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| June 9, 2023 | Submit a Note |
 Thank you to all of our Department Managers for the work that you do! The College celebrated our Department Managers and Chairs at our annual End of Year Celebration this week. We gathered at the Forge Garden, enjoyed fresh tacos, sunshine, and a raffle!
We have made it to the end of the year! As usual, we had a busy spring quarter, but overall, I think, a very successful year for the College. The past few years have been characterized by difficulty, anxiety, and many challenges. This year felt more uplifting; that’s not to say we didn’t encounter challenges, but they were of the usual type we tend to encounter at an academic institution. It was great to be in classes with masks off, great to welcome prospective and new students in person, great to travel for our many academic pursuits. And now it’s June, so we celebrate Pride this month! It is so fitting that Pride celebrations – which invite us to be our true, whole selves – coincide with graduation and commencement. Pride and commencement thereby reinforce each other in a marvelous way that we only see on a college campus. I am also thrilled that the University has initiated the LGBTQ+ Equity, Justice, and Belonging (LGBTQ+EJB) Working Group, and that it is being co-chaired by two of our own – Sonja Mackenzie (Public Health) and CiAuna Heard (Women’s and Gender Studies). But we’re not done yet: good luck with finals week, grading and the last sprint to the end of the academic year! Sincerely, Daniel A Message from the Office of Accessible EducationThe Office of Accessible Education is looking to gauge student interest for a potential interdisciplinary Disability Studies minor at SCU. The proposed minor aims to provide students with the opportunity to explore disability as a critical perspective within the human experience and hopes to offer insight on the history, experiences, and theoretical models on how differences in mental and physical ability have been constructed throughout society. Please consider sharing their survey with your students before the end of the year. Highlights
At the 31st Annual British Women Writers Conference, held at the University of Virginia on May 25-27, Kirstyn Leuner (English) presented a plenary paper titled “Giving It Away: From Private Library to Public Digital Humanities, The Stainforth Library of Women’s Writing.” Her talk argued that the acts of freely and openly sharing research, data, and methods are fundamental feminist praxis that advance the field of women's book history and bring us together as collaborators in a common project. Build it, but then, if you can, give it all away. After describing The Stainforth project, Leuner gave an example of how the Stainforth works in concert with a community of projects, especially 18thConnect and the Women’s Print History Project, to recover a long poem by Esther Barnes called "The Disengaged Fair" (1796). At the conference, Leuner also co-organized a Wikipedia edit-a-thon on women writers and presented a second paper on a project underway with Amy Lueck (English) to learn from one another how pedagogical recovery of 19th century women writers in theory and practice differs between rhetorical studies and literary history, two sub-disciplines of English Studies. Leuner has been an executive board member of the British Women Writers Association for 10 years as the Web and Media Manager, a role she invented as a graduate student.
Tom Plante (Psychology) has published a new book, Spiritually Informed Therapy (SIT): Wisdom and Evidence Based Strategies that Work. This text demonstrates how clinicians can incorporate cornerstone principles from Jesuit spirituality into professional and contemporary clinical psychotherapy practice. It underscores the benefits of introducing key faith-based principles into both secular and spiritually informed therapy to enrich client experiences. The core tenets from Jesuit spirituality introduced throughout the book include seeing God (or the sacred) in all things, treating the whole person, using a pathway for decision-making focusing on discernment, ending the day with a five-step reflection, managing conflicts with accommodation, humility, the expectation for goodness, and more. Readers learn how spiritually informed therapy can be used with diverse psychotherapy clients and in various clinical settings. The text features real-world case studies that demonstrate how Jesuit spirituality has helped individuals work through their problems and discover greater overall wellness. Developed to provide clinicians with new strategies, principles, and interventions to add to their psychotherapy toolbox, Spiritually Informed Therapy is a textbook for courses and programs in psychiatry and the behavioral sciences.
Shriya Sridharan (Art and Art History) published two papers in 2023. The first is an article titled "Women in Hindu Temple Art: Their Auspicious Presence and Unmarked Absence" in the Religion and the Arts journal. This article focuses on kolam-making, the only art/ritual practice that women are associated with in the traditional or Agamic temples of South India even today. It locates the absence of women as contemporary temple art practitioners in the intersection of the meanings of being female and the meanings of temple architectural forms and spaces. The second publication is a chapter titled, "Negotiating the ‘Living’ with the Historical: Teaching the Two Views of the Hindu Temple" in the book Teaching South and Southeast Asian Art: Multiethnicity, Cross-Racial Interaction, and Nationalism. This chapter points out the different perspectives of historians and worshippers in the viewing and conservation of Hindu temples, highlighting the need to incorporate them both in the teaching of Hindu art and architecture. In addition to showing how these two perspectives are taught in the classroom, this chapter traces how different meanings and valuations of Hindu temples as antiquities, as homes for living gods, as material evidences and so on, are negotiated in practice through spatial demarcations and selective renovations.
Jane Curry (Political Science) is going back to Poland this summer to teach at the Center for East European Studies at the University of Warsaw. She will teach students from all over the former Soviet Union and much of East Europe about our understanding of democracy and authocracy as well as the transitions from autocracy to democratic systems. It is a three and a half week course. (Jane began teaching there when she held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in East European Studies in 2003-4 and have taught there most summers since–until COVID and then "the war" in Ukraine stopped people from coming.) It is starting again this summer. Jane says it's an honor to have had the chair and to have taught yearly since. It means that, when she teaches about this area of the world and the theories of democracy and autocracy, she has some real-world experience and a sense of the lived reality for people in these countries. And, hopefully, she has helped some future elites to understand our world and the positives and negatives better. She also had a former student who got a Fulbright to study there a decade ago. Another student came for a summer to finish up the 4th edition of Central and East European Politics and got to know Poles and Poland.
Trisha Nguyen '23 (Computer Science and Engineering), Mohammed Khadadeh '21 (Computer Science, Studio Art) and David Jeong (Communication) of the Imaginarium published a paper in the Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, "Shippers and Kinnies: Re-conceptualizing Parasocial Relationships with Fictional Characters in Contemporary Fandom."
David Jeong (Communication) advised the following papers and presentations led by students of the Imaginarium Lab and Media Lab at the 73rd Annual International Communication Association Conference in Toronto in May 2023. Ashley Pace '24 (Philosophy, Communication), Sara Wheeler '25 (Web Design and Engineering), Jenna Shuey '24 (Communication), “Casual Instagram: An Investigation of Performative Authenticity." Trisha Nguyen '23 (Computer Science and Engineering), Mohammed Khadadeh '21 (Computer Science, Studio Art), Shreyansh Panda '25 (Communication), Jessica King '25 (Philosophy), Andrea Perng '22 (Communication), "Kinnies and Shippers: Explicating Parasocial Relationships with Fictional Characters in the Contemporary Fandom Space." Trisha Nguyen '23, Elliot Lee '23 (Computer Science), Jonathan Santosa '24 (Computer Science and Engineering), Hasmik Galstyan '23 (Computer Science and Engineering), Em Dang '20 (Computer Science and Engineering), Mohammed Khadadeh '21, "Restless VR: Simulating Escapism among Individuals with Social Anxiety." Jason Vu '24 (Web Design and Engineering), Ian Ohari '23 (Computer Science), Ruby Huynh '24 (Computer Science and Engineering), Riana Santos '25 (Computer Science and Engineering), Trisha Nguyen '23, Roberto Mercado '25 (Public Health Science), Shreyansh Panda '25, and Ryan Summers '22 (Computer Science and Engineering). "Toxic Impact: A sentiment analysis of toxicity within the Genshin Impact Twitter community." Saunder Salazar '24 (Mechanical Engineering) and Elliot Lee '23, "Photogrammetry for Digital Humanities." Liu, M., Drivas, M., & Miller, L. (Non-SCU Collaborators), "Metaversal communication science: Challenges, and opportunities for measuring and changing interpersonal communication patterns in VR." Student presenters received travel funding from the Department of Communication, Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, and the School of Engineering Dean’s Office.
Philip Kesten (Physics) returned this quarter to teach for the OLLI program. In “A Smorgasbord of Science,” Professor Kesten delves into scientific topics, such as physics, chemistry, astronomy, and math. He aims to answer science questions that members have long been curious about while correcting common misconceptions. OLLI@SCU will be featuring notable instructors periodically in the College Notes. The average course ranges from 4 to 10 hours of instruction per quarter. We hope this will inspire you to stay updated on OLLI news and possibly teach a class for our members. OLLI instructors are compensated for their time and knowledge; to learn more about the joy of teaching adult learners, contact olliatscu@gmail.com.
The Office for Multicultural Learning and the Rainbow Resource Center invites all alumni and friends to attend the following annual Multicultural Recognition Ceremonies to celebrate the achievements of the Class of 2023!
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Left to Right: Ian Ohari, Jonathan Santosa, Shreyansh Panda, Saunder Salazar, David Jeong, Riana Santos, Elliot Lee, Ashley Pace, Sara Wheeler. Seated: Trisha Nguyen, Andrea Perng.| College of Arts and Sciences |
Questions? Contact Sandy Boyer |