[The Montana Professor 18.1, Fall 2007 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Henry Gonshak
English, Montana Tech
O. Alan Weltzien
English, UM-Western
Volume 17 of The Montana Professor (2006-07) was guest edited by Presidents George Dennison and Geoffrey Gamble. Volume 18 is being edited by longtime Montana Professor Board members, Henry Gonshak (Montana Tech) and O. Alan Weltzien (UM-Western), as editor Linda Gillison (UM-Missoula) is on sabbatical for the 2007-08 academic year. The process of collaboration has proven a great pleasure for us, united by discipline and friendship for many years. Over several months, the frequency of e-mails and phone conversations has increased, unsurprisingly, as there is always Montana Professor business to discuss. We have been fortunate in receiving, or successfully recruiting, many articles and reviews from a variety of backgrounds. While the Fall issue lacks the thematic consistency that characterized last year's two issues, with their focus on the roles and responsibilities of higher education, we are nonetheless proud of the variety and quality of articles and reviews in the issue you're holding.
Volume 18 Number 1 opens with an eloquent op ed piece, reprinted from The Missoulian, by editor Linda Gillison, concerning her son's decision to be deployed in Iraq. This kind of painful soul searching has been missing too much from national and local media, it seems to us, in our halting national conversation, over the past five years, about the war in Iraq. Next come a pair of articles dedicated to a topic of interest to all aging Americans, our Social Security System. Max Skidmore's article traces those fears about its long-term fiscal stability and the occasional calls for privatizing part or all of the System. Skidmore disabuses us of those fears and, in analyzing the System's soundness in the 21st century, roundly attacks those arguments that favor privatization. In the subsequent article Skidmore co-authored with George McGovern, both present their own case for modest Social Security reform. Of course, the editors are pleased to have a piece co-written by the former Senator from South Dakota and 1972 Democratic candidate for President.
The Fall issue includes a pair of articles that highlight an academic discipline, nursing, rarely if ever featured before in The Montana Professor. Allison McIntosh's article proclaims the value of broadening some emphases in nursing education such that students spend much more time in geriatric settings. As though mirroring the graying of America, McIntosh advocates taking the classroom into the nursing home, and her case study demonstrates a number of fruitful collaborations between Montana Tech and specific Butte/Silver Bow sites with aged, infirm populations. Gretchen McNeely's generous profile of MSU Bozeman's Anna Sherrick provides, in effect, a short course of the history of MSU Bozeman's College of Nursing. The snapshot of Sherrick, a key figure in nursing education in Montana for half a century, enables the reader to trace the growth of nursing education from the 1930s through the 1970s.
McNeely's article is an example of the journal's occasional article devoted to an outstanding Montana University System faculty member from the past. Alan Weltzien's profile of Montana Western's Rob Thomas continues the journal's occasional spotlight on a current, outstanding member. Over the past two-three years, Montana Professor readers have read profiles about Doug Abbott of Montana Tech, Harry Fritz of UM-Missoula, and Sue Hart of MSU-Billings, for example. Thomas, senior geologist at Montana Western, has been a leader since his arrival in Dillon, and his stature in his profession is most recently measured by his receiving, on 27 October 2007, the Public Service Award from the Geological Society of America (GSA).
Even though America is the most religious among Western industrialized nations, atheism is making a comeback, at least if the best-seller lists are any indication, where atheistic tracts like Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great and Sam Harris's The End of Belief and Letter to a Christian Nation have topped the charts. Jonathan Figdor's essay, "God and the Problem of Evil," follows this trend in its thorough, cogent attack on theodicy--the defense of God's goodness and omnipotence despite the existence of evil. Figdor recognizes that believers may base their piety on faith rather than reason, but he offers bracing arguments for atheists debating rational defenses of the existence of a loving and just deity.
The Fall issue closes with a brief comic piece, by Southern Oregon University's Ed Battistella, on "Twenty-five things to do on sabbatical." Those MUS employees imagining a sabbatical or reviewing a past one might find new strategies from this list. We hope you enjoy reading the issue as much as we have enjoyed preparing it.
[The Montana Professor 18.1, Fall 2007 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]