Senior Public Health Science capstone students hosting the 2nd annual Opioid Overdose Prevention Event on campus on March 8, 2022.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

As many of you may have heard, the Board of Trustees recently approved raising Child Studies and Public Health to departmental status – I am so proud that these excellent departments are now recognized this way. Additionally, a minor in Graphic Design within the Department of Art and Art History has been approved. All of these have been a long time coming and I’m excited that they have come to fruition.

Also in the world of art at SCU, this week, we celebrated the life of Ed Dowd, benefactor of the Edward M. Dowd Art and Art History building. His legacy, both at Santa Clara and around the Bay Area is an important one. In his words, “A world filled with art is a far more enjoyable place.” And because of his generosity, students on our campus will benefit from our state-of-the-art facilities for years to come.

Ars longa, vita brevis (art is long, life is short); thank you, Mr. Dowd!

Daniel

Student Advisory Council

Farah Charisse Villanueva is a senior at SCU studying Communication and Ethnic Studies. Originally from Union City, California, she was drawn to the Student Advisory Council because she wanted to become more involved on campus and to advocate for underrepresented students.

While on the council, she hopes to help with diversity initiatives and to advocate for the hiring of more diverse faculty members, increase the amount of accessibility opportunities (financial, professional, academic, etc.) available for low-income, first generation, and BIPOC students. She also hopes to provide more support and resources for commuter and transfer students. A fun fact about Farah Charisse is that she recently learned to ice skate!

The Student Advisory Council was started during Fall 2021 and is made up of 10 students from across the College. They meet twice a quarter with Dean Press to discuss their aspirations, suggestions for new initiatives, and their responses to issues of the day.

Highlights

Cross-Pollination, a mural by Jessica Eastburn, installed at the SAP Center.

Jessica Eastburn (Art & Art History) created a mural for the Zoom Suites at the SAP Center in San José. The project was a partnership with the San Jose Sharks and Zoom; and was administered by Local Color, SJ. Commissioned artists were asked to interpret what San José means to them. Jessica's mural titled, Cross-Pollination, highlights some of the people, cultures, and industries that have helped shape San José. The mural is currently on view at the SAP Center in San José through the end of March.

Tom Plante (Psychology) along with several colleagues published a journal article on March 1, 2022, Psychological evaluations of clergy applicants in the Catholic Church: Answering frequently asked questions. in Spirituality in Clinical Practice.

Psychological evaluations are a standard component of the admission process for applicants to clergy programs in the Roman Catholic Church. Increased research and scholarship have shed light on the psychological health of clergy applicants. However, practitioners continue to lack clear guidance on salient ethics, cultural competence, and clinical considerations needed to implement evidence-based psychological assessments with this population. The purpose of this article is to answer frequently asked questions about the psychological evaluation of clergy applicants in the Catholic Church. The article reviews the purposes of these specialty assessments, the importance of informed consent and confidentiality, relevant documents issued by the Catholic Church that need to be integrated into the assessment process, and the extant literature that provides clarity about common tests and research that are important for clergy applicant evaluations. As a result, this article fills an important void for psychological researchers and practitioners engaged in professional roles with the Catholic Church.

Issue 6.1

Foglifter Press, the queer and trans literary collaborative founded by Miah Jeffra (English), was a recipient of a 2022 National Endowment of the Arts Grant.

Grace Stokes (Chemistry & Biochemistry) and her research student, Elliott Anderson '22 (Chemistry), received a $50,000 Cottrell Post-baccalaureate Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. These funds will help pay Elliott’s salary while he conducts research full-time for 12 months after graduation. Last summer, Elliott learned to utilize Grace Stokes’s laser and surface analysis setups in SCDI. He will be continuing to investigate peptoid-membrane interactions using a combination of cutting-edge analytical methods including second harmonic generation, Langmuir trough, Raman, and infrared spectroscopies.

Image: Elliott Anderson and Grace Stokes outside SCDI.

On February 19, Enrique S. Pumar (Sociology) delivered the keynote address at the 25th Conference of the Americas. The title of his talk was 'Dissenting a Humanitarian Crisis. Field notes from the Southern Border." In collaboration with Sandra Hanson, he co-edited a special issue of the journal Sustainability. The papers will be reprinted in a book entitled Moving toward Sustainability: Rethinking Gender Structures in Education and Occupation Systems. Enrique is currently working on the production of next year's volume of the Handbook of Latin American Studies as a contributing editor for sociology with the Library of Congress.

At its annual conference, John Hawley (English) received the South Asian Literary Association's Distinguished Achievement Award in Scholarship for lifetime contributions to the field. His chapter, “The Role of Transcultural Humanities in Times of Crisis: Nadeem Aslam, Karan Mahajan, and Kashmir,” has been published by Routledge in Transcultural Humanities in South Asia: Critical Essays on Literature and Culture, edited by Waseem Anwar.

Last month, together with three undergraduates Sophia Hartenbaum '22 (Psychology), Kara Murray '22 (Psychology, Communication), and Jia Seow '22 (Psychology), Birgit Koopmann-Holm (Psychology) went to the Annual Convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in San Francisco. This was their first in-person conference since the pandemic began! Each of her students presented a poster on the work they are conducting in the Culture Impacts Emotion Lab (on awe, acknowledging systemic racism, and cultural differences in compassion between China and the U.S.). Birgit gave two talks - an invited talk during the Culture Preconference (on cultural differences within the West) and a talk during a symposium on culture and prosocial as well as destructive emotions.

This month, Birgit was interviewed by Psychology Today about her work on culture and compassion. The article was published on March 7th. Upon publication, the editors promoted it as an Essential Read.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar