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Summer 2004 | Volume 26, Number 7 | Faculty | |||||||||||||
| Three Faculty Say Good-Bye Seattle Pacific University ensures that students learn from experienced professors, not teaching assistants,” says Steele. “Because SPU is a comprehensive university, faculty members must be skilled in teaching and exhibit a very high level of scholarship.” That
description applies to all three professors who retired from Seattle Pacific
thisspring. They were recognized by colleagues
at a special Retirement Banquet on May 6.
Evette Hackman: A Tale of Two Careers Raised in Omaha, Nebraska, Hackman was surrounded by good food from her parents’ catering service, so she worried about her weight. When she was 25 years old, she did something about it. “I stopped dieting and learned to live a healthy life,” says Hackman. She boosted her activity level and continued studying food and nutrition, earning a B.S. from the University of Nebraska and an M.S. from the University of Kansas. Moving to Seattle with her husband in the 1970s, she earned a Ph.D. from the University of Washington. For the next 20 years, Hackman, also a registered dietitian, worked in medical nutrition therapy and contributed regularly to consumer magazines such as Shape and Northwest Runner. In 1990, Joyce Ostrander, then an SPU professor of home economics, asked Hackman to join Seattle Pacific and design a dietetics program. "Do you ever feel like you're called?" asks Hackman. “I just felt like that.” She came to SPU, helped forge the now nationally accredited dietetics program and began guiding scores of undergraduates in the study of food and nutrition. “In Evette,” says Steele, “students saw a practicing scholar.” And like many before her, 2004 dietetics graduate Andrea Reichert will enter graduate school in public health nutrition this fall, largely because of her professor. “Dr. Hackman offered straight advice to students,” says Reichert. Although retiring after 13 years as a Seattle Pacific professor, Hackman won’t stop her study of food and nutrition. “I’m a great cook,” she says. “And I want to figure out how to make artesian breads.”
Leo Mármol: Rich Experience
and Cuban Warmth By 1973, he had earned two degrees from Pepperdine, a B.Div. from San Francisco Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the California School of Professional Psychology. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). As a mental-health practitioner, Mármol specialized in neuropsychology, and clinical and forensic psychology. He also began teaching. “It’s in my blood,” says the son of Cuba’s former director of secondary education and an elementary school teacher. After four years as director of clinical training at Fuller Seminary’s School of Psychology, Mármol moved to Oregon in 1997 to help George Fox University’s Graduate School of Clinical Psychology attain accreditation from the American Psychology Association (APA). Then Seattle Pacific, planning for its own APA accreditation, sought out his expertise. Mármol joined SPU in 2001, quickly becoming a popular guide. Mark Cross, with Alliance Counseling of Tacoma and Yakima, completed his Ph.D. at Seattle Pacific with Mármol as chair of his dissertation committee. “He was more than a professor,” says Cross. “He became a part of me that I will carry forward and use to help others.” In retirement, Mármol and his wife will return to California, but he leaves SPU’s graduate psychology programs with the foundation needed to seek APA accreditation. “Leo brought us professionalism and stability,” says Steele. “To have that package wrapped with a gentle pastor’s heart was a wonderful gift.”
Marilyn Severson: Au Revoir to a Beloved Professor Severson is a second-generation educator from Salem, Oregon. Her father was a physical education professor at Willamette University; her mother was an elementary school teacher. In her academic career, she’s led the SPU Foreign Languages Department; written books, including Masterpieces of French Literature (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004); and taken students on several study tours to France. Yet Severson didn’t begin her love affair with the Romance language until college, when she signed up for a French class. “By the end of my freshman year, I thought, ‘I’m majoring in this’ — with no particular idea of what I might do.” Her first trip to France came after completing her master’s degree at the University of Pittsburgh. Her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado followed in 1973. Severson joined the SPU faculty in 1979 and, years later, Steele, then dean of the School of Theology, was invited to observe one of her classes. “It was just a kick,” he recalls. “Marilyn is one of those women who appears demure and quiet, but she has a twinkle in her eye and an energy to her teaching.” As she completes her career at Seattle Pacific, Severson is leaving her options open — although she admits she’d like to rent a home in France and stay awhile. — BY HOPE MCPHERSON |
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From the President Equipped for Success Honor Roles The 2004 Medallion Awards The Heritage Mile |
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