Sobrato Campus for Discovery and Innovation Dedication: Top (Left to Right): Bachana Lomsadze (Physics) and Betty Young (Physics). Bottom (Left to Right): Christelle Sabatier (Biology), Laura Cocas (Biology), Robert Brock '22 (Neuroscience), Christopher Arellano Reyes '23 (Biology).

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

This week, I had the pleasure of meeting with the College’s new CAS Dean’s Student Advisory Council for the first time. Made up of 10 students from across the College, we got to know each other over falafels. What a talented, hard-working, accomplished group! They have lots of ideas for where they would like to see the College go; they are also thoughtful about how to help me grasp the student perspective on issues of the day. We will meet formally twice a quarter, with “homework” in between meetings.  

I enjoyed seeing many of you at the Sobrato Campus dedication last Friday. It was a great opening of the terrific new building, made more so by the attendance of the governor, Gavin Newsom. I think his presence and his speech at the event underscore the importance of what we’re doing here at Santa Clara, illustrated perfectly by the attention he paid to the students who were there with us. Because, what is all of this for, if not the students? 

We have also caught the attention of others in our higher education space—this week we toured the building with LMU’s president, Timothy Law Snyder, who was keen to see what we are doing. LMU is looking at building a new, 100,000 square foot engineering building to match their relatively new Life Sciences Building. They were suitably impressed! 

Sincerely,

Daniel

Highlights

Tom Plante (Psychology) published a book chapter, "Relationship between Religion, Spirituality, and Psychotherapy: An Ethical Perspective," in The Oxford Handbook on Psychotherapy Ethics.

Spirituality and religion are typically a critically important element of most people’s lives. They offer an overarching framework for making sense of the world and a strategy to cope with life’s stressors. They provide a community and a way to wrestle with life’s biggest questions regarding meaning, purpose, and suffering. Mental health professionals are mandated to behave in an ethical manner defined by their codes of ethics. These codes typically understand religion and spirituality a multiculturalism issue. Professionals need to be respectful and responsible and pay close attention to potential implicit bias, boundary crossings, and destructive beliefs and practices. Working with religious professionals as helpful collaborative partners also achieves ethically minded best practices. Numerous resources are now available to help professionals develop and maintain their skills in ethically minded clinical practice with spiritual and religious clients. This chapter highlights these issues and offers suggested guidelines toward high quality professional practice.

Image: Top: Carter-O'Connell lab alumni who worked on the paper (from left to right: Yazmin Torres '20 (Biochemistry), Braden Yoshinaga '20 (Biology), Miles Yamasaki '20 (Biochemistry), Damon Rideaux '19 (Biology), Ian Carter-O'Connell, Sean Wallace '19 (Biochemistry), and Leila Chihab '20 (Biochemistry)) Bottom: Schematic of the TLC-MALDI method described in the paper.

The Ian Carter-O'Connell (Chemistry & Biochemistry) lab has a new paper out in ACS Chemical Biology, entitled: "Rapid Analysis of ADP-Ribosylation Dynamics and Site-Specificity Using TLC-MALDI." The team - led by co-first authors Sean Wallace '19 (Biochemistry) and Leila Chihab '20 (Biochemistry) - developed a quick, affordable, and accessible method to quantify multi-site ADP-ribosylation using thin-layer chromatography and matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (TLC-MALDI). Using their technique, they show that two related ADP-ribose transferases (PARPs 14 and 15) behave very differently when tasked with ADP-ribosylating themselves, which has some interesting implications for their function in the cell. They go on to show that the technique works equally well with peptide substrates and it can be used with chemical treatments to determine acceptor site chemistries. This work benefited from on ongoing collaboration with the Fuller lab and their synthesis of a key peptide substrate. Taken together, the team has shown the utility of their TLC-MALDI method and they look forward to its use in uncovering new biochemical mechanisms.

Earlier this month, Katy Bruchmann (Psychology) and her collaborators Maggie Osa '16 (nee Head, Psychology), Kahana Wong '21 (Psychology) and Lindsay Baerg '21 (Psychology) published an article titled "Construal level moderates a local dominance effect of appearance comparisons in undergraduate women" in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. Two studies examined why, as a population, undergraduate women have worse body image than other populations despite having bodies that are much closer to the beauty ideal. They found that it was a because of a local dominance effect—that is, undergraduate women were comparing themselves to relatively fit local student populations instead of a more size-diverse global population. This research also suggests that getting women to construe comparison information more abstractly (i.e., think more about the "bigger picture") helped them to overcome these harmful social comparisons. 

Image: Katy Bruchmann (Psychology)

Paul J. Schutz (Religious Studies) gave the inaugural lecture for "Que(e)ries," a new initiative exploring diverse genders and sexual diversity at St. Mary's College in Moraga, CA. Drawing on research completed for his recent article in Horizons: the Journal of the College Theology Society, the lecture—entitled "En-Gendering Creation Anew: Science, Gender, and Catholic Life"—explored the pastoral and practical implications of the Catholic Church's traditional account of gender as a male-female paradigm fulfilled in the unity of a man and a woman for LGBTQ+ persons. The lecture proposed that a model of dialogue rooted in scientific studies of the sexed human body and trans* experience might foster greater sensitivity to the real-life struggles of LGBTQ+ persons and lead the Catholic Church toward greater acceptance of all God's creatures in their unique, embodied particularity.

Lindsay Halladay (Psychology/Neuroscience) was selected to receive a Young Investigator Award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF), a private, non-profit foundation committed to alleviating the suffering caused by mental illness by supporting "the most promising young scientists conducting neurobiological research." This marks the first time a researcher at SCU has received this prestigious grant.

Through the BBRF Young Investigator Grant, Lindsay will receive two years of support ($70,000) for her research on the behavioral and neural deficits incited by early life trauma.

Nearly 1% of children in the US experience abuse or neglect, which can drastically alter neural development and lead to lifelong mental health conditions. While prior research has led to some insight regarding stress hormone dysregulation resulting from childhood adversity, less is known about how early life trauma interrupts neurodevelopment to induce lifelong socio-emotional deficits. With the help of SCU undergraduate researchers, the Halladay lab has identified a potential neural locus for social behavior deficits stemming from early exposure to trauma. Funding from the BBRF will support research to pinpoint precise neural circuits altered by early life trauma, with the hopes of identifying a potential therapeutic target for individuals afflicted with behavioral disorders incited by childhood adversity.

Psychology alumnae Sarah Rabinowitz '21 (Psychology, Communication) and Christina Pavlov '18 (nee McCollum, Psychology) led a research study under the direction of Kirsten Read (Psychology) and with the collaboration of student researchers Brianna Mireku '22 (Psychology), Katrina Ying '22 (Psychology), and Rose Zhang '22 (Psychology, Child Studies) that was published last week in Frontiers in Psychology. The study was on the emotional impacts to young adult volunteers of reading aloud with preschool-aged children, and found that shared reading can provide a mood boost to a reader, alongside the benefits it has for the child listening. This sweet study took four years to complete, and wouldn't have been possible without the support and collaboration of Kids on Campus as well as the student researchers in the Read Lab. 

Image: First author alumna Sara Rabinowitz reading aloud to KOC students at the University Library in 2019

Alma M. García, (Sociology) accepted her first place award certificate in the category of Best Young Adult Non-Fiction Book for her memoir Club Oasis: Childhood Memories (Floricanto Press, 2020) on Saturday Oct 16 at the International Latino Book Awards Virtual Ceremony. These awards recognize outstanding achievements in Latino Literature for the past year. Dr. Antonio Flores, CEO of Hispanic Association of Colleges & Universities introduced Alma.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar