On February 12, the Political Science department welcomed the Hon. Michael Rhoads ’06 (Political Science, Philosophy, English) back to campus for the latest event in the 2025 Eric Hanson Alumni Speaker Series, “The Role of Courts in Safeguarding the Rule of Law.” Above: Political Science faculty and students gathered for lunch with Rhoads (fourth from the left).  Read more.

Dear Colleagues,

This year Santa Clara University once again saw an exceptionally strong class of applicants. Our application count grew by roughly 7% this year for a total of over 12,700 for round one of Early Admission (EA) and Early Decision (ED) students. By the time regular applications were all received in January, SCU topped 20,000 – a record number for us, so we are off to a great start! This, generally, is the first indicator of how the application season is going. As for deposits, we don’t know specific numbers yet, but as of a couple weeks ago, they were up from this point last year.

We’ve got lots of events planned today and tomorrow for our CAS families as part of SCU’s Family Weekend, including our annual Dean’s Reception and Student Showcase. Please consider stopping by the Vari Lobby from 4:30-5:30 tonight to support our students and engage with families who made the trip to our beautiful campus!

Next weekend, our Winter quarter main stage production from Theatre and Dance, She Kills Monsters, kicks off a few weeks of performing arts events. Be sure to get out and bask in the talents of our students! Whether you’re in the mood for a play, some jazz, or other forms of musical entertainment, there is something for everyone!

Lastly, our REAL Program application deadline is just a week away—March 1. Please continue to encourage your students to apply for this fantastic opportunity to receive up to $6,000 in support of their summer research, internships, or career exploration!

Here’s a poem by the Polish Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska.

Sincerely,

Daniel

Darwin.
They say he read novels to relax,
But only certain kinds:
nothing that ended unhappily.
If anything like that turned up,
enraged, he flung the book into the fire.

True or not,
I’m ready to believe it.

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,
he’d had enough of dying species,
the triumphs of the strong over the weak,
the endless struggles to survive,
all doomed sooner or later.
He’d earned the right to happy endings,
at least in fiction
with its diminutions.

Hence the indispensable
silver lining,
the lovers reunited, the families reconciled,
the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded,
fortunes regained, treasures uncovered,
stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways,
good names restored, greed daunted,
old maids married off to worthy parsons,
troublemakers banished to other hemispheres,
forgers of documents tossed down the stairs,
seducers scurrying to the altar,
orphans sheltered, widows comforted,
pride humbled, wounds healed over,
prodigal sons summoned home,
cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean,
hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation,
general merriment and celebration,
and the dog Fido,
gone astray in the first chapter,
turns up barking gladly
in the last.

Got IT Questions or Issues?

Stop by the virtual IT drop-in sessions with Charles Deleon! These sessions are designed to provide faculty and staff in the College of Arts and Sciences a friendly and casual setting for addressing general IT questions and concerns. Feel free to drop in and out at any time during the scheduled session, whether you have a quick question, need assistance with something and don't know where to start, or simply want to learn more about our IT resources.

Biweekly. Next session: Friday, February 28, 11:00 am-12:00 pm.

Zoom link

Highlights

Linda Burks (Mathematics and Computer Science) published the article, College Algebra Students' Perceptions of Exam Errors and the Problem-Solving Process, in Frontiers in Education (Vol. 10, p. 1359713).

The first two years of college mathematics play a key role in retaining STEM majors. This becomes considerably difficult when students lack the background knowledge needed to begin in Calculus and instead take College Algebra or Precalculus as a first mathematics course. Given the poor success rates often attributed to these courses, researchers have been looking for ways in which to better support student learning, such as examining the impact of enhancing study habits and skills and metacognitive knowledge. One way that students can enhance their metacognitive knowledge in order to modify their study habits and practices is through reflection on mistakes. For this paper in particular, we focus on mistakes students make on exams. We found that students often attributed their exam errors to “simple mistakes.” However, we identified many of these errors as “not simple.” Understanding students’ perceptions of their mistakes helps us better understand how we might support them as learners and better situate them for success in the future.

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Abel Cruz (Modern Languages and Literatures) published a co-authored article titled “Second language learners’ sensitivity to grammatical gender in Spanish–English codeswitching environments” in Second Language Research. In Spanish, words are marked for feminine or masculine grammatical gender in almost equal distribution. Language learners (children or adult second language learners) have to acquire this classification system, but they often assign masculine gender to feminine Spanish nouns in their learning trajectory. In this paper, we explored the linguistic mechanism(s) that may give rise to this preference. We start with the observation that all Spanish–English bilinguals (and monolinguals alike) have no problem associating non-gendered nouns with a gender-marking element in their Spanish discourse. For example, Spanish language users are more likely to associate the novel English word “COVID” with the masculine gender “El COVID” rather than the feminine gender “La COVID.” We found that English learners of Spanish also exhibit a preference for masculine gender when an English noun is combined with a Spanish article “El key”, rather than applying feminine grammatical gender of the Spanish equivalent “la llave.” In fact, this preference is extended to other syntactic environments like “The key está roto.” We suggest that statistical distributional patterns of masculine gender in the lexicon of second language learners may explain this preference.

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Students in Brian's winter quarter course working on developing the devised piece that will be performed during Spring quarter.

Brian Thorstenson (Theatre and Dance, Frank Sinatra Chair in the Performing Arts) worked with Leanna Goodwater (Humanities Librarian, University Library) to create a publicly available study guide as an introduction to devised theatre, the Jesuit theatrical tradition, the history of theatre at Santa Clara University, and the remarkable collections of rare theatrical materials in the university library's Special Collections. The guide provides information on what devised theatre is, background sources on devised theatre, as well as devised theatre companies and plays. The study guide was created in support of overhead, a skylark called, a new devised play Brian is currently developing with Sinatra Visiting Artist Detour Productions and current students. The piece starts in three different locations then moves the audience through campus and ends in the Mayer Theatre. "We’re in the midst of creating a new performance using text, movement, music, and lip synch all investigating our starting question: What do you call home?" The play will be performed in May as the Department of Theatre and Dance's mainstage Spring performance.

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Rohit Chopra (Communication) co-authored a report, "Anti-Indian Hate on X: How the Platform Amplifies Racism and Xenophobia," for the Center for the Study of Organized Hate. The report highlights a troubling surge in anti-Indian racism and xenophobia on X (formerly Twitter), starting in December 2024, sparked by the appointment of Indian-origin technologist Sriram Krishnan as an adviser to the incoming Trump administration on Artificial Intelligence and Vivek Ramaswamy’s X post on American "mediocrity." For the report, the authors analyzed a set of highly-viewed racist and xenophobic posts on X that cumulatively received over 138 million views.

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Iris Stewart-Frey (Environmental Studies and Sciences) provided commentary on the role climate change might play in the deadly Los Angeles fires, including to our local TV station ABC7 and the BBC, which was picked up by other news outlets such as the National World, and the Global Herald. She also provided insights on the compounded environmental impacts of the rise in data centers for the article, "As California AI Data Centers Grow, So Does Dirty Energy," in The Slick.

 

 

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Left to right: Chad Raphael, Jesica Fernández, Laura Nichols, Won Jung Kim

Chad Raphael (Communication, Environmental Justice & the Common Good Initiative) collaborated with Martha Matsuoka (Occidental College) and Ana Baptista (The New School) to co-edit a special issue of the journal Social Science about “Community-Engaged Research for Environmental Justice." The issue includes articles on community murals by Jesica Fernández (Ethnic Studies) and Laura Nichols (Sociology), science education by Won Jung Kim (Education and Counseling Psychology, as well as urban water runoff, photovoice and community science, and conservation science. Each article involves research conducted in partnership with community organizations that are working to advance environmental justice.

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Qiuwen Li (Art and Art History) presented her research, "Empowering Change: Graphic Design’s Role in Addressing Societal Challenges Through Inclusive Methodologies and Case Studies," at the 23rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Education (HICE) from January 4-5, 2025. Her presentation explored how inclusive design methodologies can transform graphic design into a powerful tool for addressing environmental and social issues within design education. Through two student-centered projects, she demonstrated the impact of interdisciplinary collaboration, empathic design principles, and participatory approaches in creating meaningful solutions for marginalized communities. The goal of her research was to showcase how prioritizing inclusivity enables graphic design to address diverse societal needs, driving significant change.

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Chris Bacon (Environmental Studies and Sciences) received a $24,998 award from Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education to support his project “Co-producing a Place-Based Food Justice Conference and Curriculum in the South Bay” project. This project will be coordinated with the Environmental Justice and Common Good Initiative, SCU faculty and student researchers, the South Bay Food Justice Collaborative, Veggielution community farm, UC Extension, and other partners to convene a mini-conference as the culmination of an urban agroecology and food systems change short course. The team will subsequently develop a hybrid place-based curriculum with learning outcomes focusing on an equity competency model for sustainable food systems and fostering cross-institutional collaboration in the South Bay Area.

Chris also recently published an invited article on Agroecological Transformations for Environmental Sustainability for the Jesuit Curia’s Social Justice and Ecology Secretariat in Rome. This work drew on his Peace Corps experience and subsequent research to identify how expanding tropical tobacco impacts food security and public health through vegetable crop displacement and local pesticide exposures. He then focused on how agroecology-based strategies offer an alternative that promotes biodiversity, food security, and climate resilience, citing examples from Latin America’s coffee growers to India’s Zero-Budget Natural farming.

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Tom Plante (Psychology) along with David Feldman (Counseling Psychology), Jacqueline Ge '23 (Counseling Psychology), and Anthony Cortese (Ignatian Center) published an article on the Examen.

Abtsract: This is a randomized controlled trial of an Examen-based practice, an intervention reflecting a five-step daily reflection and prayer practice developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Catholic Jesuit order. Like other practices (e.g., mindfulness, yoga), this practice can be used as a spiritual or secular intervention to help people with a variety of challenges and stressors. In this exploratory study, 57 university students were randomly assigned to a two-week daily Examen-based condition, while 58 students were assigned to a wait-list control condition. Questionnaires measuring hope, life meaning, satisfaction with life, mindfulness, compassion, stress, anxiety, and depression were administered pre- and post-intervention and subsequently at two-week follow-up. Significant differences were found for conditions on the measures of life meaning, satisfaction with life, and hope, suggesting that the Examen-based practice produces improvements in individuals’ global evaluations of their lives as well as their perceptions of the future.

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Aparajita Nanda (English) just published her edited volume, Passing: Anatomies and Physiologies of Identity Transformations. This collection aims to bring a new perspective on the much-discussed problem of passing. It focuses on the politics of re-presenting passing in literature and relies on a definition of passing based on medical metaphor. On the one hand, passing implies the relationships and the forms, the aspects of different elements of identity (the anatomical viewpoint) and, on the other hand, passing cannot exist beyond the way various identity components function (the physiological viewpoint). The ground of these medical metaphors is the fact that they combine very efficiently and evocatively our identity as a whole that is both described and set in motion. It is both static and dynamic. In this way, passing shows both the necessity and the dynamic of the change, the evolutions, the conversions, the metamorphoses, and the renewals of our identities.

 

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Hsin-hung (Sean) Yeh (Modern Languages and Literatures) presented "Your 'Advanced' is My 'Superior'—An Exploration of the Inconsistencies between Chinese Language Curriculum and ACTFL Proficiency Levels and Their Pedagogical Implications" at the 2024 International Annual Conference of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language, held at National Chi Nan University, Nantou, Taiwan, on December 13-15, 2024. The presentation examines the misalignment between commonly used Chinese language curriculum levels and ACTFL proficiency guidelines, highlighting its impact on teaching effectiveness, textbook design, and student proficiency development.

While most curricula classify students as Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced, ACTFL's scale includes Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Superior, and Distinguished. This discrepancy often results in "Advanced" courses exceeding the intended proficiency, incorporating tasks better suited for "Superior" or even "Distinguished" learners. Consequently, students may struggle in ACTFL OPI assessments due to inadequate training in core "Advanced" skills. The presentation advocates for better curriculum alignment with ACTFL standards to enhance instruction and assessment accuracy, and the findings emphasize the need for refined pedagogical strategies that ensure students develop appropriate proficiency before progressing to higher levels.

Image: Hsin-hung (Sean) Yeh presenting at the 2024 International Annual Conference of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language.

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The Historians of British Art have bestowed the 2025 award for a single-authored book with a subject between 1600–1800 on Andrea Pappas' (Art and Art History) book, Embroidering the Landscape: Women, Art and the Environment in British North America, 1740–1770, published by Lund Humphries. The Award Committee notes: "Andrea Pappas’s Embroidering the Landscape is a work of serious intellectual ambition. Not content to foreground embroidered needlework as subject of intensive art-historical inquiry, Pappas excavates women’s contributions to an expanded vision of pictorial art. Written with lucid, critical acuity, Embroidering the Landscape troubles received views in which embroidered landscapes embody “naïve” visions. Instead, the book demonstrates how these understudied works were made by worldly women actively combining representational systems and spatial projections encountered in European precedents, Asian export ware, and first-hand experience. Working up from the archive to theorize scalar hierarchies and the “telescopic perspective” incorporated into embroidered pictorial logics, Pappas places needleworks and their makers in an Atlantic world of imperial inequality, land spoliation, and colonialism’s devastating ecological consequences. Embroidering the Landscape is a timely contribution that will find readership in environmental history, women’s studies, and histories of science, among other fields." This is the second scholarly award for Andrea's book.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar