Graduate Student Profiles (S-Z)

Elizabeth Scherman is a first year Ph.D. student. Her studies include a B.A., Communications, Pacific Lutheran University, M.A., Communications, University of Washington, and M.A., Education, University of Puget Sound. Elizabeth is tenured faculty in Communications at Bates Technical College in Tacoma. She worked previously as a reporter for the Tacoma News Tribune and as education reporter for the Peninsula Gateway. Her research interests include the manner in which marginalized populations communicate within their own groups as well as how their stories eventually surface within mainstream media and the fine and performing arts. Her master’s thesis focused on how unorthodox fiction by women writers slowly entered the conservative medium of women’s magazines. She is also interested in journalism history, mythology and comparative religion, film studies, women’s studies, and critical cultural studies. Elizabeth also enjoys writing plays and has seen seven of her plays receive full production, including two historically based works which were funded as part of a team effort through the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has been studying on and off at the University of Washington for 31 years, which is either inspiring or pathetic, depending on how one looks at it.

Penelope Sheets is excited to join the Ph.D. program at UW after getting her M.A. from the University of Minnesota and her B.A. from the University of Michigan. Having grown up in the Twin Cities, she is excited to move to Seattle and develop a love for yet another state that shares a border with Canada. Her M.A. thesis focused on the comparative persuasiveness of differently framed policy messages, and at UW she is excited to continue studying the various effects - psychological, political, and cultural, to name a few - of using "moral" and religious language in political messages. She is also looking forward to delving further into political science, rhetoric, and linguistics than she did during her M.A. coursework. Penny is slightly apprehensive about the lack of snow in Seattle during the winter, but is sure that the ocean and mountains will more than make up for it.

Leah Sprain is a doctoral student who aims to use ethnography, discourse analysis, and rhetorical criticism to research and analyze social justice issues, especially pertaining to sustainable development and the environment. Her interests include social movement theory, intercultural communication, rhetoric of social protest, and the ethnography of communication. Her previous work includes a master's thesis that analyzed the political nature of organic consumption and an undergraduate thesis on Fair Trade coffee that drew on fieldwork conducted in Costa Rica and Guatemala. Leah obtained a M.A. in Communication from the University of Washington, and a B.A. in Environmental Studies and a B.F.A. in Communication (with an emphasis in Social Advocacy) from Pacific Lutheran University.

Steffany Suttle will enter the Native Voices program Autumn 2004. She is a member of the Lummi Nation in Washington State. She is a graduate of Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi. Whilst at TAMU-CC she majored in Television/Film and minored in Women and Gender Studies. She was an active member in the Native American Student Association while at TAMU-CC. Steffany looks forward to learning the process of making a documentary film. Film is her vocation and avocation. She plans to work hard and is excited about moving to Seattle and meeting new people.

Francine Swift completed a BA program focusing on video, film and audio production at The Evergreen State College. She has studied broadcast journalism and print journalism at Highline Community College. Francine has spent a lifetime learning and witnessing the revitalization of Native language, art and participating in cultural celebrations that were outlawed in her grandmother’s generation. These essential life ways drive a vision to see Native people to preserve their own histories and traditions. Pacific Northwest Native history is largely an oral history which is now passing away with each tribal elder. Knowing one’s roots is essential to having a firm foundation and healthy sense of well-being on the way to accomplishing one’s life goals first in your own world and then contributing to your community.

Clifford Tatum: BA San Francisco State University, MBA Seattle University.
Clifford's PhD research examines the use of information and communication
technologies in collaborative knowledge production. His other research
interests include online collective action, the Internet as a diasporic
medium, and the intersection between urban culture and internet culture. He
is an instructor for the University of Washington Honors program where he is
co-director of the Honors study abroad in Amsterdam.

Amoshaun Toft is a media activist and carpenter. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Institute for Social Ecology in 1999. Since then he has immersed himself in the world of community radio, independent media and radio journalism. Over the past 4 years he has produced radio stories for the nationally syndicated programs Free Speech Radio News, Democracy Now, Live Wire Independent News and Pacifica’s Peace Watch, as well as local community radio stations WGDR in Planfield VT, and KBCS in Bellevue WA. He started Radio.indymedia.org as a content distribution platform in spring of 2001 and has helped coordinate a number of national and international IMC-radio broadcasting projects, including the No-WTO broadcast in November 2001 and the World Economic Forum/World Social Forum/No-NATO broadcast in February 2002. Amoshaun has joined the MA program to explore the role of communication structures in democratic institutions. He hopes to combine his experience in independent media with his background in political science to research how new communication models can facilitate democratic change.

Jonathan S. Tomhave is doctoral candidate currently plugging away on his dissertation, Cameras and Indians: Performance and Resistance by First Nations Actors in mainstream and alternative film (working title). Among other things, Jonathan is also a filmmaker whose film Half of Anything is remarkably still screening around the world. A trailer of this film can be accessed either at www.jnh1066.com or at www.native-voices.org. In addition, Jonathan is also currently working on two documentaries. The first where Jonathan is the director and lead editor is with Sara Deer, Terreane Derrick, and Christina Entrekin on sexual violence in Indian Country and is currently in pre-production. The second project where Jonathan is the lead editor is with Sherman Alexie, Larry Estes and the Hydrocephalus Association which is examining the impact of hydrocephalus on the lives of many people around the world and how it has become in many ways, a forgotten condition. Furthermore, Jonathan is also working a number of papers ranging from diabetes, identity, and holistics (with Selina Mohammad) to expanding the conversation away from John Ford’s The Searchers and Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves to films (working title, The Search for the Dancing Wolf is Over: Moving Beyond The Searchers and Dances with Wolves) made by Natives and non-natives in the 21 st century.

Marcos Torres B.A., English, Speech, Telecomm/Film, University of Oregon, Eugene, 1989.

Mary Lynn Veden recently completed her MA at UW and is now entering the doctoral program. She is interested in political/international communication, the rhetoric of counterpublics, and the nature of public address in an evolving public sphere. Her research has taken her in many topical directions, ranging from U.S. foreign policy and the war on terror to critical legal studies to the politics of human sexuality. As a student of critical rhetoric, she considers teaching essential to her academic mission of sharing her scholarship to empower students to be critically thinking, articulate, responsible citizens. When not in the classroom or pursuing her own research she serves as a volunteer coach for the UW student-run Speech and Debate Society. ML received her B.A. in International Affairs and Communication at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.

Chris Wells is pursuing a Master's in Communication, and plans to focus his studies in political communication. Chris grew up outside St. Paul, Minnesota, earned a B.A. in Linguistics from Cornell University, and has spent the last two years fighting overfishing and pollution as oceans associate for the Washington Public Interest Research Group (WashPIRG) in Seattle. He's excited to come to the University of Washington to study how public opinion forms around political candidates and issues, and what roles the media play in shaping that opinion. Chris is also interested in comparative approaches to understanding media's role in society, and in how the public sphere is changing with the introduction of new technology.

Lea Werbel, a first year master’s candidate, plans to study how media can be used to promote social change – an interest which began when she first watched Michael Moore’s film “Roger & Me”. Her enthusiasm for analyzing how communications programs can effectively engage and activate the public in order to promote action around critical social issues was furthered by her work in the media department at The Advertising Council in New York City. In between working, Lea has traveled extensively and volunteered for awhile at a radio station in Ghana. This experience led to an increased interest in radio communication and the role in which it can play in uniting communities, creating discussion, providing access to the political system, and promoting community action and social change. A relative newcomer to the Pacific Northwest, Lea grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii and is happiest surrounded by water, mountains, and greenery.

Teresa Whitney is entering the MA program in the Department of Communications. She received her BA in Communication from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2005. While an undergrad her research focused on how German college students culturally code communication about 'Americanness.' She has spent the last two years working in international public relations in New York as well as the publishing industry in Boston. Teresa's interests include intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, social anthropology, and international communication.

Cetan Wanbli Williams comes to the M.C. Native Voices program from Western Washington University where he received his B.A. He also attended Northwest Indian College, WA, Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe College in Wisconsin, and Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas. He has studied Environmental Education, Tribal Environmental and Natural Resource Management, Native American Studies, and Natural Resource Management.

Dru Anthony Williams earned his B.A. (Communication/Single-Subject Teaching Credential) and M.A. (Communication/Critical Cultural Studies) from San Diego State University and is now a doctoral student with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Critical Studies. With rhetorical criticism as his preferred methodological tool, Dru follows passions that feed predominately on ideological critiques guided by narrative and dramaturgical theory, critical race theory, whiteness studies, feminist theory, and argumentation theory. Fledgling creative interests also include the rhetoric of science and the post-humanism movement and the visual rhetoric of themed environments. Dru is continuously intrigued by the “taken-for-granted” power structures surrounding issues of race, gender, and class and enjoys the critical challenge of naming them. His master’s thesis (“The Rhetoric of Reparations: Whiteness and the Narratives of Imposition”) presented a rich opportunity to analyze how these historical classifications intersect to create socially meaningful positions.

Leighton Wingate M.C., Communications, University of Washington, 1988; M.M., Music Theory, North Texas State University, 1977; B.A., Music, Mississippi State University, 1975. Leighton has been working in the newspaper field for 13 years. He wants to combine his professional experience in journalism and his previous academic background in communication with his lifelong interest in history to explore the relationships between the public and the press during our nation's past, focusing primarily on the Civil War and Reconstruction period and events immediately preceding and following.

Jun Young's intent in pursuing the Ph.D. is fueled by passion - a passion to deepen his understanding of human communication, sharpen his ability to perform cogent research, and ultimately make significant contributions as a scholar of communication.
His current research interests are in the areas of corporate culture and workplace relationships in a digital age. Having done a cursory literature review on corporate culture, he found scant studies exist on the topic from a rhetorical perspective - corporate culture as "symbolic action". How is corporate culture created and maintained through discourse, especially through technology-mediated artifacts such as corporate intranet sites and internal email? From a social-scientific approach Jun is curious about how technology has affected the development of relationships in the workplace. He is particularly interested in how "virtual teams" maintain commitment, establish trust, reconcile power differentials, and other team tasks.

Virginia Young received an AAS in Visual Communication from Highline Community College, WA. She received a BA, with a double major, in General Studies/American Indian Studies and Interdisciplinary Visual Art from the University of Washington.