2024 Chairs Retreat. Sitting left to right: Elsa Chen (Political Science), Maggie Hunter (Strategic Advisor for Faculty DEI Initiatives), Sharmila Lodhia (Gender and Sexuality Studies), Michael Whalen (Communication), Julia Voss (English), Laura Nichols (Sociology), Allia Griffin (Ethnic Studies), Danielle Morgan (English), Lissa Crofton-Sleigh (Classics). Standing left to right: Lee Panich (Anthropology), Chris Bacon (Environmental Studies and Sciences), David Von Bargen (Military Science), AD John Birmingham, AD Kathleen Schneider, Dean Daniel Press, Alberto Ribas-Casasayas (Modern Languages and Literatures), Jim Bennett (Religious Studies), Korin Wheeler (Chemistry and Biochemistry), Scot Hanna-Weir (Music), Patti Simone (Neuroscience), Matthew Newsom Kerr (History), Lisa Whitfield (Psychology), Guy Ramon (Physics), AD Kathy Aoki, Tamsen McGinley (Mathematics and Computer Science). Not pictured: Takeshi Moro (Art and Art History), Christelle Sabatier (Biology), Brett Solomon (Child Studies), Paul Schutz (GPPM), Erick Ramirez (Philosophy), Sonja Mackenzie (Public Health), Butch Coyne (SCU Presents), Kimberly Mohne Hill (Theatre and Dance), AD Alison Lucas, AD Kat Saxton.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

Though it is still technically summer, it doesn’t feel like it anymore here in the Dean’s Office as we prepare for the start of Fall Quarter. We had our annual New Chairs Training and our Chairs Retreat this week, and look forward to Convocation (both ours and the University’s) next week, followed quickly by Welcome Weekend – of course, we are also welcoming new faculty continually over these first weeks of September, so a hearty welcome to all our new colleagues!

I'd like to also welcome our incoming chairs: Lissa Crofton-Sleigh (Classics), Allia Griffin (Ethnic Studies), Matthew Newsom Kerr (History), Tamsen McGinley (Mathematics and Computer Science), David Von Bargen (Military Science), Erick Ramirez (Philosophy), Brett Solomon (Child Studies) who has been out on sabbatical this past year, and Chris Bacon (Environmental Studies and Sciences) who took over as chair last Winter quarter.

Additionally, a huge thanks goes to the chairs who stepped down earlier this year: Tim Urdan (Child Studies), Dan Turkeltaub (Classics), Apara Nanda (Ethnic Studies), Amy Randall (History), Frank Farris (Mathematics and Computer Science), Sean Chang (Military Science), and Chris Kulp and Larry Nelson (Philosophy). I’d also like to recognize Virigina Matzek (Environmental Studies and Sciences), who stepped down as Chair last winter quarter. It is no small job to lead our departments, so I am thankful to those who have been doing this work and to those who are just taking it on.

It’s great to see what many of you were up to this summer through the notes submitted below. I love seeing the fruit of your labor, especially when it involves students! We are changing the cadence of College Notes this fall. Rather than a weekly issue, we will be sending out an issue full of your notes every other week. Please keep submitting your notes throughout the year.

I hope to see you all at Convocation next week!

Sincerely,

Daniel

Highlights

Triumphant arrival at the entrance to Yosemite.

From June 14-29 seventeen students in Walk Across CA 2024, taught by David Popalisky (Theatre and Dance), trekked from Ocean Beach in San Francisco to Yosemite. Staff members on this fourth walk (the first since 2016) included Iris Stewart-Frey and William Rush (both Environmental Studies and Sciences), each of whom offered roadside talks on CA water issues and the geologic forces that formed Yosemite respectively, along with Marin College drama teacher Molly Noble and SCU grads and three time walk veterans Marianna Moore '17 (Liberal Studies) and Dante Popalisky MA '14 (Teaching). After days walking on urban sidewalks and overgrown forest paths, swimming in reservoirs, and witnessing California’s natural diversity in a “cell phone free” state of wonder, students met community leaders including James, food activist in Oakland, Fr. Camilo and farmworkers in Stockton, Carlos preserving the Miwok language in Tuolumne and Jim, Stanislaus National Forest ranger among many others. On the last day in Yosemite students shared their poems, songs, drawings and photos informed by their walk experiences. Many thanks to Undergraduate Studies, the Center for Student Involvement, the Environmental Studies and Sciences Dept., Sergio Ramos, and Ruth Mikusko (Theatre and Dance) who contributed funding and logistic support, with a special shoutout to former Theatre and Dance colleague Bob Steiner who has driven students up to San Francisco and back from Yosemite on all four walks.

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Chris Buenrostro '23 (Psychology) and Tom Plante (Psychology) presented "A clinical trial of the Examen and mindfulness within a secular substance use disorder treatment program" at the 132nd annual convention of the American Psychological Association, August 9, 2024, in Seattle, Washington. Chris also won an Early Career Investigator Award from APA Division 50 (Addiction Psychology) and Division 28 (Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse) for this research project as well. Chris will begin a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology at Louisiana State University this fall.

Abstract: The Examen is a 500-year-old Jesuit introspective prayer and reflection. Recent research has indicated that it has utility in psychotherapy. This study implemented the Examen as a secular cognitive–behavioral tool in the first longitudinal clinical trial of the intervention with an addiction treatment population, comparing it directly to a treatment-as-usual mindfulness intervention. The study found that Examen and mindfulness are equivalent in outcomes on depression, anxiety, stress, and substance craving. Further research should continue to investigate the Examen as an alternative to mindfulness for religious and secular populations and the factors responsible for the success of these practices.

Image: Chris Buenrostro presenting his award-winning research conducted with Tom Plante at the American Psychological Association convention in Seattle, Washington.

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Catherine Montfort (Modern Languages and Literatures) was invited to participate in a panel discussion at the well-known American Library of Paris, Paris, France on June 11, 2024. The book under scrutiny was Impressions from Paris: Women Creatives in Interwar Years France, ed. Sylvie Blum. It included such luminaries as Josephine Baker, Colette, Lucie Delarue Mardus, Sonia Delaunay, Janet Flanner, Francoise Gilot, Irene Nemirovsky, Anais Ninn and Doria Shafik. Montfort analyzed the issues confronted by a Jewish Russian female writer in France at the time, from her arrival in France at 16 years old up to World War II and her death in a concentration camp, age 39, in 1942.

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Summit participants outside Nobili Hall.

Chad Raphael (Communication, Environmental Justice & the Common Good Initiative) co-hosted over 30 Jesuit and Catholic secondary school educators at SCU for a three-day summit on incorporating environmental justice and integral ecology across the high school curriculum. Participants learned about promising practices for teaching about sustainability and justice in secondary education, how to make whole-school curricular transformation, connecting with Jesuit and Catholic educational networks and social ministry organizations, and forming a new professional development network. SCU’s Center for Sustainability and de Saisset Museum offered environmental justice tours of the campus, and Bellarmine College Prep hosted participants for lunch in their campus garden.

The Summit helped participating teachers and administrators move from narrow approaches to sustainability toward education for integral ecology and environmental justice, and from individualistic approaches toward learning and action for systemic change. The need to address environmental justice in relation to racial and economic justice, and a more inclusive approach to Catholic education, resonated especially with educators from Cristo Rey schools who attended.

Co-organized with Bishop O’Dowd High School and the Ignatian Solidarity Network, the summit was generously supported by SCU’s Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education and Inclusive Excellence Division, and an alumnus donor.

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Together with alumna Jia Seow '22 (Psychology), Birgit Koopmann-Holm (Psychology) just published an article describing how people in China and the U.S. conceptualize a compassionate face. As shown in the image above, Chinese mental representations of a compassionate face include more sadness and less happiness compared to U.S. American mental representations of a compassionate face, partly because Chinese participants want to avoid feeling negative less than do U.S. Americans. This work has important implications for therapeutic settings and the meaning of compassion in an increasingly globalized and connected world. This article was published in Cognition and Emotion.

Image: Group composite images depicting how people tend to conceptualize a compassionate face in China (L) and in the U.S. (R)

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Sonia Gomez's (History) first book, Picture Bride, War Bride: The Role of Marriage in Shaping Japanese America, has just been published by NYU Press.  In it, she shows how the institution of marriage created pockets of legal and social inclusion for Japanese women during the period of Japanese exclusion. The book begins with the first wave of Japanese women's migration in the early twentieth century (picture brides), and ends with the second mass migration of Japanese women after World War II (war brides), to illustrate how popular and political discourse drew on overlapping and conflicting logics to either racially exclude the Japanese or facilitate their inclusion via immigration legislation privileging wives and mothers. Picture Bride, War Bride retells the history of Japanese migration and exclusion by centering women, gender, and sexuality, and in so doing, troubles the inclusion versus exclusion binary. While the Japanese were racially excluded between 1908 and 1952, Japanese wives and mothers were permitted entry because their inclusion served American interests in the Pacific. However, the very rationale enabling their inclusion simultaneously restricted and defined the parameters of their lives within the U.S.

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Sreela Sarkar (Communication) has been invited to be a Research Fellow at O. P. Jindal Global University (India) at IDEAS - Office of Interdisciplinary Studies for two years starting this Fall. Sreela will be affiliated with the initiative on Transitional Spaces, Culture and Media Studies to “lead/contribute to research that addresses critical questions at the intersection of digital technology, access, identity, culture and anthropology, especially with a focus on India and Global South.” Sreela will be collaborating with colleagues in India for two main research projects from the U.S. with visits. Jindal is ranked first among private universities in India with international faculty and students and a global presence. Sreela is also the incoming Director of the Digital Humanities Initiative at SCU.

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Two students from Environmental Studies and Sciences presented their research at the Ecological Society of America meeting in Long Beach in August. Donald "Trey" Grimsley '24 (Environmental Science) and Leonie Casper '25 (Environmental Science), accompanied by their research mentor Virginia Matzek (Environmental Studies and Sciences), each gave a poster from their multifaceted project on water-use efficiency in woody species used in restoration of riparian areas. Trey presented on gas exchange measurements taken on live leaves during the Matzek Lab's 2023 field season, and Leonie presented on isotopic measurements performed on leaf samples collected that same summer. Their research and conference attendance was supported by a grant from River Partners, a Clare Boothe Luce fellowship to Leonie, a DeNovo fellowship to Trey, and student travel and summer research awards to Virginia from the Provost's office.

Image: Virginia, Leonie, and Trey in front of Leonie's poster at ESA.

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Sonja Mackenzie (Public Health), along with co-authors Marcin Smietana (Cambridge University) and Laura Mamo (SFSU) presented their paper, “What’s queer got to do with it? Building an integrated theory of Queer Reproductive Justice” at the 2024 European Association of Social Anthropologists’ (EASA) biennial conference, Doing and Undoing with Anthropology, on July 25. Their paper was part of a session on “Doing and Undoing Queer Families: Queering Reproductive Justice” which brought together ethnographic research on LGBTQ+ families in varied contexts of assisted reproductive technologies, medical settings, and a range of state political institutions in Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the US. In their paper, Mackenzie and colleagues interrogate the shared analyses of power in the tenets of Reproductive Justice and queer justice to offer a critical frame of Queer Reproductive Justice. Their theoretical work draws on the empirical case studies of Mackenzie’s policy advocacy with transgender and nonbinary high school students in California, and on Smietana’s transnational research on gay men's use of surrogacy. Neha Mann '25 (Public Health Science) will work as a LGBTQ+ Health Equity Scholar this year to conduct further research on the role of school districts in supporting transgender youth health in the context of anti-LGBTQ+ policies across California and the US.

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Katy Bruchmann (Psychology) along with alumni Makeda Adisu '17 (Psychology, Communication) and Sarah Zasso '22 (Psychology, Communication) published an article in the last issue of Politics, Groups, and Identities entitled "You're red, I'm blue, so I don't like you: The political dissimilarity-disliking effect." In this paper, we examined how learning about a person's political affiliation on social media can influence first impressions. Years of previous research have suggested that we like politically-similar others *more* than a baseline, but across two experiments, our data suggest that we actually like politically-dissimilar others *less* than a baseline. This work connects to research on negative partisanship which contributes to the growing political polarization in this country.

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Chad Raphael (Communication, Environmental Justice & the Common Good Initiative) and Sarah Young '24 (Communication, Environmental Studies) co-edited Teaching Sustainability Competencies across the Disciplines: A Guide for Instructors. Chad and Sarah coordinated contributions from a dozen staff and faculty members of the Scaling Up Sustainability Across the Curriculum Community of Practice of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). The guide introduces instructors to the major sustainability competencies (such as systems thinking, futures thinking, and ethical thinking), and supports instructors to integrate these competencies into their courses by identifying example curricular and pedagogical resources, assessments of student learning, and scholarship of teaching and learning in this field. The guide will be widely used in curriculum development workshops offered to faculty across North America, including SCU’s own summer workshops on sustainability and justice across the curriculum.

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Daniel Morgan (Religious Studies) had an article published last month in the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (JESHO) entitled "Sufis and Sultans in Eighteenth-Century Delhi: Re-evaluating the Political Letters of Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi (d. 1762)." The article examination of the (in)famous political letters written by Shah Wali Allah at a time when the Mughal Empire was in a state of terminal decline and facing invasion by the Afghan ruler, Ahmad Shah Abdali. While generations of historians have argued that Wali Allah was a wholehearted supporter of Afghan power, the article looks at unstudied Persian-language correspondence to show that his contact with the invading power was motivated by rather more pragmatic concerns.

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The Future Teachers Project (FTP) held its annual FTP Summer Fellows Program, bringing 10 high school students from across the Bay Area to Santa Clara University. The FTP Summer Fellows Program offers an immersive, overnight experience aimed at recruiting students who aspire to become K-12 teachers and advance social justice. Summer Fellows had the opportunity to interact with undergraduate students, faculty, and staff; participate in college workshop and info sessions; conduct individual research projects; and experience campus life before applying for undergraduate admission in the Fall. The following high school students were selected for this program: Anahi Guerrero (Everett Alvarez High School), Jess Wang (Moreau Catholic High School), Belinda Huazo (North Salinas High School), Fumika Ono (Prospect High School), Eduardo Gonzalez (Abraham Lincoln High School), Olivia Ha-Thai (Piedmont Hills High School), Gabriella Kamea Hernandez (Moreau Catholic High School), Mariel Arreola Mendez (Alisal High School), Jatzire De-Paz Martinez (Alisal High School), and Yuliana Zarate-Mora (Alisal High School).

Five undergraduate students served as Program Coordinators, including Aurora Ruiz De La Rosa ’27 (Child Studies, Psychology), Kaylee Lopez ’27 (Child Studies, Psychology), Linda Soto ’27 (Child Studies, Sociology), Milagros Cruz-Jimenez ’27 (Child Studies), and Ruby Gutierrez ’25 (Ethnic Studies, English). Omar Davila Jr (Child Studies) has served as Director of FTP since 2020.

Image: 2024 FTP Summer Fellows Program

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar