The Dean's office gathered with chairs and department managers to mark the end of another academic year and to celebrate the hard work that helps the College run smoothly. Photo by Robert Khalipa.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

We find ourselves at the end of our last week of classes with many celebrations already underway. This week we held our annual paella party for the chairs and department managers—my first since becoming your dean! What a fun tradition, I am so glad we were able to come together to celebrate in person, finally.

This week, the University also celebrated the Senior Toast, at which the University Awards were announced. Congratulations to all of the seniors honored this year! I am so proud to see the majority of them are majors within the College. It is a testament to the excellent departments and programs that make up the College, and a reflection of the care you all put into your work each day. Thank you!

Highlights

David Jeong (Communication) published a journal article in Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory titled "Disaster World: Decision-theoretic agents for simulating population responses to hurricanes," which discusses an AI framework for simulating natural disaster/crisis response behavior (e.g., hurricane evacuation). This work was part of a larger program that sought to assess the accuracy of social science modeling approaches that make causal inferences about social dynamics in the real world, namely the “ground truth” underlying the observed phenomena.

Image: This figure shows the general procedures of the intensive training program and the connectivity between hippocampus and intraparietal sulcus

Lang Chen (Psychology, Neuroscience) published a co-authored paper in the Journal of Neuroscience in May 2022. The study examined the neurobiological circuit markers in learning through a behavioral intervention program focusing on number sense (e.g., quantity information processing) in children. The results showed that the brain connection between the hippocampus and intraparietal sulcus could predict the learning gains across individuals with or without math learning difficulties. This study provides novel insights into a brain circuit critical for the acquisition of number skills, and effective interventions targeting these fundamental cognitive skills could remediate learning disabilities.

More than five years after defending her dissertation in the same colloquium room, Jesica Siham Fernández (Ethnic Studies) was invited to present her book, Growing Up Latinx: Coming of Age in a Time of Contested Citizenship, in that very same room at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she received her Ph.D. The joy of presenting her book before members of her dissertation committee years later was an affirming and healing experience for Jesica.

In addition to giving book talks at UC Santa Cruz and CSU Fullerton, Jesica in collaboration with Dr. Rod Watts at CUNY (The Graduate Center at City University of New York), recently published an article: "Sociopolitical Development as Emotional Work: How Young Organizers Engage Emotions to Support Community Organizing for Transformative Racial Justice." The manuscript makes an important intervention in the sociopolitical development literatures that often overlook the significance of socioemotional learning among youth in the context of community organizing spaces. This manuscript was published in a top-tier outlet that is the Journal of Adolescent Research.

Image: Jesica delivers her book talk presentation at UC Santa Cruz.

Image: Psychology Honors Program graduates present their work at our year-end poster session.

On Friday, May 13th, graduates of the Psychology Honors Program displayed the outcomes of their year-long projects, in partial fulfillment of the program requirements. This class of program graduates includes: Paige Clement '22 (Psychology), Zach Goldman '22 (Psychology), Sophia Hartenbaum '22 (Psychology), Amana Liddell '22 (Psychology, Biology), Kara Murray '22 (Psychology, Communication), Charlotte Parque '22 (Psychology, Music), Samantha Rusnak '22 (Psychology), Isa Sanchez Flores '22 (Psychology), Jia Seow '22 (Psychology), Skylar Seyffert '22 (Psychology), Daniel Teramoto '22 (Psychology), and Brianna Wingard '22 (Psychology). Students in the program complete projects that incorporate either an internship or empirical research study, participate in a 2-course Honors Colloquium sequence, and also lead service projects that benefit the psychology department, campus, or wider community. Congratulations to these students for their hard work and persistence!

Francisco Jiménez (Professor Emeritus, Modern Languages and Literatures) was a speaker for the Georgetown Crossing the Border Lecture Series, "Generations Making Mexican America," hosted by the Georgetown College Americas Forum and co-sponsored by the Georgetown Americas Institute, April 20. He was a keynote speaker at the National Conference, Monarch Migration & Multilingualism: Teaching Content and Language in Tandem, at Sedona, Arizona, hosted by Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona Geographical Alliance, and Office of English Language Acquisition, May 12. In his presentation, "The Educational Value of Storytelling," Jiménez discussed why it is essential for educators to teach and transmit stories by and about the different populations of immigrants to this country. In addition, he was a guest speaker at the Rotary Club of Pacifica on May 3. He gave a talk at SCU on “The Transformational Power of Education” for 62 students and their teachers from the Salinas High School Unified Migrant Program, April 26. He also made in-person author visits to Hilios School in Sunnyvale on April 12 and to Independent Silicon Valley High School, San José on April 27. In addition, he made virtual author presentations on his writing to the Oregon State University’s College Migrant Scholars Program, April 8; B.H. Hamlin Elementary School, Hamlin, Texas, April 14; and Ballyshannon Middle School, Union, Kentucky, April 22.

Kathleen Maxwell (Art & Art History) gave one of the keynote addresses at the inaugural Pen, Print, & Pixels Conference sponsored by The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, Plano Texas on May 20. The title of her talk was "From the Coronis to the Bluetenblattstil: The Decoration of the Greek Gospel Book from the Fourth through the Tenth Centuries."

Image: Athens, National Library of Greece, codex 56, St. Matthew

Iris Stewart-Frey (Environmental Studies & Sciences) and Ed Maurer (CESE) from the Environmental Justice and the Common Good Initiative, together with colleague Hugo Hidalgo (University of Costa Rica) and Kenneth Joseph ’21 (Bioengineering, Biology) published an article, "The Mesoamerican mid-summer drought: the impact of its definition on occurrences and recent changes," in Hydrology and Earth System Science. The mid-summer drought, veranillo or canícula, is a phenomenon experienced in many areas, including Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. It generally denotes a period of reduced rainfall in July–August that is important for the local planting cycle. The group of researchers worked to understand those definitions from prior studies and smallholder farmer feedback and then tested the impact on these varying definitions on projected changes under climate change. They found that the typical mid-summer drought pattern may not be occurring during the time or in the places it has historically; whether examining past or future changes or developing improved seasonal forecasts, the non-stationarity of its timing should be accommodated. Results from this study have been shared at a water and climate change workshop with smallholder farmer representatives. Implications inform ongoing local climate adaptation planning.

Image: Water storage for smallholder community in Nicaragua

Congratulations to six SCU Physics and Engineering Physics (EP) majors and one Physics minor who were selected as Geoff and Josie Fox Summer Research Fellows for 2022. These undergraduates will work on research projects with their SCU Physics faculty mentors and will be funded by an endowed gift from the Fox family. Students will present their summer research results this coming Fall at the annual SCU Physics Summer Research Symposium (date TBA). The 2022 Fox Awardees are and their Physics faculty mentors are:

• Peter Hovland '23 (Physics), mentored by John Birmingham
• Skyler Weight '23 (Engineering Physics) and Peyton Clark '23 (Mechanical Engineering, Physics minor), mentored by Bachana Lomsadze
• Rob Cady '23 (Mathematics, Physics), mentored by Guy Ramon
• Yiyi Wang '23 (Physics), mentored by Chris Weber
• Ivar Rydstrom '24 (Physics) and Makar Dubovskov '23 (Computer Science, Physics), mentored by Betty Young

Image: Geoff and Josie Fox, special friends of SCU Physics, celebrate the 2019 inauguration of the Geoff and Josie Fox Summer Research Fellowship Program. Fox fellowships enable talented SCU Physics students to hone their scientific abilities, deeply investigate new and exciting physics, and effectively pursue their goals as young scientists.

Earlier this year, Margaret McLean (Religious Studies) was appointed to the Editorial Board of a new international journal, the Journal of Geoethics and Social Geosciences.

In addition, she had published two papers this year:

"Combining Ethics Inquiry and Clinical Experience in a Premedical Health Care Ethics Internship," with Melissa Bottrell, published in the January 2022 issue of Academic Medicine (Acad Med 2022:97:78-83). This study of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Health Care Ethics Internship demonstrated the enduring positive impact of deep experience in health care settings coupled with classroom learning and reflection on ethics at the bedside on: graduates' career decisions, professional capabilities, preprofessional competencies, and moral sensitivity and responsibility. It provides resources for program replication.

"Preparing Ahead Wisely And Ethically to Stave Off Crisis Standards of Care" published in the Spring 2022 issue of Health Progress (Health Progress 2022: 103 (2): 12-16). The COVID pandemic forced us to reckon with our fractured and fragile healthcare system, especially the lack of needed resources from PPE to ventilators to antivirals. In response, hospitals developed Crisis Standards of Care that included triage protocols for those times—and there were many—when not everyone who needed help could receive it. This paper argues that prevention is better than crisis and proposes an "ethics of contingency" meant to stave off the crisis of scarcity.

Cruz Medina (English) was a contributor to a position statement for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) on Media Education in English Language Arts. The statement provides support on behalf of the national organization and its members for educators whose institutions do not recognize how technology, media, and multimodal composing parallel traditional English Language Arts curricula while offering culturally and technologically relevant skills and literacies to students who read and write in these digital spaces. Other contributors include past NCTE president Ernest Morrell (University of Notre Dame). The statement can be read on NCTE's website.

Image: NCTE Position Statement Home Page

Narine Kerelian (Political Science) joined Gizem Arat’s (Lingnan University, SAR Hong Kong, China) research team to examine: “The COVID-19 pandemic and disadvantaged ethnic minority communities in Hong Kong: How to promote culturally appropriate practice?” This study explores local social service providers’ views on employing culturally responsive practices to include ethnic minorities in Hong Kong’s COVID-19 response. We collaborated with 15 social service providers working in 11 non-governmental organizations tasked with assisting and empowering underprivileged ethnic minority groups (namely South or Southeast Asians, asylum seekers/refugees, and foreign domestic workers) in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key findings from the study include a lack of mental health support for diverse ethnic minority groups, language barriers impeding access across services, a lack of channels to disseminate timely and accurate public health information, and a lack of appropriate surgical mask sizes for some ethnic minority individuals. This study calls for a culturally responsive implementation of health policies, practices and service provision to bring equity and inclusion into Hong Kong’s COVID-19 response, with implications for global cities experiencing growing diversities. In addition to academic contributions through forthcoming journal publication, this research has also been highlighted in Hong Kong’s local news (Sing Tao Daily, 星島日報) to raise public awareness.

Left Picture - Artwork produced by: John Brouhard, Chase Zamborelli & Josef Rapadas
Right Picture - Artwork produced by: Aidan Mackey, Kevin Rooney & Corrado Moy

(Re) Imaginando nuestra Universidad

(Re) Imagining Our University

The artworks on view in this digital display were created by Santa Clara University undergraduate students enrolled in the Spanish 2 Language and Culture Class. Emily E. Frankel (Modern Languages and Literature) utilized a class assignment in Winter of 2022 to encourage students to address current concerns through art and through a re-imagining of University space. Working in groups, students researched artists from Spanish-speaking countries or countries with Spanish colonial histories, along with artists of Latinx and Native American backgrounds here in the United States. Students then developed artistic expressions inspired by the artist they studied to address subjects of importance to the students. The resulting artworks touch upon themes related to mental health, the impact of the pandemic on the student body, indigenous identity, war, poverty, women’s rights, the influence of Latinx writers and celebrities, immigration, childhood memories, labor conditions, and more. Students were also asked to think about where they would showcase their project on the Santa Clara University campus if given the opportunity and why—encouraging them to think through how their art and its content relate to aspects of campus life and how their work might inspire others to see and think about spaces on campus differently. For more info, please contact: desaissetmuseum@scu.edu

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar