexual harrasment, ADA, employee grievance policies, and so forth.  They also have oversight of the multicutural center and the women's center.

(Check out the website for the school by clicking on the picture to the left.)

She works for Earlina Bowden, in a third floor office in Signers'  Hall, which connects through to the same floor as the anthropology department in the Eielson Building, in fact. This job should be a great place for Meghan to shine with both her organizational skills and her great ability to help people in distress and grace them with a smile and an open, servant's heart.

She's already completed eight classroom hours of Banner / purchasing process training, and will soon be taking training in some of the web-based systems used during the employee hiring and screening process.  In late September, she'll be flying to Colorado for training on affirmative action software, and will at some point go through some conflict resolution training, as well.

Among other duties, Meghan manages Earlina's schedule of training sessions, coordinates purchasing for OEO and the centers it oversees, produces fliers and literature, helps compile reports, and will be revamping the department website.  She is also the first point of contact for anyone coming in with a query or complaint.

University of Alaska, Fairbanks: Anthropology

While the details are just now starting to be shaken out, Nick will be studying in the anthropology department at UAF.  Their program is especially strong in all fields of arctic and subarctic anthropology -- archaeology, linguistics, cultural, and physical.  Apart from a very active field research program and faculty who aggressively pursue research as well as instruction, there are a number of resources at the disposal of the program, including the University of Alaska Museum, the Alaska Polar Regions Collection in te Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, the Alaska Native Language Center, and the Alaska Quarternary Center.  There is a real opportunity for a depth of study in the department.

(Check out the website for the school by clicking on the picture to the left.)

Initially, Nick's interim advisor was to be Dr. Jeanette Smith, archaeologist specializing in biochemical studies (e.g., stable isotopes) and South African studies, but Dr. Smith is transferring to the biology department, mainly to better accommodate her technical specialties. She will still be involved in the anthropology department, and may still ultimately be involved with Nick's studies, as her expertise has a lot to lend hunter-gatherer and other early human studies.  In her place, Dr. Peter Schweitzer will be acting as Nick's interim academic advisor.  He is a cultural anthropologist with interests in social organization and the ethnohistory of Siberia and Alaska.

It had also been thought that Nick would be TA'ing the course in Language and Gender, for Dr. Pat Kwachka, a linguistic anthropologist with a great interets in language acquisition.  Instead, he will be one of three TA's with small-group sections of ANTH 100x, a general education class on the development and study of human culture around the world. The class is taught by new faculty member Dr. Kerrie Ann Shannon, and will feature an ethnography on Candian Eskimos entitled Never in Anger.

Nick's Class, Fall '05

• ANTH 609, Anthropology of Religion, Dr. Patricia Gray.  Religion or supernatural belief from the perspective of anthropology. Religion in the context of "primitive" society as well as its role in complex society. Religious practitioners, ritual, belief systems, and the relationship of religious behavior to other aspects of social behavior.

•  ANTH 625, Human Osteology, Tammy Greene.  Human skeletal analysis: bone biology, skeletal anatomy, aging and sexing, metric and non-metric traits of skeleton and dentition, paleopathology, and paleodemography. Inferences on genetic relationships between and patterned behavior within prehistoric groups derived from skeletal material.

• ANTH 629, Structures of Anthropological Argument, Dr. Patricia Gray.  Reading and analysis of examples from various paradigms in anthropology, past and present. Presents a thorough grounding in forms of anthropological argument and preparation for the research and writing process. Includes evolutionary, Boasian, structural-functional, structural as well as subdisciplinary linguistic, archaeological and biological forms of argument.