The Center for the Arts & Humanities featured the second in a three-part Faculty Fellow Series on "Solidarity, Resistance, and Imagination" last week. The "Black / Asian Encounters: Past, Present, Future" event included panelists from a group of interdisciplinary scholars, educators, and students involved with the Black-Asian Relationality Project. L-R: Michelle Burnham (English), Darrien Mitri '26 (Communication), Sonia Gomez (History), Hsin-I Cheng (Communication), Jose Kabeer (AIMS College Prep High School, Oakland), and Hsin-hung (Sean) Yeh (Modern Languages and Literatures).

Dear Colleagues,

In the run up to our May 1 deposit deadline for admitted students, about a third of our departments took up my call to participate in outreach to students admitted to their majors. Students love to hear from potential future faculty that they are valued and desired. A lot of these students have options, and Santa Clara is an expensive one. Knowing that this is a welcoming place with people that care can make all the difference. I am so grateful to everyone who has engaged with our admitted students.

Speaking of engaging with admitted students, earlier this month Preview Day was a huge success. Despite the weather, we had almost 2000 people come to campus to learn more about our departments and programs. I attended a few department sessions and was very impressed—the turnout was amazing for all departments, big and small.

Our faculty, staff, and students are so invested in bringing in the next class of Broncos and connecting with them on a very human level. When an admitted student walks up to a table and sees a current student in that major who looks like them and can connect with them, sharing about their involvement and experience, it makes it real, it allows them to see themselves here.

I heard a student this week describe what joy meant to them. They answered “a sense of internal belonging.” I believe this is what you offer admitted students when you welcome them with passion, conviction and warmth. What more can we ask for?

Thank you to everyone who came out on a Saturday to represent their areas and for helping us bring in the Class of 2028!

Sincerely,

Daniel

Got IT Questions or Issues?

Stop by the new weekly virtual IT drop-in sessions with Charles Deleon! These sessions are designed to provide faculty and staff in the College of Arts and Sciences a friendly and casual setting for addressing general IT questions and concerns. Feel free to drop in and out at any time during the scheduled session, whether you have a quick question, need assistance with something and don't know where to start, or simply want to learn more about our IT resources.

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Highlights

Cruz Medina (English) published a chapter titled "Revision as Protecting What's Important" in the edited collection Revising Moves Writing Stories of (Re)Making with Utah State University Press. Medina's chapter documents the writing, revision, and the submission process of his article "Decolonial Potential in a Multilingual FYC" that was ultimately published in Composition Studies and included in the 2020 Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition. The chapter argues for the centering of appropriate decolonial methodologies rather than accommodating to the imagined audience of journal editors and the construction of "empirical" research that reinforces gatekeeping of knowledge production and what is authorized as research.

Kara presenting this work.

Alumna Kara Murray '22 (Psychology, Communication) and Birgit Koopmann-Holm (Psychology) published their work on identifying a barrier to dismantling racial inequalities in Emotion, a top-tier, peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Psychological Association. In this paper, they explore why some Americans can acknowledge the deeply rooted racism in the United States while others cannot. Past research coming out of Birgit's lab suggests that the more people want to avoid feeling negative (“avoided negative affect; ANA”), the less likely they focus on and even perceive someone’s suffering. Because acknowledging racism is one specific instance of noticing and acknowledging that people are suffering, their new research investigates whether ANA might also affect the degree to which people acknowledge racism. As predicted, their work suggests that wanting to avoid feeling negative is a barrier to acknowledging systemic racism. In Study 1, they found that the more people want to avoid feeling negative, the less they acknowledge systemic racism. In Study 2, they found that specifically increasing ANA caused participants to acknowledge systemic racism less compared to participants in a control condition. This work has potential implications for prejudice-reduction interventions, which might benefit from incorporating trainings on how to accept negative affect.

Entomology as Inspiration was the theme of a recent conference of the Entomological Society of America (ESA). Professor Janice Edgerly-Rooks (Biology) participated as an invited speaker in a program symposium. A summary of the symposium has been published as an article entitled "Art is Science is Art: Strengthening Connections Between Entomology and the Arts" in the Spring 2024 American Entomologist, a glossy journal sent to all members of the ESA. Edgerly-Rooks and the other symposium presenters (including performance artists, poets, fabric designers, sound engineers and others) summarized their work for the article. The paper highlights the integration of scientific research, the arts and education. For her part, Edgerly-Rooks showcases how her students generated complex behavioral data as well as interpreted those data into sound files, a process called sonification. Members of the SCU team took the work a step further by creating musical compositions from those behavioral data. One musical piece that received extra attention and great applause at the conference (and in the article, which includes an image of sheet music) evolved from a collaboration between Edgerly-Rooks, Bruno Ruviaro (Music) and Elizabeth Jonasson '20 (Music), a composition student who has gone on to a successful career as a composer.

Mythri Jegathesan's distinguished lecture series presentation at the University of Kentucky.

Mythri Jegathesan (Anthropology) presented a paper titled, "Beyond the Sluice and in the Soil: Searching for Water in Sri Lanka's Northern Province" at the American Anthropological Association meeting in Vancouver last November. This paper was presented in a double panel on "Elements in Agriculture" and delivered findings from her NSF research on transitional justice, land and livelihood among resettled minority Tamils in postwar Sri Lanka. The paper was the basis for her invited lecture given as the Annual Distinguished Lecture speaker for the Department of Anthropology at University of Kentucky on February 15th. The lecture was accompanied by a multidisciplinary roundtable on research methods and ethics with graduate students from the Anthropology Graduate Student Association and faculty from Women's and Gender Studies, Geography and Anthropology.

Kirsten Read presenting the Read Lab study on "Surprise vs. Confirmation in Young Children's Mapping and Retention of New Animal Names" at CDS 2024 in Pasadena

At the end of March, Kirsten Read (Psychology) attended the Cognitive Development Society conference (held next door to where America's Got Talent was being taped) in Pasadena. She facilitated a roundtable for faculty pursuing research on language and communication at the pre-conference “Developmental Science at Non-R1 Institutions: Collaborative Strategies for Success” and serves as a mentor to other junior faculty, post-doctoral scholars, and graduate students interested in working at undergraduate-focused institutions like SCU. At the main conference, Dr. Read also presented work on behalf of Read Lab alumni Grace Roach '23 (Psychology), Caroline Cotler '23 (Psychology), and Dhanya Paul '22 (Neuroscience) on children's ability to predict and then remember new animal names during natural storybook reading contexts, and how the predictability of those newly-named animals supports young children's learning.

Mateo J. Carrillo (History) and Bryson White (Religious Studies) welcomed award-winning author Mark Arax to campus for two events on Wednesday, February 28, 2024. A journalist, writer, historian, and biographer of California and the U.S. West, Mark painstakingly documents how the myth that is California was built upon the exploitation of the state's natural and human resources.

In the morning Q&A session, "Chronicling the Human Condition: Perspectives on a Career in Media, Writing & History," Mark spoke with SCU students about the importance of storytelling and fostering human connection in the age of A.I.

In his afternoon talk, "Big Ag & Big Tech: A Tale of Two Valleys Where Innovation, Inequality & Plunder Meet," Mark spoke about the rise of A.I. and how the technological development of the Silicon Valley beginning in the mid-twentieth century has paralleled the agricultural development of California's San Joaquin Valley beginning in the mid-nineteenth century

Image: Author Mark Arax engages the audience during his afternoon talk "Big Ag & Big Tech: A Tale of Two Valleys Where Innovation, Inequality & Plunder Meet."

Miah Jeffra's (English) novel, American Gospel, was announced a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. The winner and finalists will be honored at a special celebration hosted by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston and co-presented with The International Hemingway Foundation and Society on Sunday, May 5, 2024. Seán Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s grandson, will honor finalists during the celebration, and award-winning author Joan Silber (herself the 1981 PEN/Hemingway winner) will deliver a keynote address. This is Miah's fourth book.

Michelle Badura (Biology) attended SABER West, a regional conference for the Society for Advancement of Biology Education Research. She was able to attend several talks that focused on novel teaching strategies for improving student learning outcomes, sense of community and belonging, engagement, etc. She connected with colleagues in her discipline at a Physiology-based small group breakfast and received advice and strategies for how to improve her courses. She also presented some early results from her work transitioning an Anatomy course to a non-traditional grading system at a poster session and received feedback and further networked with members of her learning community whom she'd only previously met on Zoom. She looks forward to continuing to expand both her community connections and teaching skills repertoire at further conferences.

L-R: Alexandra Kroener '24 (Communication), Karen Lin '25 (Communication), Sammy Key '25 (Communication), Aura Terrell '26 (Communication), Gia Reid '26 (Communication, Theatre Arts), Brooke Neville '26 (Communication), Katie Buse '25 (Communication, Psychology) at Walt Disney Animation Studios after meeting with alumnae Mayka Mei '06 (Communication) and Mandesa (Milton) Tindal  '98 (Communication).

Over Spring Break, Professor Mike Whalen (Communication) hosted 35 students interested in film and television careers at the 18th Annual Hollywood Shadowing Program in Los Angeles. Students met with alumni working at Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros, Creative Artists Agency, United Talent Agency, Focus Features, Amazon Prime+, A&E Networks, and many more. Students attended large meetings at studio and network offices as well as smaller networking opportunities over coffee and lunch. This year over 40 alumni volunteered to meet with students.

Evelyn Ferraro (Modern Languages and Literatures), on March 29, 2024, participated in the virtual Giornata di Studio “Critical Conversations in Transnational Italian Studies” organized by the American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS). Contributors to the special issue of Forum Italicum “Critical Issues in Transnational Italian Studies” (August 2023, Volume 57.2) were in conversation with the respondents and the larger audience on questions related to methodology, pedagogy, practices of belonging, and research articles. Gain free temporary access to Ferraro’s “Place and transmemory in California Italian American literary narratives: Dorothy Bryant's Miss Giardino” and the other articles in the special issue.

L-R: Top row: Heather Kenyon, Fernando Salvador Francisco ’25 (Communication), Katie Dowse, Erik Sunderman, Derek Duarte, Steven Fetter. Bottom Row: Dylan Caballero ’25 (Psychology, Child Studies), Ximena Melgoza ’27 (Theatre Arts, Spanish), Gia Gonnella ’26 (Pyschology, Theatre Arts), Sydney Gorin ’27 (Psychology), Ellen Duncan ’24 (Communication). Not pictured: Naomi Arnst.

Faculty, staff and six students from Theatre and Dance attended the United State Institute of Theater Technology Conference and Expo in Seattle, WA in March. The students attended sessions on scenic techniques, lighting technology, stage management, and costume construction. The Expo displayed the newest theater technology and offered networking opportunities with the largest employers in the industry including Disney and Cirque de Soleil.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar

20th Anniversary Celebration of the New Playwrights’ Festival

Come celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the New Playwrights’ Festival! Join us for six electrifying evenings of new plays written by SCU alumni and former festival participants of NPF! April 26 – May 5, 2024.