Roger Lasley, registrar, has released a CD of acoustic guitar music titled “Walking Backwards.” Lasley has performed on radio shows such as “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Live from Studio One.” Lasley’s CDs are available from the Carleton Bookstore and River City Books.

Quy T. Ton ’95 and Kao Yang ’03 have been awarded 2003 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. The purpose of fellowship is to provide opportunities for continuing generations of able and accomplished new Americans to achieve leadership in their chosen fields. Ton is a first year medical student at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He previously earned a master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley. Ton was born in Saigon, but when he was 18 months old his family fled Vietnam; they now live in Mansfield, Penn. Ton received both a Larson International Fellowship and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study East Asian medicine in Vietnam, China, Japan, and Korea. Following his graduate work in public health, he was hired by Partners in Health in Boston. At the University of Minnesota, he has been president of the Medical School chapter of Physicians for Human Rights and co-chair of the American Medical Students Association chapter. Yang is a Hmong-American senior at Carleton. She was born in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand, where her family had fled to escape the ethnic cleansing of the Hmong, a preliterate highland tribal people who fought with the American soldiers during the Vietnam War. After six years in the refugee camp, the family moved to St. Paul, Minn., where they have lived since. At Carleton, Yang has focused on broadening her experience and exposure to the liberal arts rather than on refining her fiction writing. She is majoring in American studies, with minors in cross-cultural and women’s and gender studies. Yang received the Page Foundation awards for excellence three years in succession, the Gilman Scholarship for International Study, and the Freeman in Asia Scholarship for international study in Asia.

Nancy Wilkie, the William H. Laird Professor of Classics, Anthropology and the Liberal Arts, has been honored with the creation of an lectureship endowment in her name by the Archeaeological Institute of America (AIA). The endowment will fund the Nancy Wilkie Lectureship in Archaelogical Heritage and honors Wilkie’s contributions as a former president of AIA.

Julie Klassen, professor of German, presented a paper titled “‘Man merkt die Absicht und ist verstimmt‘: Engaging Students in Political Deliberation in the Literature Classroom” at the Women in German annual conference.

Neil Lutsky, professor of psychology, was the keynote speaker at the seventh annual Faculty Development Conference at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. His talk was titled “Thinking Through Technology: Using Technology to Teach the Hard Disciplines of Seeing and Thinking.”

Clifford Clark, professor of history and the M.A. and A.D. Hulings Professor of American Studies, was recently published in the fifth edition of the textbook, “The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People.” Clark contributed the four chapters on the late 19th century. Clark’s co-authors include Paul S. Boyer, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Joseph F. Kett of the University of Virginia, Neal Salisbury of Smith College, Harvard Sitkoff of the University of New Hampshire and Nancy Woloch of Barnard College.

Gregory Hewett, assistant professor of English, has had his book, “Red Suburb,” selected by Book Sense as one of the top ten poetry picks for spring. The BookSense list is compiled by the Independent Booksellers of America.

Harry Williams, professor of history, presented a paper titled “George S. Schuyler as H.L. Mencken’s ‘Black Clone’: A Reconsideration” at the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Brown University. The presentation was part of a symposium titled “Race, Globalization, and the New Ethnic Studies.”

Paula Arai, assistant professor of religion, recently published an article titled “Women and Dogen: Teachings and Practices on Equality” in the fall issue of Mountain Record: The Zen Practioner’s Journal. Arai also gave a presentation at the American Academy of Religion conference in Toronto on “Ancestors as Healers in Japanese Buddhism” and a presentation on “Women Living Zen” at Clouds in Water Zen Center in St. Paul.

Susan Singer, professor of biology and Director of the Perlman Center for Teaching and Learning, and Carol Rutz, director of the writing program, presented a panel at the February conference of the Collaboration for the for the Advancement of College Teaching and Learning. Their presentation was about the recent faculty development activities at Carleton.