Dolores Huerta made a special visit to campus for a discussion on Art and Activism with Karina Gutiérrez (Theatre and Dance) and playwright Lisa Ramirez and met the cast and crew of TO THE BONE. Pictured: Erika Shanahan '22 (Communication, Political Science), Assistant Production Director; Emily Moya '24 (Biology); Ariana Chavez-Magaña '24 (Psychology, Child Studies); Dolores Huerta; Patrick Ocock '22 (Theatre Arts), Assistant Director; Tavi DeLeon '23 (English). Inset: Karina Gutiérrez, Director; Dolores Huerta; Lisa Ramirez, Playwright. Photos by Adam Hays.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

It’s the end of week 7, yikes! And while many of you are past midterms, there is no slowing down in a 10-week quarter…and yet, signs of this year’s close are everywhere: awards ceremonies, farewell gatherings for retirees, department end-of-year parties. I so enjoy seeing many of you at these gatherings!

This spring we will also live through a historic watershed moment at SCU, when our non-tenure track faculty vote on unionization, a long-awaited process. I strongly encourage all of the College’s many non-tenure track faculty members to cast their votes on this critical matter (ballots will be mailed on May 27 and must be received by the National Labor Relations Board by June 17).

If you are unsure whether you are included in the bargaining unit, I encourage you to read the Provost’s communication announcing the election.

Vox populi, vox Dei!

Daniel

Highlights

Justen B. Whittall (Biology) recently received the John Mooring Native Plant Research Endowment Award supporting native plant research. John Mooring (Professor Emeritus, Biology) taught Field Botany, Plant Ecology, Evolution, and more at SCU. He was recruited by Santa Clara University to bring cutting-edge NSF-funded research to the College. His research on the origin of species in California native sunflowers combined field, greenhouse, and laboratory research. The pioneering methods he employed to create hybrids in the greenhouse and then assess the behavior of the chromosomes provided insights into the boundaries that define species that are not as easily discernible in plants, especially those darn yellow composites. Like Mooring’s research, Whittall’s lab also relies heavily on the greenhouse facility atop Alumni Science where undergraduates, postbacs, and visiting scientists from around the world come to study the ecology and evolution of plants from the field to the gene with a special focus on flower color.

Image: John Mooring on a recent visit to SCDI. He is holding a photo of himself working at the microscope that he used to observe the patterns of chromosomes in sunflower hybrids which he created in the SCU greenhouse.

Peter Minowitz (Political Science) published a 1200-word article (in Inside Higher Education) that faults journalists for distorting the new state laws that target Critical Race Theory.

Juliana Chang with roundtable participants on Asian American Studies at Jesuit universities: Professors Ed Park (Loyola Marymount University), Stephen Sohn (Fordham University), James Kim (Fordham University), Long Le-Khac (Loyola University Chicago), and Vivian Lu (Fordham University).

Juliana Chang (English) chaired a panel, "Asian American Writers Workshop @ 30: Building an Asian American Community that Lasts" at the Association for Asian American Studies Conference in Denver, Colorado, April 14-16, 2022. She also participated in a roundtable on Asian American Studies at Jesuit universities across the country.

Rohit Chopra (Communication) was invited to speak at a congressional briefing held on April 26, 2022, held in response to the 2021 Annual Report of the United States Commission on International Freedom, and calling for sanctions against India in light of persistent violations of minority rights. The report recommended India for the designation of a 'Country of Particular Concern' for the third year in a row. Rohit's comments focused on the clear evidence of genocidal actions against Indian Muslims, indicators state-supported violence against Indian Muslim and Christian communities, and the urgent need for the US and broader international community to take action. Other speakers included Arunima Bhargava, USCIRF Commissioner, Reverend Peter Cook, Executive Director, NY State Council of Churches, and Ellen Kennedy, Executive Director of World Without Genocide. Rohit's comments can be viewed here.

Rohit Chopra also chaired and moderated a Zoom panel titled 'Censorship, Resistance and Violence' on April 27, 2022, as part of the three-day Annual South Asia Conference organized by the Ireland India Institute at Dublin City University. Papers covered censorship in Kashmir, Indian Prime Minister, the politics of Narendra Modi's use of the radio to promote his vision for India, the role of social media in state-level Indian elections, and anti-Muslim narratives in mainstream Indian television news channels. The panel discussion was followed by a general Q&A session with audience members.

Alberto Ribas-Casasayas's (Modern Languages & Literatures) paper "Mexican Studies v. the Psychedelic Renaissance" was read _in absentia_ at the 26th Bruce-Novoa Mexican Studies Conference at UC Irvine. The paper addresses some cultural, social, and economic challenges posed by recent developments in the medical industry and some forms of spiritual and wellness tourism centered around psychedelic substances, with a focus on biopiracy, cultural appropriation, and other forms of abuse.

Image: 1955. The Mazatec healer María Sabina prepares a ceremony with 'ndi xitoj (the little sprouting ones) under the gaze of banker and ethnomycologist Robert Gordon Wasson. The ceremony would become the focus of a famous photo report in Life magazine two years later.

