Senior Assistant Dean Rafael Ulate (lower left, center) received technical and moral support from Military Science's Lieutenant Colonel Sean Chang (lower left, left) and Captain Travis Newman (lower left, right) as he took on rappelling 65 feet and jumping out of an airplane at 12,500 feet with the Golden Knights, the US Army's parachuting team.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

As we begin our last full month of summer (yes, it's only August 5th!) Fall Quarter will be upon us in no time, so our planning for the next academic year is already keeping us in the Dean’s Office quite busy!

Many of us in the College are doing the usual preparation for Fall Quarter classes and the traditional events of the new academic year, to be sure, but there is something else in the air: a fresh start, with a new president, a new cohort of students and a sense that we can do much more than endure the pandemic; we can flourish!

To me, this means that we are more equipped than ever to simultaneously struggle against all that is difficult, dangerous and frightening (racism, pandemic and climate, for starters) and create, nurture, teach, grow, discover. I look forward to exploring new vistas with you in the coming year. In the meantime, it’s great to see our scholarship is continuing throughout the summer, and your work is being recognized by external organizations, as many of these notes attest.

All that said, don’t neglect the vegetable gardens, beaches and forests of our glorious Bay Area summer!

Best,

Daniel

Highlights

Grace Stokes (Chemistry & Biochemistry) helped to organize the first in-person "Enhancing Science Courses by Integrating Python" workshop in Tucson, AZ on July 4-6, 2022. She led a group of 15 faculty from across the country who met together to share resources and develop new Python coding exercises to teach data science and programming to undergraduates while achieving course learning objectives in non-computationally-focused chemistry, physics or astronomy courses. These activities were funded by a Cottrell Scholar Collaborative grant from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. This meeting generated so much interest among other faculty who use (or are planning to use) Python in their courses that Grace will be co-organizing an inaugural west-coast regional workshop at Santa Clara University in January 2023!

Congratulations to Allison McNamara '15 (Anthropology and Environmental Studies) on completing all requirements to earn a PhD in biological anthropology at UT Austin! Allison is graduating with 9 (nine) peer-reviewed articles and an H index of 5. But, we all know an H-index is about as valuable as a GRE score. After graduating from SCU, Allison completed fieldwork in Zambia, Honduras, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and in the United States (fossil primates). She is a superstar!

If you would like to congratulate Allison, her email address is: allison.mcnamara@utexas.edu

Photo: Allison McNamara at the Chimfunshi field site in Zambia.

Molly M. King (Sociology) published a research article entitled "REDI for Binned Data: A Random Empirical Distribution Imputation Method for Estimating Continuous Incomes" in the journal Sociological Methodology. The article introduces a new method that enables researchers to use a reference data set to convert categorical income data into continuous values. This method can be used to reconcile bins between data sets or across years and handle top incomes. It can also be useful for deriving continuous values for individual observations for subsequent regression analyses.

Image: Illustration of the random empirical distribution imputation method. The number of income values sampled from all income bins approximates a continuous distribution.

The Modern Language Association Committee on Scholarly Editions awarded its Seal to The Stainforth Library of Women’s Writing on Monday, July 11, 2022. Kirstyn Leuner (English) directs this digital humanities (DH) project, co-edited with Prof. Deborah Hollis (CU-Boulder University Libraries). This award and seal mean that the project will be indexed with MLA’s CSE Approved Editions. The Seal signifies that we did our job of meeting the highest standards in the field for a digital scholarly edition that is accurate, reliable, consistent, and explicit in its delivery of significant textual content. The process of obtaining the seal required the project pass full peer review for form and content for a second time (we also passed peer-review by the Advanced Research Consortium in October 2021). The editors will receive a prize at the 2024 MLA meeting in Philadelphia.
   
The Stainforth project plays an important role in the MLA’s CSE Seal index. First, it represents scholarship on marginalized writers and texts among a list that leans heavily canonical. Second, it is one of few DH projects in the list. We hope it opens doors for institutional recognition of digital scholarly editions that center marginalized authors.

Anne Baker (Political Science) published an article, “Out-of-State Contributions Provide Non-Incumbent House Candidates with a Competitive Edge,” in American Politics Research. Her article examines congressional candidates' growing reliance upon out-of-state donor contributions to fund their campaigns and, relatedly, the growing influence of this national set of donors. She finds out-of-state funds from donors serve as an important signal to the rest of the party network that particular newcomers to politics are worth their support.

The Media Ecology Association presented its 2022 Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship to Paul Soukup, S.J. (Communication). As part of the award, Paul gave the keynote address at the association's annual convention, held this year in early July in Rio de Janeiro.

Kai Harris's (English) debut novel, What the Fireflies Knew, was longlisted for The Center for Fiction's 2022 First Novel Prize. Twenty-four debut novels were selected from over 140 submitted titles with U.S. publication dates between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2022.
   
The First Novel Prize, first awarded in 2006, was created to honor the best debut fiction of the year. The winner receives a $15,000 prize and each of the other shortlisted authors receives $1,000. The shortlisted titles will be announced this fall, and the winner will be announced on Tuesday, December 6, 2022 at The Center for Fiction Annual Awards Benefit.
   
96 volunteer readers chosen from The Center’s diverse community of writers, booksellers, librarians, members, and staff determined the longlist. From these recommended titles, a judging panel of five distinguished authors—to be announced—will choose the shortlist and the winner.

On June 10, Evelyn Ferraro (Modern Languages & Literatures) co-hosted with Laura Ruberto (Berkeley City College) a post-screening panel discussion of Dear Sirs, a documentary film by Mark Pedri exploring the story of Mark’s grandfather's experience as World War II Prisoner of War. The event organized by Marie Bertola (Modern Languages & Literatures) with the co-sponsorship of the Italian-American Heritage Foundation (IAHF, San Jose) and Il Cenacolo (San Francisco) brought together the Italian-American community for a moment of mindful recollection and storytelling. The screening and post-screening discussion are part of a focused and broader effort by the Italian Program to engage the community in a conscious effort to preserve and interpret the voices of the past, and reflect on how its scars and longings have shaped today’s present.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar