Thursday, February 23, 2012

Women's Issues

I have always been passionate about women’s issues. I grew up in an all-female household with a mother who was politically very active. From an early age, I noticed that men and women in Switzerland were treated differently, and this merely because of their differing power status. I remember questioning this bias and wanting to figure out the origins of these differences. At a more fundamental level, I wondered why boys and girls differed and whether there were any environmental reasons for those differences. In many ways, this curiosity led me to my current research and teaching interests.

When I started my undergraduate studies at Creighton University, I did not really know what I wanted to study. I thought that International Relations would be a good match with my interests in politics and my multi-lingual experiences. However, when I took my first psychology course, I understood that this was the path I wanted to pursue. I loved my introductory psychology course. Not only was my professor an inspiring teacher, but I was also made aware that one could scientifically examine behaviors and thoughts. This was the start of an amazing journey of discovery. As part of a research methods lab, I examined differences in men and women’s memory. I wanted to know why in my all-male household, I seemed to be the only one who could remember where my boys’ and husband’s things were (even though they had misplaced the items). I continued that research focus throughout my graduate career. Over the years, it included answering questions such as: what do boys and girls think of gendered toys, how does their understanding of gender affect their play, how do these thought patterns influence their behaviors, performance, and interests later in life, why is there a lack of women in the physical sciences, how can cognitive gender differences be eliminated, etc. Some of the studies have shown that there are ways to attenuate these differences through certain environmental experiences (e.g., video game play, other leisure activities, etc.).

My teaching interests have also evolved to include women’s issues. A few years ago, I created one of my favorite courses: Women and Gender. As part of the course, students are asked to experience our gendered world and reflect on it. Currently, together with several female professors, I am developing a new online course in Women and Leadership. This course will likely be featured (with a few differences) in our new graduate certificate in Women’s Leadership. I hope that many of you will join our first class in the near future!

Kindly,













Dr. Isabelle D. Cherney
Associate Dean of the Graduate School and University College
Director, Interdisciplinary Ed.D. Program in Leadership
Professor of Psychology

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Balancing Passions

It seems particularly appropriate that in the last few minutes of Valentine’s Day, I am writing about those things for which I have passion.  My first answer to the question, “What are you passionate about?” is my family.   The second, is my job in Creighton’s biology department. Interestingly they are intimately intertwined.  It was at Creighton in 1989 that I was first introduced to my husband Eric. We were both sophmores at Creighton, both newly declared biology majors, and, even though I had not noticed it before, in many of the same courses.   At first, we didn’t really get along- we had very different political opinions and argued our positions fervently.  Our interest in biology though was shared.  Along with a few other biology majors, we soon developed a tight nit group of friends that studied together, TA’ed together, did research together, ran Bio club, and continued to argue about politics or other issues.  The biology department and our faculty mentors had a profound affect on our development as young people.  As time continued, Eric and I grew closer and our friendship evolved into a marriage graced with two unbelievably amazing boys.  I am grateful everyday that my undergraduate experience at Creighton led me to Eric, Preston and Lucas.

It is precisely my undergraduate experience at Creighton that motivates me now as I serve as a faculty member to current Creighton undergraduates in the Biology department.  I am passionate about my desire for Creighton students and, in particular female students, to experience the intellectual challenge and close mentorship that I did when I was an undergraduate student.  I may not have always liked the work I had to put into studying for my courses but the effort required of me from my professors paid off in many ways.  I developed studying and time management skills.  I learned how to interact with and teach my peers.  I was taught how to digest primary literature and interpret experimental data.  I shown how to do form a hypothesis, develop my own experiments, analyze data, and present my work.  All of my coursework, teaching and research provided me with the tools and confidence to pursue a doctoral degree in biology.  I continue to use these same tools now as I balance family with teaching and research as an assistant professor.  Hopefully the my presence as a female faculty member (along with my other female colleagues) shows younger women that one can balance work outside of the home and family if they so choose.  As faculty, I firmly believe that my most important role is to pass on the intellectual, time management, and communication skills I developed as an undergraduate biology major to my students.  I am passionate about my duty to push students beyond their comfort zone in the classroom and laboratory so that they can expand their own skill set and increase their confidence as they prepare for future challenges in life. 

Kindly,












Dr. Annemarie Shibata
Assistant Biology Professor

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Returning to the Center

Greetings from Afrika. My name is Audrianna Edmonds and I am a senior at Creighton University. I have been given the opportunity to spend my last semester of my undergraduate career in Ifrane, Morocco. As it relates to academia, I am a Justice and Society major, but my passion lies in the study of indigenous peoples all over the world with hopes of correcting social ills through means of non-violence.
 
I would like to dedicate this blog post to Dr. Ashton Welch who has since transcended, but remains a mental reminder of what a man or woman can be when he or she maximizes more than the 10% of his or her brain. For those who were not fortunate enough to meet Dr. Welch, he was a scholar in academia, but more importantly on his knowledge of self. He served the function of a respected history professor at CU. I was signed up for four of his African studies courses and not soon before school was intended to start last fall he transcended. Through only 2-3 momentary interactions with him and the overwhelming presence of his spirit, an insatiable global curiosity of what he had seen, studied and what he knew to be truth was planted into me.

So why Afrika? I think it’s important to establish early on that Afrika was not an idealistic pursuit fabricated to avoid post-graduate decisions or to become more “peace.” In fact it was just the opposite. Living and operating in an industry of illusions keeps society in a permanent state of drunkenness (a social state of lack of expectation and/or intense focus on preoccupation). Chief Crow Dog said, “When we sober up we start asking questions.” Consequently, it makes sense that everyday life is geared to keep people drunk. In my infancy of sobriety, I have come to realize that life is about returning to a pure state.

Consider this analogy: When people are conceived they are a seed. The seed is the heart. Life markets the seed and teaches the seed that it needs to consider going through some processing to make it more “refined.” The seed is sprayed, spayed, dunked, punked (something that can’t recognize its own power), mass produced, sterilized and packaged to the global society. The seed now has layers that represent protection, exclusivity and homogeneity.

Afrika represents finding my mother because I was machine-made; genetically I am not aware of my original creator. John Neafsey wrote that prayer is a countercultural experience. “Prayer with feet” is living one’s life undoing the mechanization that life once meant and promoting this countercultural experience in hopes that one day, after I have found my mother, I now stripped naked will be able to return to my Father.

Kindly,












Audrianna Edmonds
Senior, Justice and Society

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Reflections on Declaring Womanhood

It was June of 1998 and I was 24 years old, about to end my 2 year commitment to work and live in rural Namibia in the Peace Corps and I was travelling across South Africa. In Durban my friends and I were walking back from the beach and in front of us was a 100+lb. monitor lizard meandering down the sidewalk. I know most Americans’ images of Africa include animals but this is Durban…an eclectic modern African city. The home to the best surf in Africa, a vibrant Indian population and the descendants of Shaka himself, all overlaid with a British colonial veneer. We followed the lizard and soon a young guy with his arms and neck sleeved in tattoos grabbed him and picked him up like a sack of potatoes and slung him over his shoulder. Wouldn’t you want to know more? We did, and one thing led to another. In about 3 hours I had my first tattoo, an arm band around my left bicep with a female symbol in the middle.

I got my tattoo in the only Hell’s Angels tattoo parlor in Africa (not that I am particularly proud of that but it is an interesting fact) from Ricky, the son of the founder of the club and the parlor. Anyone with a tattoo knows they will be asked in that awkward interaction ‘what does it mean.’ Usually I am asked by an acquaintance and I wiggle to feel out how much this person wants to know,  how much I want them to know, and how much they can ‘handle to truth,” to quote Colonel Jessop in A Few Good Men.  I often think “you don’t want to know the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties you want me to have this tattoo, you need me to have this tattoo." In actuality, I usually say an ambiguous line that hints at depth but provides none, like “I got it at a time in my life that I was feeling really good about being a woman.

I started at Creighton 5 years ago and attended my first Psychology Honor Society Christmas Party. I didn’t know the students too well and I was just getting to know my colleagues, who at this point in time had seen my tattoo. It was an intimate party with 15 students and 10 or so faculty. We were all chatting when the conversation quieted for a moment. Then a student, that I didn’t know very well said with a giggle, “Dr. Brown, we were all wondering what your tattoo means”. ……..the music stopped, everyone was looking at me. I was speechless.

When I got the tattoo I didn’t have the language to describe it. The complex motivations were all there but not the language to pull them together and share them. It was how I lived then, feeling my way through life. Since, I have had the privilege to slow down and study, quieting myself enough to think about the meaning of many things, including my tattoo.

Motivations to tattoo range from the trivial to the deep; impulse, physical endurance, beautification, personal narrative, spiritual, or cultural tradition. Subcultural membership, or the wish to belong to a certain social circle, has long been mentioned as reasons to obtain body modifications. Body ornaments as permanent sign of commitment are fairly common but also the wish to belong to a certain community or to openly show affiliations to subcultural groups have been important for many years.

I wanted to show my affiliation to the community of women. The good and the bad, the weak and the strong, the living and the dead “Well Jill, you already, do, right? You were born a female." But to me, it was a psychological rite of passage. It was a declaration that this is my affiliation. The redundancy for me was the meaning. Defining and declaring that I was a woman, an agent in the process.  Like many in my peer group I also wanted to create and maintain my identity, being special and distinctive from others.  I was thinking about coming back to live in the US in the community that I was raised. I had just had a formative experience of living with a family, in a society that operated under very different assumptions. But for me, there was really only one choice: the female symbol.

The control of my own appearance reflected the creation of this identity for me. This tattoo was not for men:  it was mine. It was my own declaration that my journey as a woman was starting anew. Researchers have found that some women create a new understanding of their body and reclaim possession through body modification and the permanent marking. The reclamation of the body plays an important role, assigning tattoos and piercings a self-healing effect. Perhaps I wasn’t healed but I was on the way.

Kindly,









Dr. Jill Brown
Assistant Psychology Professor