PSFA E-CONNECT - September 2008

MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN

This year the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts is pleased to welcome new faculty members in all eight of our schools. These teachers and scholars represent some of the very best minds in their respective fields and we are delighted to have them join the San Diego State community. Join me in welcoming the following individuals to the SDSU family:

Joyce M. Gattas, Dean
College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts

Art, Design and Art History

Patricia Cué, B.F.A, Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico)

Before coming to SDSU, Patricia Cué was an assistant professor and department chair of Graphic Design at Ohio University. As a design professional, Patricia has worked for clients in the U.S. and Mexico, such as the Getty Conservation Institute, Museo Dolores Olmedo, and Arquine International Architecture. While working at Ohio University, Cué designed for numerous local and university affiliated organizations, such as the College of Fine Arts, the Kennedy Museum of Art, and the English Department’s literary journal /nor (New Ohio Review). In her research, Patricia currently explores cultural sustainability and ethics in the practice of graphic design. Her work has been published in the AIGA Voice Journal for Graphic Design, AIGA XCD, Fahrenheit Contemporary Art, and in “Drawing in the Design Process” by Peter Olpe.

Communication

Carmen M Lee, Ph.D., UC Santa Barbara

Dr. Lee is a communication scholar specializing in cross-cultural and intercultural communication. Her areas of interest include cultural variability, interethnic and intercultural attraction, and tourism and intergroup relations. She is presently researching intercultural interactions which take place within international youth hostels as well as how individuals’ travel accommodation choices affect their overall interactions with, and perceptions of, members of different cultural groups. Dr. Lee also conducts research in the area of interpersonal communication. Currently she is developing a relational continuum upon which casual sexual relationship can be assessed.

Exercise and Nutritional Sciences

Kathleen D’Ovidio, Ph.D., University of Maryland

Dr. D’Ovidio completed her doctoral work at the University of Maryland and was most recently at Delaware Valley College as an assistant professor in the Food Science and Management Department. Her current research interests are focused on Food Safety issues, specifically adulterants, contaminants and mycotoxins in dietary supplements, and the development of a tracing system for fresh produce using edible tags.

Hospitality and Tourism Management

Jess Ponting, Ph.D., UTS

Dr. Ponting specializes in the use of sustainable tourism for community development. He has been particularly active as a researcher/consultant in equatorial Asia-Pacific, most recently as member of the World Commission on Protected Areas, and as a consultant for Fiji’s Tourism Master Plan. His areas of interest include sustainable tourism, surfing tourism, cross cultural interactions in tourism, the social construction of tourist spaces, and volunteer tourism. He is currently researching peak experiences in surfing tourism, hermeneutic circles of representation in tourism marketing, volunteering as a decommodified tourism experience, and the interface between traditional systems of reef resource ownership and sustainable marine tourism in the Pacific Islands.

Kate Spilde Contreras, Ph.D., University of Santa Cruz

SDSU Vice President of University Relations and Development Mary Ruth Carleton and her husband, Bruce Hunt, have pledged $100,000 to establish the Carleton-Hunt Endowed Internship Fund in the School of Journalism & Media Studies. Vice President Carleton received her master’s degree in journalism at UC Berkeley and was a television reporter and anchor for nearly 20 years. The endowment gift will support upper division student internships in the journalism field.

Journalism and Media Studies

Amy Schmitz Weiss, Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Schmitz Weiss is a former journalist who has been involved in new media for over a decade. She also has worked in business development, marketing analysis, and account management for several Chicago Internet media firms. Her research interests include online journalism, media sociology, news production, and international communication. Recent publications include a co-authored peer-reviewed journal article and a co-authored book that was published in December 2007. She is presently researching the role of collaborative processes in newsrooms in the United States and abroad. Dr. Schmitz Weiss is also investigating the importance and benefits of online distance education for the journalism industry as an innovative force in collaborative work and its ability to support journalistic communities of practice.

Music & Dance

Eric Smigel, Ph.D., University of Southern California

Eric Smigel received his M.A. degree in music history and Ph.D. in historical musicology from the University of Southern California. While in Los Angeles, Eric taught music history at USC, served as a research assistant at the Getty Research Institute, provided pre-concert lectures for the Da Camera Society, worked as an educator for the International House of Blues Foundation, and was a docent at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Most recently, Eric served as Assistant Professor of Music at Utah State University. Eric’s primary research interest is 20th-century music and its relation to the other arts, and he is currently compiling a critical anthology of source readings of modern American artists, composers, dancers, filmmakers, photographers, playwrights, and poets. He is also preparing a book-length study of American composer James Tenney.

Matthew Rowe

Matthew Rowe joins the School of Music and Dance as the orchestra conductor. Born in London, Matthew studied conducting with Colin Metters, George Hurst and John Carewe. In 1990 he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory of Music, Baltimore to study under Frederik Prausnitz. He has also participated in conducting masterclasses with Peter Eötvös, Ton Koopman, Eri Klas, Leon Fleischer and Michael Brewer. Orchestral appearances have included all the BBC orchestras as well as the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the Norrkoping Symfoniorkester, the Ulster Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra and the London Mozart Players. He has worked with the Dutch National Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet and recently made his debut with Birmingham Royal Ballet conducting Swan Lake. Opera performances include Bizet’s Carmen, Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins and Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman with the Danish National Opera.

Public Affairs

Maurizio Antoninetti, Ph.D., UC Santa Barbara/SDSU

Dr. Antoninetti is an urban geographer with degrees in architecture and urban planning specializing in urban design and aging-in-place. His areas of interest include city history, universal design, qualitative and mixed methodologies, phenomenology, healthy communities, and sustainable neighborhood designs. He is presently researching the crisis of small municipalities (piccoli comuni) in Italy, grass-root initiatives to achieve aging-in-place in American suburbs, and recent innovative designs for children’s playgrounds in the U.S. and Europe. He is the principal investigator of the Auspex Project, an Internet-based research on undesired American places.

Salvador Espinosa, Ph.D., Indiana University

Salvador Espinosa is a scholar and public finance consultant specializing in fiscal decentralization, public financial administration and regional development. His current research focuses on the budgetary impact of federal transfers in Mexico. Before starting his doctoral degree, Salvador worked as Budget Analyst for the City of Bloomington, Indiana; as Research Associate for the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute (Indianapolis, Indiana) and Coordinator of Information and Economic Development for the government of the state of Guanajuato (Mexico).

Television, Theatre and Film

Denitsa Bliznakova, M.F.A., Brandeis University, B.F.A., Parsons School of Design

Denitsa is happy to be working with the educational team at San Diego State University as an Assistant Professor. She has designed costumes for productions at The Old Globe, A Noise Within, Falcon Theatre, New Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, and the Williamstown Theatre Festival, amongst others. Design credits for other media include the music videos Stars by Switchfoot, Bubble Bounce by Bigg Steele, the short films Midgetman, Sleep in Heavenly Peace, and La Cerca, and the feature films Johnny Got His Gun featuring Benjamin McKenzie, and Undercover Kids. She was a design assistant on the TV show Law & Order and has either supervised or consulted on productions at the San Diego Opera, Quixote Studios, and the Soul Dance, Fusion of Space and Mind production at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London.