Allen Carden, Ph.D., degree completion academic coordinator/liberal arts faculty, gave a talk titled "The Lincoln Legacy" at the Fresno County Law Day Luncheon (sponsored by the Fresno County Bar Association) on May 8.

Fran Martens Friesen, M.A., English faculty, presented "Peers, Papers, and Progress: The Evolution of Stretch Class Writing Lab," at the Conference on College Composition and Communication 2009 annual convention March 11-14 in San Francisco. She presented with Suzanne Kobzeff, FPU writing program coordinator 2000-2005, 2007-2008.

Eleanor Nickel, Ph.D., English professor, was among 30 faculty members nationally selected to participate in the seminar Slave Narratives at Yale University, June 7-10. Sponsoring organizations include the Council of Independent Colleges and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Brian Schultz, Ph.D., biblical and religious studies professor, has written Conquering the World: The War Scroll (1QM) Reconsidered. The book is published in the series Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah (vol. 76) by Brill Academic Publishers. The book is a new look at the War Scroll, among the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Found between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves near the Dead Sea, these 800-plus texts are believed to have belonged to a Jewish sectarian group, probably a branch of the Essenes.

Richard Wiebe, M.A., philosophy professor, was appointed to a "mixed-use" consortium representing the Sierra Club to the city of Merced. The group is working with UC Merced on in-fill projects with multiple uses (retail, office, condominium) to reduce sprawl.