University Brings Two Distinguished New Department Chairs to Campus
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 10, 2002
Joe Wills
530-898-4143
University Brings Two Distinguished New Department Chairs to Campus
The Departments of History and Art and Art History have newly hired chairs, both of whom come to California State University, Chico with distinguished achievements in their fields.
History chair James Matray is one of the nation’s leading experts on Korea in the post-World War II era. He is the author of “The Reluctant Crusade: American Foreign Policy in Korea, 1941-1950,” which won the Phi Alpha Theta Best Book Prize in 1986, and editor of “Historical Dictionary of the Korean War,” which won Choice magazine’s Outstanding Academic Book Award and Library Journal’s Best Reference Book Award in 1992. Matray has also co-edited “Korea and the Cold War: Division, Destruction, and Disarmament.”
Matray has participated in conferences on Korea at the Truman and Eisenhower Libraries and received research grants from the Harry Truman Library Foundation, MacArthur Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His latest books are “Japan’s Emergence as a Global Power” and “East Asia and the United States: An Encyclopedia of Relations Since 1784,” to be published next month.
Matray came to CSU, Chico from New Mexico State University, where he was a faculty member in the history department for 22 years. He earned his undergraduate degree in European and American history from Lake Forest College in Illinois and his master’s and Ph.D. in American history from the University of Virginia.
Art and art history chair Tom Patton is a nationally known photographer, with his work represented in the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum as well as the Australia National Gallery. Patton’s work - ranging from realistic landscapes and urban scapes to whimsical digitized images shot in studio - has been featured in more than 200 shows at small galleries and major museums, such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Patton received a National Endowments of the Arts grant in 1991 and the James Phelan Award in Photography in 2001-02. He earned his bachelor of fine arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and a master’s and master of fine arts degree from the University of New Mexico.
Prior to coming to CSU, Chico, Patton was at the University of Missouri, St. Louis for 19 years. Along with being senior studio artist, he was chair of the art and art history department from 1990 to 1996. He started the BFA program at UMSL, which attracted more than 300 majors to the program within five years.
Along with these two department chairs new to CSU, Chico for fall 2002, the university also has six faculty members who are new chairs of their departments: Byron Jackson - political science; Shekhar Misra - finance and marketing, management; Brooke Moore - philosophy; Tony Waters - sociology; Bruce Yoakum - construction management; and Gayle Hutchinson, who assumed the chair of physical education and exercise science last spring. In addition, professor Judy Bordin is the new program coordinator of the Social Science program.
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