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| May 24, 2024 | Submit a Note |
 Students from THTR 36/136 Scene Painting working on dimes for the "We're in The Money" scene of 42nd Street. Director: Kimberly Mohne Hill (Theatre and Dance); Choreographer: Pauline Locsin-Kanter (Theatre and Dance); Music Director: Debra Lambert (Music). The production opens tonight!
I want to offer a big congratulations to all of our faculty who have been appointed as newly endowed professors or achieved rank and tenure promotions for their contributions to teaching, service, and scholarly research, as announced earlier this week by President Sullivan.
Employees in all walks of life go through promotions, but for academics, these milestones take on special significance. Of course, the practice of tenure is distinctive and highly prized. Beyond tenure, the process of academic promotion (to associate and full) is deeply communal – it literally takes about two dozen evaluators (on and off campus), working over nearly a year, to promote a faculty member to associate or full. The promotions to Teaching Professor (formerly called Senior Lecturer) are also exceptionally thorough and lengthy, though they don’t involve external reviewers. Thus, when our faculty receive their promotions, they know that their accomplishments are deeply understood by the very same professionals whose assessments they respect the most. It is a deeply affirming moment in our careers and worthy of reflection and celebration. I also want to recognize the faculty who have retired or will be retiring this year.
These individuals have worked at Santa Clara for periods ranging from 11 to 44 years, and collectively have contributed roughly 150 years of service to the University. Their dedication to the College and to our students has left a lasting impact. Thank you all so much for your contributions to our community. I wish you well in your retirement! Finally, in any academic year, there are many in our community who leave SCU for other pursuits, positions and adventures – we also wish you the very best! I hope you all have a lovely Memorial Day weekend. Daniel Highlights
Image: SHCS La Mesa Verde urban gardeners’ fall 2023 seedling distribution event in San Jose, California includes vermicompost (small bags on the right).
Iris Stewart-Frey (Environmental Studies & Sciences), Ed Maurer (Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering), Allan Baez Morales (Frugal Innovation Hub), and Qiuwen Li (Art and Art History), together with undergraduate students Bri Guingona'25 (Environmental Studies), Alex Avila '24 (Civil Engineering) and Turner Uyeda '24 (Civil Engineering), graduate student Gautam Chitnis (FIH), and community partner Raul Diaz (CII-Asdenic) gave four presentations on water and climate justice in Central America. Iris gave an invited talk on "Recent and Future Hydroclimatic Shifts over Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean - What Metrics Matter for Local Stakeholders?" Other presentations were: "Connecting local hydroclimatic trends to smallholders experiences of climate change in Northern Nicaragua" (Guingona, Baez Morales, Diaz, Maurer, and Stewart); "Making rainfall forecasts available to Central American smallholder communities through participatory and student centered research" (Avila, Baez Morales, Maurer, Stewart, Diaz, Chitnis, Uyeda, Guingona), and "Accounting for Uncertainties in Trends of the Central American Mid-summer Drought" (Maurer, Stewart, Uyeda, Avila). More can be found on the Water and Climate Justice Lab website. Image: Undergraduate student Bri Guingona giving her poster presentation.
Sharmila Lodhia (Women's & Gender Studies) published a paper titled "Rewriting Race: Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the Power of Dissent," in Women's Studies: An inter-disciplinary journal. This study examines how dissenting opinions authored by Justice Sotomayor expand the rhetoric of race at the Supreme Court. Rewriting, or re-righting race, as it were, involves adopting a voice as a rhetor that speaks back to the customary obfuscation of race at the Supreme Court by inserting into the record an intersectional account of race that encompasses it’s affective, experiential, and embodied dimensions across a range of jurisprudential domains.
On May 7, Pre-Law Advising, the Pre-Law Society, and the Mock Trial team hosted a panel discussion on careers in law. The panelists were all SCU undergraduate alumni: Christine Epres '01 (Communication), Ana Razmazma '05 (Accounting, French and Francophone Studies), Judge Michael Rhoads '06 (English, Philosophy, Political Science), Jay Russell '82 (English), and Reid Wells '15 (Political Science). They discussed their career paths and offered advice to an audience of more than 40 SCU pre-law students.
Susan Kennedy (Philosophy) presented her paper “The Dying Donor Rule: A New Ethical Standard for Controlled Donation After Circulatory Death” at the 4th Annual Philosophical Bioethics Conference hosted by New York University’s Center for Bioethics. This research examines the moral permissibility of organ procurement from non-heart beating donors and pays special attention to the way end-of-life care practices overlap with the organ donation process for patients who are dying but not yet declared dead.
Ryan Anderson (Anthropology) attended the 2023 fall meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Ryan presented a paper on "Unstable Beach Anthropologies," which was a reflection on the unstable histories of beaches as they contrast with various (ongoing) human attempts to hold them in place...whether materially, symbolically, or ideologically. A related piece, titled "A Matter of Time: Sea Level Rise, Retreat, and Resistance along the California Coast," was published as part of Cultural Anthropology's 'Theorizing the Contemporary' series in January 2024. Finally, Ryan was also a co-author, with Gary Griggs, Charles Lester, Kiki Patsch, and Kim Steinhardt on an article for Shore & Beach titled "The past, present, and future of Seacliff State Beach: Adapting to long-term sea level rise on California’s Central Coast." From the abstract: "This article frames the potential application of a new approach for recovery planning along the California coast by examining historical failures, accelerating threats, and the economic and societal factors that create obstacles to long-term success at places such as Seacliff. While each situation differs, the Seacliff State Beach challenge is representative of an ever-widening dilemma faced by many seaside communities." Image: The pier at Seacliff State Beach after it was damaged by the 2023 winter storms. Photo by Ryan Anderson.
Brita A. Bookser (Child Studies) published the article entitled, "Unsettling the Unimaginable: A Genealogical Counterstory of Early Care and Education in the United States" in a special issue of Pedagogy, Culture, & Society, an international forum for critical and pedagogical scholarship. The article treats the history of early education as an unsettled matter by investigating the carceral foundations and liberatory strategies that characterize the emergence and sociopolitical evolution of early education. To do so, this article advances a new methodology (genealogical counterstorytelling) that (1) traces the carceral foundations of early education across three sites typically exiled from public memory and origin storytelling: plantations, off-reservation boarding schools, and incarceration camps; and (2) describes three emergent themes of womanist anti-carceral praxis evident across the sites: redefinition of educational philosophy, creation of educational third spaces, and fortification of culturally relevant epistemologies. Confronting dominant narratives of so-called origin stories, this genealogical counterstory illustrates tensions and transformations indicative of the complexity and contradictions of American early education philosophy and pedagogy. This article also attends to the sociopolitical significance of early education rendered through genealogical counterstorytelling and relations to contemporary equity issues.
Philip Kesten (Physics) finished his course on physics in outer space, explaining the underlying science in space and travel. He discussed physics while also combining science with a touch of a classic sci-fi franchise, Star Trek. The course explored Newton and Einstein’s physics, particle physics, and the real-life physics of transporter beams and warp drive, a staple of Star Trek lore. 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 olli@scu.edu.
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Students and panelists at "Careers in Law: A Panel Discussion with SCU Alumni" (L-R): Ellie Woodley '25 (Psychology, Political Science), Christine Epres, Reid Wells, Huxley Murray '25 (Political Science), Judge Michael Rhoads, Ana Razmazma, Lillian Henderson '25 (Political Science, Classics), Shivani Dharanipragada '24 (Computer Science, Philosophy), Jay Russell, and Matt Harrigan (Political Science), Director of Pre-Law Advising| College of Arts and Sciences |
Questions? Contact Sandy Boyer |