SCU Physics students (l-r): Ivar Rydstrom '24 (Physics), Weston Tierney '22 (Physics), Chloe Morali '24 (Computer Science & Engineering), David Rogers '24 (Physics), Daniel Gutierrez '23 (Computer Science & Engineering, Engineering Physics) alongside a classic brachistochrone model. The brachistochrone problem (brachistos = shortest; chronos = time), well known to physics majors, is that of determining the path down which a particle will fall from one given point to another in the shortest time.

More than a dozen SCU Society of Physics students and Women in Physics members enjoyed a great weekend trip to the San Francisco Exploratorium in April 2022.

Award reception at WPA 2022; Left: Kerri Lyons; Right: Naila Masom

Kerri Lyons '23 (Neuroscience), mentored by Lindsay Halladay (Psychology, Neuroscience), and Naila Masom '22 (Psychology), mentored by Lang Chen (Psychology), received a highly-competitive Student Travel Award (21/945; 2%) from the Western Psychological Association to present their research work at the 103rd WPA Convention at Portland, OR in April 2022. Kerri’s work “Investigating the role of stress-regulating cells in the extended amygdala during aversive fear learning” used a combination of animal behavior and chemogenetics to target and manipulate specific neurons in the brain to understand how dynamic neural activation patterns drive aspects of aversive learning. Kerri’s project has implications for understanding how aberrant neural activity may lead to anxiety disorders. Her work is partially funded by SCU’s REAL program. Naila’s work “Sex Differences in Resting-State Functional Connectivity of the mPFC and ACC in ASD” revealed increased brain connections between the social and frontoparietal attention networks in females with ASD compared to the males with ASD, suggesting that upregulations of the brain networks in females may explain the less severe symptoms in affected individuals known as the “female protective effect” and imbalanced ratio of female and male in ASD. Naila’s research work is supported by the SCU WAVE Visualization Award to Chen.

Jia Seow

Jia Seow '22 (Psychology) presented her poster at the 103rd Western Psychological Association annual conference in Portland, OR, and won first place in the American Psychological Association’s Division 52 (International Psychology) poster contest. Together with her advisor Birgit Koopmann-Holm (Psychology) as well as Eleanore Carper '22 (Psychology, Anthropology), she presented their most recent work on what people regard as compassionate in Chinese and U.S. American contexts.

Birgit Koopmann-Holm also gave two talks at this conference: During a symposium, she presented her new work showing that people’s motivation to avoid feeling negative makes them acknowledge systemic racism less. Because she received WPA’s Early Career Research Award in 2021, this year, she gave an invited Award Address, during which she presented her work on the cultural shaping of sympathy and compassion.

Students working in several research labs in the Psychology Department presented at the 103rd Western Psychological Association annual conference in Portland, OR. They are Amana Liddell '22 (Biology), Charlotte Parque '22 (Psychology, Music), Rosie Dillon '22 (Psychology, Communication), Brianna Wingard '22 (Psychology), Naila Masom '22 (Psychology), Tannaz Azimi '22 (Neuroscience), Lani Krossa '23 (Computer Science), Anna Riggs '23 (Neuroscience), Jonathan Tablante '22 (Neuroscience, Biology), Aidan Williams '22 (Individual Studies), Huy Pham '22 (Neuroscience), Alex Edwin '23 (Neuroscience), Nick Luckenbach '22 (Computer Science & Engineering, Psychology), Janet Ronquillo '23 (Neuroscience), Linnea Rothi '23 (Biology, Neuroscience), Jocelyn Yang '24 (Psychology), Michael Nguyen '24 (Neuroscience, Music), Kerri Lyons '23 (Neuroscience), Jordan Rodrigues '23 (Psychology, Ethnic Studies), Nnenna Uche '23 (Psychology), Alyssa Bergmann '22 (Psychology), Jia Seow '22 (Psychology), Sophia Hartenbaum '22 (Psychology), Georgia Harrell '22 (Psychology), Brianna Mireku '22 (Public Health, Psychology), Taylor Tamashiro '22 (Psychology, Communication), Mikayla Apodaca '23 (Psychology, Political Science), Alexandra Hock '23 (Psychology), Antionette Aragon '22 (Psychology), Claire Van Dyke '23 (Psychology), Daniel Teramoto '22 (Psychology), Jada Lawson '22 (Psychology). Their Psychology faculty mentors were Jiu Bhagwat, Kathryn Bruchmann, Lang Chen, Lindsay Halladay, Birgit Koopmann-Holm, Kirsten Read, Matthew Bell, Patricia Simone, Lisa Whitfield, and Tim Urdan. We are grateful for the funding support from the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Dean.

Juan Velasco-Moreno (English) and Kirk Glaser (English), director of The Writing Forward Reading Series, organized a poetry celebration for Cinco de Mayo at the Forge Garden on Thursday, May 5, 2022. The poetry reading was hosted by professor Juan Velasco-Moreno and Kirk Glaser and featured four renowned Latinx poets: Matt Sedillo, Rachelle Escamilla, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, and Naomi Quinonez.

Image: (Clockwise from top left) Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Naomi Quinonez, Matt Sedillo, and Rachelle Escamilla.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar