SOCIAL SCIENCE DIVISION: ANNUAL REPORT OF SERVICE, 2009-2010

May 15, 2010

Professor: Michael S. McGlade

Tenured Faculty: Yes

Rank: Professor

Years in Rank: Six

CLASSES TAUGHT

GEOG 105 Physical Geography (2 sections), GEOG 106 Economic Geography (2 sections), GEOG 313 Pacific Northwest, GEOG 371 Mexico and Central America, GEOG 107 Cultural Geography (2 sections), GEOG 470 Energy, Environment, and Society

GEOG 470 is now in its second year. I feel students are learning a great deal in the course that is pertinent to today’s world. I continue to blend a science-based approach in the first part with a more policy-based approach in the second. This summer I will be teaching GEOG 410 Global Issues and GEOG 370 Human Migration.

RESEARCH

Am continuing the long term project of documenting and explaining regional retirement settlement patterns and environmental impacts of North Americans in the East Cape region of Baja California Sur. Have been focusing on the role of real estate agents and early pioneer settlers in driving the highly localized settlement of Canadians in the Castillo de Arena region, and people primarily from Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon in the Cabo Pulmo region. Have been able to document, through photos taken personally and reproduced from local residents, the development of severe beach erosion in a community that was established 20 years ago. For photographic documentation of this project, see www.wou.edu/~mcgladm. I presented some of this research at the 2009 Association of American Geographers Conference in Las Vegas on March 24. A visit to the study region just after the 2009 hurricane season yielded additional data on the erosional and depositional balance in the shoreline and arroyo environments: even hurricane events in the region may not bring sediment to the beach. The key appears to be intense rainfall rather than abundant rainfall. Qualitative interviews with local residents suggest that they generally believe that the beach erosion is natural in origin. None have hypothesized anthropogenic origins.

Consultant to project Community Partnered Response to Intimate Violence, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Nursing, RO1 NR008771-01A1, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Principal Investigator of record, Nancy Glass. Provide guidance regarding research methods and qualitative data interpretation. Have been working with team members on a draft of some of the findings, which was submitted to a scholarly journal in May. A previous draft was not accepted for publication by a different journal March 2009.

Reference: Intimate partner violence, Latinos, and work: A descriptive study of abuse tactics that disrupt women’s employment. Gino Galvez, Eric S. Mankowski, Michael S. McGlade, Maria Elena Ruiz, Nancy Glass.

SERVICE

My primary service effort this year has been chairing the Department of Geography. The geography program has completed its second year in its redesigned major and so far things have been going smoothly. We are still working out our approach to assessment a bit, though our basic approach is pretty well in place and ongoing. Our upper division course offerings have generally been well-enrolled in general with majors and non-majors.

Western Oregon University
Member, Safety and Energy Committee
Member, Personnel Review Committee, Division of Social Science
Chair, Department of Geography
Advise ~10 students, including majors, minors, and pre-education