Transitions

We offer our heartfelt thanks and best wishes to Charla Dain, long-time UA employee and SoA staff member. Since 2011, Charla has served as editor of the Anthro News Digest. Thus it is only fitting that this issue features Charla’s story.

Charla first joined what was then the Anthropology Department in November 2000. Her nine-month position was established to help the Department prepare for the Traditions, Transitions, and Treasures banquet and silent auction, which was held the following October to help raise funds for student support. Following a successful event, from May 2002 to May 2003, Charla moved to the Office of International Agriculture in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. In 2003 the Anthropology Department invited Charla to return and become a permanent staff member—an invitation she gladly accepted.

During the past two decades Charla’s work has undergone several changes. Upon her return to Anthropology she worked as a secretary to Regents’ Professor Emeritus Mark Nichter. In this role she helped with (among other things) compiling and editing bibliographies for the courses he taught, editing tobacco cessation teaching materials for the NIH-funded Quit Tobacco International project (of which Dr. Nichter was PI and Dr. Mimi Nichter, Professor Emerita, was co-PI), and editing the manuscript of Dr. Nichter’s book, Global Health (UA Press, 2008).

In 2011 Charla took over the Anthro News Digest, then only a couple of years old. She brought a light touch to SoA news and developed an excellent rapport with faculty, students, and supporters alike. Charla helped organize and publicize events for the 2014–2015 SoA Centennial Celebration. In more recent years she has helped guide faculty and graduate student instructors in creating syllabi that pass muster with the UA Office of Instruction and Assessment.

With training as a classical musician, music scholar, and classical music radio announcer, Charla brought sensitivity, an eye for detail, and a keen intellect to her work in the SoA. She is taking temporary retirement while she searches for a new position. We will miss her.

In this time of budget and staff reorganization, Charla’s responsibilities, including Anthro News Digest, will be taken on by the rest of the SoA staff. Stay tuned for details in our next issue, which will be published on August 12.