Sabatical
leads Fulbright scholar to Burns, teaching class for EOU DDE Harney
County Center
By Terry Keim
The Burns-Times
Herald
Published: March 18, 2004
|
|
|
Martha Henderson is on sabatical
from Evergreen State College in Washington and has taught at
EOU's Harney County DDE office in Burns.
|
BURNS -- A Fulbright scholar in our midst, Martha
Henderson of Burns, came to Harney County in 2001 while on sabbatical
from her teaching position at The
Evergreen State College. She came to Burns wanting to make a commitment
to this community.
Henderson was born in Duluth, Minn., in 1952, but
became acclimated to the desert after growing up in Prineville from
age 13 on.
"I was drawn back to Eastern Oregon," she said of her move
to Harney County. "It has a landscape you
have to come to terms with."
For now, her faculty position in Olympia will take her back north.
But the high desert will bring her back home between quarters at Evergreen.
Home here will include her parents, Edwin and Madelyn Henderson, when
they move to Burns from Dufur.
Crossroads of culture In the mean time, the Fulbright Program has
taken her to Greece for four
months.
"Fulbright has its longest history in Greece,"said Henderson.
The University of the Agean is spread out over four islands, and Henderson
will live on the island of Mytilini where the university's geography
department is located. She applied to go to Greece because the Aegean
is a crossroads, and as a geographer, that aspect added to the excitement
for her.
"To the east is the Ottoman Empire. To the west, the old Greek
influence," she said. Henderson will research the approaches
the two regions take
toward wildland fire.
"Our use of fire is one of the things that
defines us as human, like language,"she said.
Books about fire she's taken to Greece include several by Stephen
Pyne, Norman Maclean and John Maclean. She also took Dave Strohmaier's
The Seasons of Fire.
Culture of fire
As part of her research, when she compares how wildland fire is managed
by the Greek and U.S. governments she will be able to refer to her
own extensive fire background. Henderson worked as a fire lookout
to earn money for college each summer. Fire is part of her personal
landscape, but her title is cultural geographer.
She has several degrees in that discipline from several compass points
of the country. After graduating from Crook County High School in
1970, she attended Seattle Pacific University. She transferred to
what was then the Oregon College of Education (now Western Oregon
University) in Monmouth when she knew she wanted to study geography,
since Seattle Pacific University didn't offer that major. She received
her master's in geography from Indiana State University in 1978.
Then, Eastern Oregon pulled her home again. She was hired to work
in John Day for the Malheur National Forest from 1978-80.
"I spent my summers as an aerial observer in fire detection,
flying all the way down to Burns and up into the Umatilla," she
said. "I learned a lot about fire,"she added with a grin.
Henderson said she also learned how to read a map really, really well.
"I love the tactical sense of using maps. It helps you figure
out where you are in the landscape. It makes you a better observer,"
she said. "It helps you place yourself in your environment."
Cultural geography
She went to the deep South to fulfill a dream of obtaining her Ph.D.
She said the geography department at Louisiana State University in
Baton Rouge is internationally known for its field and cultural geography
department.
"We were known as Berkeley geographers because our professors
had studied with Carl Sauer, who taught at the University of California
Berkeley. He is the most famous American cultural geographer,"said
Henderson. "We were trained in field methods, which meant we
went out to work with people and record their stories."
Henderson said a Ph.D involves studying philosophy, with an emphasis
in an area of study. "We were sent out into rural areas to look
at how people lived in a subsistence environment. The research was
about the future effects of industrialization on cultures. The question
was whether places would lose the texture of their local adaptations."
Her dissertation title is Landscape Changes on the Mescalero Apache
Reservation. She lived in Ruidoso, N.M., for a year while she looked
at the impact of over 150 years of federal policy on the reservation's
landscape.
While there she taught at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces,
"I got my Ph.D in four years, and it just about killed me,"
she said. Once on that kind of fast track, she kept going, achieving
tenure at the University of Minnesota in Duluth within four years
of taking her first full-time teaching position.
The West pulled her back again, and she accepted a position at The
Evergreen State College in 1995.
"I really support Evergreen's focus on the students,"she
said.
Henderson is writing a book about the cultural
landscape of Washington based on her experiences leading a group of
students on a 200-mile walk across Washington along an old railroad
grade. Her book will be about how students learn through experience
and about the local geography. For some pixilated insights into the
trip go to BTH Newslinks and click on
The Evergreen State College's Expedition 2000 www.burnstimesherald.com
Henderson took a leave of absence and sabbatical between 2001 and
2003, but she didn't stop teaching. In addition to setting up her
household here, Henderson taught a class in Burns last winter on World
Regional Geography with an emphasis on local food security. She also
spent a month in Spain travelling along the Camino to Santiago de
Compostela, also known as The Way of St. James, a pilgrimage
that is 1,000 years old. She presented her trip in a slideshow held
as the first Lunch and Learn program put on by the Eastern Oregon
University-Harney County Regional Center in February 2003.
Local class offered
After Greece, before returning to Evergreen, Henderson will teach
another class here -- the Geography of Latin America. The class will
be taught from a personal perspective. In 1990, Henderson did field
work in Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. For more information about
registering, contact Bonnie Olson at 573-5012.
