FOCUS: A road-map safety site

FACULTY: Associate Professor Tom Horan, School of Information Systems and Technology

Over the past year, a research team based in the School of Information Systems and Technology, and led by Associate Professor Tom Horan, has been developing a groundbreaking website called SafeRoadMaps (www.saferoadmaps.org) as part of a partnership with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Excellence in Rural Safety.

The innovative website was an outgrowth of a talented faculty/student team that included research faculty members Brian Hilton and Ben Schooley as well as doctoral student Nathan Botts and masters student Gary Richmond. The site provides an interactive means for travelers to identify roadways that may have safety problems, as well as to better understand public policies (such as primary seatbelt laws) that are in place to improve safety.

The website was released to the public in conjunction with the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety’s Summer Institute. The response to the press release announcing the website has been overwhelming. In the two days following the release there were more than 150 media reports, and numerous TV and radio interviews with Horan and others. Most importantly, there were 3 million hits of the SafeRoadMaps website during this time. Some 100,000 people have used the site to perform in-depth inquiries on traffic fatalities in the United States.

At the conference where the website was unveiled, Horan briefed Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Transportation Thomas Barrett, who was impressed and enthusiastic about the project.

There are numerous possibilities for further development of the site, and Horan and his team have already begun exploring these directions, ranging from connections to in-vehicle navigation devices to possible partnerships with major vehicular organizations such as AAA.
 

FOCUS: A new religious studies program implementation

FACULTY: School of Religion

Claremont Graduate University is partnering with California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) on a new LA-based interdisciplinary religion major. The curriculum-development initiative is called Religion, Identity, and Civil Society in the Era of Globalization.
CUSLA selected CGU for the partnership due to Claremont’s reputation for its forward-thinking, cross-faith design for its School of Religion. CGU received $25,000 of the $75,000 National Endowment of the Humanities grant to develop the program.
“The CGU School of Religion has pioneered a model for community relationships through its councils and how they recruit students from the religious communities they represent,” said Scott Wells, who is the program director and the director of religious studies at CSULA.
Karen Torjesen, dean of the School of Religion, said she envisions CSULA becoming a feeder school for CGU, noting that CSULA’s student body is the most ethnically diverse California State University campus.
CSULA is the closest of the California State Universities to Claremont, which makes joint programs and research possible. The two universities recently cohosted a religious diversity symposium titled “Religion in Los Angeles, Religion in the Americas, Religion in the Era of Globalization.”

Wells and Torjesen said they envision future scholarship opportunities for CSULA students in religious studies to pursue graduate work at the CGU.

“Most students at CSULA are first-generation college students who might not otherwise be able to consider graduate work in religion or the humanities,” Wells said.

The two universities also plan to develop an articulated program in which interested and qualified CSULA students could transition into the MA program at CGU by beginning their graduate work during their senior year.

FOCUS: Funding for the Institute for Signifying Scriptures

FACULTY: Professor Vincent L Wimbush, School of Religion

Claremont Graduate University’s Institute for Signifying Scriptures (ISS) was re-funded by the Ford Foundation, with a $600,000 grant, to continue its groundbreaking studies on the relationship between societies and sacred texts.

The institute was established with a similar grant from the Ford Foundation in 2004, with a subsequent additional grant in the amount of $300,000 awarded by the Henry W. Luce Foundation in 2006.

Directed by Professor Vincent Wimbush, the ISS explores how sacred texts function in societies and, conversely, how societies invent and engage religious texts. The historical and ongoing consequences of such work is also analyzed. The institute is affiliated with CGU’s School of Religion.

“This award means much: in a time in which human aspirations, but also human differences, conflicts, and tensions around the world are understood and articulated ever more stridently and feverishly with the uses of scripture, the agenda of ISS – to probe the work that we make scriptures do for us – is more and more compelling,” Wimbush said.

The Ford Foundation’s grant will support the ISS operations, projects, and programming, including its distinguished speaker series (inaugurated in 2007 with Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka) and advanced colloquia, visiting professors, and various research projects. (The most advanced of the current research projects is a collaborative project on Ethnologies of Scriptures which involves a study of the ways in which scriptures function in five different communities of color in the United States.)

Beyond CGU students and faculty colleagues in Claremont, the ISS is represented by a large group of scholars and community activists (research associates) spanning the globe, who are ISS conversation partners and supporters. In Claremont, the ISS Brown Bag Lunch Discussion Series has become a well-known site of intellectual enrichment: twice a month, scholars from varying fields meet at CGU to discuss pertinent issues and themes.

For more information on the ISS and its activities, visit the website at www.signifyingscriptures.org.