The Department of Biology welcomed over 300 students, faculty, and supporters to campus on April 6 for the 47th Annual West Coast Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Conference. There were 103 student poster presentations and 101 student talk presentations. Over 45 colleges and universities from eight states, including Arizona, California, Georgia, Kansas, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, and Washington, were represented. Image: CSU Sacramento (top left), Pomona College (top right), The Master's University (bottom, left), and Sonoma State University (bottom, right).  

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

Our annual Day of Giving was a success! Total campus gifts amounted to nearly $7.26 million; the College raised over $158,000 from 458 gifts this year - the most number of gifts in our Day of Giving history! More significantly, every single department and program within the College received donations during the campaign. We had nine different challenges across six departments and unlocked nearly $49,000 from challenges alone. Thanks to everyone who was involved in planning and promoting the College on this day!

I want to encourage you, if you haven’t already, to visit The Bias Inside Us, a community engagement project featuring a Smithsonian traveling exhibition hosted by the SCU Library before it concludes on April 21. Featuring compelling images, hands-on interactives, and powerful testimonials and videos, the exhibit raises awareness about the social science and psychology of implicit bias, its impact, and what people can do about it.

Tomorrow, campus will be host to nearly 1,750 prospective students and guests for our annual Preview Day. We will have departmental sessions, tabling, and tours taking places throughout the morning. Thank you to everyone who will be showing our prospective students how great it is to be a Bronco! Bear in mind that a very large proportion of students coming to Preview Day end up matriculating in fall, so we have reason to believe that your tabling, lectures, tours and welcome really make a big difference. Let’s cross our fingers that it doesn’t rain, despite the forecast...because, really, Sunny Santa Clara is a saying for a reason!

Daniel

Highlights

Presenting at the SfAA conference in Santa Fe, New Mexica. Left to right: Roberto Mercado, Bianca Duarte, Veronica Miranda, and Mae Krause.

Veronica Miranda (Anthropology) and Alice Villatoro (Public Health) organized a research roundtable at the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meetings in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The roundtable was titled “Addressing the Health Needs of Latina/e/o/x Communities in Santa Clara County, CA via Community-Academic Partnerships” and focused on two local, community-based projects. The first, addresses postpartum health experiences among Latina/e/o/x birthing people, including understanding how they navigate their postpartum lives and the resources they need to support their wellbeing (funded by the Bannan Forum Grant). The second project seeks to identify and understand the primary stressors to wellbeing and mental health among Latina/e/o/x adults in the South Bay and how they shape needs for mental health support (i.e., the South Bay Wellness Study funded by the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Grant). Collaborating student researchers presented preliminary findings from each of these projects: Mae Krause '24 (Public Health Science, Anthropology; postpartum project), Bianca Duarte '25 (Psychology, Public Health Science; South Bay Wellness Study), and Roberto Mercado '25 (Public Health Science; South Bay Wellness Study).

Chan Thai (center) with AIDFI colleagues and a survey worker from Moises Padilla en route to visit community members in Mico Coyaoyao, Negros.

In December 2023, Chan Thai (Communication) traveled to the island of Negros in the Philippines to visit collaborators at AIDFI, a non-profit organization that installs hydraulic water pumps to deliver running water to indigenous communities living in the mountains. Through a collaboration facilitated by Miller Center, Chan has been working with AIDFI to assess the impact of the water pumps on the quality of life of community members living in barangays (villages) that have had a pump installed. During this visit, Chan conducted interviews with 27 community members in six communities that have had water pumps installed to better understand how access to water has impacted their physical, social, financial, and overall wellbeing. Chan is currently working with two Communication Department alumni to analyze the data and write up a manuscript. This project was co-funded by the Miller Center, the Environmental Justice & the Common Good Initiative, and the College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Office.

Michelle McCully (Biology) traveled in January to a Gordon Research Conference on Protein Folding Dynamics. She presented her lab's work on determining the tradeoff between thermostability and function in a set of engineered DNA-binding proteins. The research was conducted in collaboration with undergraduates Lauren Verheyden '20 (Biochemistry), Lily Schumacher '21 (Biology, Studio Art), Andrew Bigler '20 (Chemistry, Biology, Music), Jessica DeSanctis '22 (Biology, Neuroscience), Nicole Boardman '22 (Biology), and Natali Gonzalez "20 (Biology), who designed the proteins and used a combination of computational modeling and experimental biophysics to test their designs.

Elizabeth Dahlhoff (Biology) attended the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meetings in Seattle, Washington (January 2024) with her students and collaborator Nathan Rank. At the meeting, SCU student Harvey Chilcott '23 (Biology) presented a poster entitled "Between a Rock and a Hot Place," which they are currently writing up to submit for publication to the journal Functional Ecology.

In November 2023, Lazlo Pearlman (Theatre and Dance) attended the International Association of Trans Bodybuilders and Powerlifters Bodybuilding and Powerlifting competition in Atlanta, Georgia. His experience at the contest and surrounding events, and the people he interviewed (and will interview further) will materially contribute to his forthcoming book Transing Visualities: Identity, Representation, Performance, under contract to Bloomsbury Press.

Left to right Hsin-hung (Sean) Yeh, Pei-Chia Chen (University of California, San Diego), Wen-Hua-Du (Worchester Polytechnic Institute), and Grainger Lanneau (University of Washington).

Hsin-hung (Sean) Yeh (Modern Languages and Literatures) organized a panel, "Inclusive Pedagogy and Multimodal Curriculum Design in L2 Chinese Classes," in the 2023 Annual Convention of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. The panel showcased evidence-based inclusive and multimodal teaching practices that align with diverse social identities of Gen Z and enhance their inner motivations in L2 Chinese classes. It also aims to remove implicit biases toward Gen Z who are usually considered highly digitally proficient and address the issues due to oversimplification of the de facto diverse student body of different SES and ethnicities. Sean Yeh's presentation discussed how to make instructional languages more inclusive to reduce learning anxieties based on qualitative research results, while his colleagues in the panel focused on how to tailor a lesson and its in-class activities multimodally to involve different perspectives from (non-)heritage students in a community that promotes collaborative learning and how to design learner-centered tasks that organically foster collaboration and cross-cultural literacy. The panel hoped to ultimately promote more inclusive pedagogical practices tailored for students to elicit their best performance via multimodal tasks.

Panelists for the "Liberate Your Leadership" webinar on March 13, 2024.

Maggie Hunter (Sociology) spoke on the webinar panel, "Liberate Your Leadership" sponsored by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the Center for Liberated Leadership. The panel included four women of color leaders in higher education who spoke about the challenges and opportunities of leading in this political moment. Dr. Isis Artze-Vega and Dr. Wendi Williams joined Maggie Hunter on the panel moderated by Dr. Chinyere Oparah. The panelists discussed a variety of topics including the attacks on DEI-related work in higher education, self and community care amidst attacks on women of color leaders themselves, and the challenges of creating institutional change for equity. The video is available on the AAC&U website.

Erin Bradfield (Philosophy) presented her paper, “A Wager of the Heart: Memory Erasure, Humiliation, and a Leap of Faith in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” at the second annual meeting of the International Society for Philosophy in Film Conference in London, England (August 2023). The theme of the conference was “Strange New World: Science Fiction and Philosophy.” Her essay analyzes the film through the lens of Pascal, arguing that that Joel and Clementine have nothing to lose and everything to gain from the renewal of their relationship at the end of the film. Bradfield argues that Joel and Clementine embark upon a secular wager of the heart, betting on the existence of love in order to try again. While from a rational perspective, the two might make an ill-advised decision given the evidence they have about their previous break up, from an emotional perspective, it could be a beneficial decision. She argues that they let their hearts be their guides to make a leap of faith about the existence of love. By choosing to try again, the two manifest the value they place upon the love they shared and could share again. In this decision, Joel and Clementine eschew strict rationality, understanding that “the heart has reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

Aparajita Nanda's (English) article "Political Theologians: Lauren Olamina and Ramakrishna Paramahansa" part of the Octavia Butler Online Symposium on Political Theology Network went live on March 1. The Political Theology Network focuses on interdisciplinary study of religion and politics highlighting connections between religion and political ideas and practices that places scholarship on religion in dialogue with the field of politics, philosophy, ethics, cultural studies and critical theory. Aparajita shares the forum with Michael Brandon McCormack, University of Louisville, CiAuna Heard (Womens and Gender Studies), Santa Clara University and Ebony Gibson, Georgia Gwinnett College.

Tripp Strawbridge (Modern Languages and Literatures) recently presented his research at the annual conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Houston, Texas. The presentation, titled "Longitudinal social network analysis in study abroad: Effects of travel, extracurriculars, and 'at home' network communication," described the ways in which various factors affected students' social network development while studying abroad in Spain for one semester. This social network development was not significantly affected by continued virtual communication with contacts "back home" (i.e., outside of the study site), or by students' volunteer and workplace internship placements; however, frequent weekend travel outside of the study site had a notable impact on the types of social networks formed. Students who traveled more developed fewer relationships with local Spanish peers, and did not progress in their Spanish proficiency to the same degree as those who spent more time on site.

Scot with the Congressional Chorus after their beautiful performance of his newest major work, Four Principles of Marriage.

Scot Hanna-Weir's (Music) composition, Four Principles of Marriage, a 30-minute, multi-movement choral orchestral setting of the text from the Obergefell v. Hodges supreme court decision that affirmed the legality of same-sex marriage received its East Coast premiere on March 16 by the Congressional Chorus under the direction of conductor Allan Laiño. The work was the center piece of their concert "We Do" which explored love in many forms and through many perspectives. The work was introduced by brief remarks from Douglas Hallward-Driemeier of Ropes & Gray who argued question two of the landmark marriage equality case before the Supreme Court. The world premiere performance was conducted by Scot at the Mission Santa Clara in May 2023 with the Santa Clara University Chamber Singers, the Santa Clara Chorale, and the San José Chamber Orchestra and is available to watch here.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar