Northern Arizona University

Computer Modeling of Cultural Systems

In 1997, Dr. Cathy Small was awarded a National Science Foundation grant for 1998 and 1999 to model and simulate Polynesian social systems. This modeling work has culminated in an invitation to the Santa Fe Institute as part of a global team of scientists working on modeling issues. The Santa Fe team jointly publish­ed the book Dynamics in Human and Primate Societ­ies: Agent-Based Modeling of Social and Spatial Processes with Oxford University Press in 1999.  She was named Senior Fellow at Institute for Law & Systems Research, University of San Diego, where she collaborated on modeling and ethnographic projects on health management and the law and she served as pro bono consultant to the Central Planning Office of the Tongan government, where she modeled future population and migration figures.

Her modeling efforts have opened new teaching avenues for her, including the development of a gradu­ate course in computer modeling, her participation as the invited workshop director at the 1998 and 2001 AAA meet­ings (sponsored by NAPA) to introduce anthropology professionals to computer modeling and simulation, and her invitation by the French government’s Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales as a scholar-in-residence to conduct a two-week modeling course in the University of Provence in Marseilles, France in 1999.

Pipeline NAU

Dr. Cathy Small began Pipeline NAU, a program with the support of university adminis­tration and the help of committed faculty members. The Pipeline is a cooperative venture of NAU, the Flagstaff Public Schools and Big Brothers/Big Sisters that pro­vides long-term mentoring to low income high potential seventh-graders who would be the first in their families to attend college. Mentors from NAU meet weekly with their mentees for five years within a structured program, until their student has graduated from high school. At the successful completion of the program, the student receives a full four-year scholarship to NAU.  Almost a second job involving mentoring, administration, fund-raising, recruitment and promotion, Dr. Small coordi­nates this program as a service project. Pipeline received the National Points of Light award in 1999, the Governor's Special Recognition award and  honors for the Best Educational Practice in Post-Secondary Education in the state of Arizona in 2000.

South Pacific Studies

Dr. Small’s lifelong ethnographic work has been in the South Pacific, and she continues to be involved in research and scholarship in this area.  Her book Voyages is used by more than 100 universities, and was the recent “forum” selection by Pacific Studies for scholarly review by three scholars with author response. She is active in reviewing grants and manuscripts (Museum Studies, Contemporary Pacific, American Ethnologist, National Science Foundation) in Pacific studies and wrote two of the recent reference works on Pacific Islanders (in Harvard University Press, The New Americans, 2007 and the Tongan Profile for Migration Information Source in 2004).

Freshman Year Studies

In 2002, on her sabbatical, Dr. Small enrolled in her own university as a freshman, moving into the dorms and taking a full load of classes.  The ethnography, describing “undergraduate culture,” that came out of her freshman experience (published by  Cornell University Press in 2005, and then by Penguin in 2006) has received wide attention in both national and international circles and in public and professional media (including features in the Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, Newsweek, and USA today, Talk of the Nation, Associated Press, CNN and guest talks on more than 40 radio talk shows).

The public attention has provided a vehicle for making applications of her ethnographic insights in higher education.  Dr. Small is on partial release to speak at educational conferences and universities across the country about improving teaching and realigning university structures.  In 2006-7 alone, she accepted invitations as keynote speaker or presenter/consultant at more than 30 universities and conferences in the U.S. and overseas in an effort to assist in the transformation of pedagogical structure now underway in higher education.