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| October 24, 2025 | Submit a College Note |
 More than 300 alumni and friends celebrated at the 2025 Grand Reunion College of Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering Grand Bash Reception. Student hosts (L-R) Emma McCarthy ’27 (Anthropology, Art History), Jasmine Arizpe ’28 (Finance), DeeDee Pan ’28 (Web Design and Engineering), Ashley Treanor ’26 (Computer Science), and Ethan Diec ’27 (Computer Science and Engineering) greeted the revelers.
Last Saturday, we welcomed prospective students and their families to Open House and enjoyed ample opportunities to showcase the College. I joined our associate deans and a wonderful group of student ambassadors at four sessions of the CAS Overview to talk about the College and what makes the Santa Clara experience unique. The sessions were well attended, drawing in nearly 600 people. In addition to those more formal presentations, we featured student research projects in the North Lobby and offered tours of some of our more compelling spaces, like our labs, communication editing bays, and dance spaces. We also hosted an information fair with discipline-specific tables dedicated to the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Pre-health, pre-law, the Center for Arts and Humanities, and ROTC participated as well. To cap it off, five of our current students shared their summer experiences, spanning multiple majors and disciplines. All in all, the day was a broad representation of everything we offer here in the College. I am grateful to the many faculty, students, and staff who volunteered and helped make the day a success. Your presence, your warmth, and your Bronco spirit are what make this place so special—our true secret sauce. This week’s poem is by Mary Jo Bang, from her 2007 collection, Elegy. The Poetry Foundation included this as a “poem of the day” this week. Bang, who worked as a professional photographer for many years, wrote the following about writing and the mastery of a craft: “I could see myself getting closer and closer,” she said of her years learning photography. “Over time, what was on the film and the photographic paper more and more resembled what I’d imagined when I looked into the viewfinder. And I saw how, if you steadily worked at something, what you don’t know gradually erodes and what you do know slowly grows and at some point you’ve gained a degree of mastery. What you know becomes what you are. You know photography and you are a photographer. You know writing and you are a writer.” In appreciation of your craft, Daniel How Beautiful
By Mary Jo Bang
Just remember you are standing For water, the view from above or afar. And he was a child. Then a scalpel cut her open for all the world Highlights
On Oct. 15, Ana María Pineda (Religious Studies) was honored by Christians for Peace in El Salvador (CRISPAZ) with the 2025 Peter Hinde CRISPAZ Peace Award at Santa Clara University for her lifelong commitment to the Latino/a community and her dedication to preserving the memory of the Martyrs of El Salvador. Inspired by the testimony of the Martyrs of El Salvador, CRISPAZ established the Peace Award in 2009 to recognize individuals or organizations that embody the preferential option for the poor in their work for the promotion of peace and social justice. In attendance were family, students, colleagues, Bishop Cantú with representatives of the Diocese of San Jose, CRISPAZ staff, board members, and community members. CRISPAZ is a faith-based organization dedicated to building bridges of solidarity between the Church of the Poor and marginalized communities in El Salvador and communities in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and other countries through mutual accompaniment. Image: CRISPAZ Executive Director Francisco Mena Ugarte and Ana María Pineda.
Meilin Chinn (Philosophy) presented her paper “The Subtle Wild: Pure Talk and Ears Through the Ground” at the Pacific Association for Continental Thought held in Homer, Alaska, Sept. 25-28. The theme of the conference was “The Wild.” In her talk, Meilin argued that attempts to preserve wilderness sometimes suffer from a lack of attention to the subtle aspects of the wild. In these cases, wilderness is defined in terms of vast physical space, dangerous predators, and overpowering forces. This narrow understanding of wilderness weakens our capacity to protect it. Meilin presented a remedy drawn from Chinese Daoist practices that cultivate the subtle powers of nature, as well as from her experience living with the indigenous Yup’ik people of Alaska, who practice a method of listening to the wild called “having ears through the ground.”
In October, Ignatius Press published a new book by David Pinault (Religious Studies, Emeritus), Earth Dragon Run: A Spiritual Entertainment.
Brita A. Bookser (Child Studies) published an empirical paper titled "Resisting Political Backlash and Advancing Critical Scholarship Through Collaborative Autoethnography" in the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research's special issue, "Research Methods to Elevate the Study of Race and Antiracism in Social Work," with her coauthors Jelena Todić (University of Texas, San Antonio), Tasha Seneca Keyes (CSU San Marcos), Andrea Joseph-McCatty (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), and Melanie Sonsteng-Person (Salem State University). Their research project began with the goal of understanding how critical social work scholars continue to advance antioppressive scholarship within an oppressive neoliberal higher education system. As the project evolved, they also examined how their chosen method, collaborative autoethnography, could contribute to antiracism in social work. They found that collaborative autoethnography functioned as a counterspace, fostering authenticity, reflection, and belonging; deepened community and praxis through collaborative inquiry; and strengthened critical scholarship through collective care. Ultimately, this methodology fosters critical antiracist scholarship in social work, even amid and potentially because of political adversity.
On Oct. 8, Matt Driscoll (English) attended Under the Redwoods Live, a seasonal/quarterly event hosted by the Sempervirens Fund, with several students from his ENVS 95 (Sustainability 101) class. The fall event featured a conversation between Lisa Landers (filmmaker, Giants Rising) and Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, whose recent book What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures (and podcast of the same name) engages experts in various fields to spotlight exciting climate solutions. Matt was generously gifted with free student tickets by the Sempervirens Fund. Together, Matt and his students enjoyed a wide-ranging talk engaging questions about AI and climate, the emotional and psychological challenges of working with climate change, and with a nod to recently-deceased Jane Goodall, the slippery role of hope in the face of crisis.
Along with co-authors at Colorado State University, Andrew Ishak (Communication) contributed a chapter to The Routledge Handbook of Communication and Resilience. The chapter entitled "Resilience in Livesaving Critical Teams" draws on Andrew's previous research on teams that work in high-stress, time-limited environments such as firefighting, emergency medicine, and the military, among others. It also extends a model of organizational resilience developed by Andrew and his co-author Elizabeth Williams that examines how organizations not only have differing levels of resilience but might also differing types of resilience. This is also Andrew's first collaboration with graduate students at another university. Image: Andrew and his co-author Elizabeth Williams (Colorado State University) at a conference in New Orleans.
John Farnsworth (Environmental Studies and Sciences, Emeritus) has had a book chapter published in Narratives of Hope and Despair: Ruin and Regeneration in Literature and Culture, which is the latest volume in the long-running series, Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives of Literature and Culture. In selecting John’s chapter, "Optimistic versus Ominous: Competing Rhetorics of Ecological Crisis," the editors wrote: "We have positioned it as the final chapter as it rounds things off nicely and is a perfect note to end on." The volume, released on Oct. 14, is being made available on Open Access courtesy of a grant from Østfold University College in Norway. According to a pre-publication review, the book "is a meticulously researched, highly original, and compelling volume that will be a welcome addition to the bookshelves of academics who represent many fields from across the arts and humanities."
Image: Audience of the Bilingualism and Social Justice event in St. Clare Room.
Iris Stewart-Frey (Environmental Studies and Sciences, Environmental Justice and the Common Good Initiative), Jake Dialesandro (Environmental Studies and Sciences) and undergraduate student researchers Samantha Lei ’26 (Environmental Science) and Lilah Foster ’21 (Environmental Science) published an article in Water Resources Research, one of the most highly ranked journals in the water field. In the article, "Toward the Human Right to Water for Vulnerable Communities: The Effectiveness of Stakeholder Processes to Control Regional Shallow Groundwater Contamination by Nitrates," they demonstrate that despite stakeholder processes, regional nitrate contamination is rising, and significantly higher with severe drought and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) proximity. A new metric developed in the study supports the prioritization of monitoring in areas of high nitrate variability, maximum contaminant level exceedance, and low observational density. The authors argue that to guarantee the Human Right to Water, policies to include interannual sampling, domestic well regulations, and source reduction must be enacted. This work is part of a project of the Water and Climate Justice Lab at SCU.
On Oct. 15, the Center for the Arts and Humanities (CAH) celebrated its second annual CAH Pop Up event in honor of National Arts and Humanities Month (as declared by President Obama). Representatives from many departments, units on campus, and student groups showcased upcoming events and opportunities, tabled for various clubs and programs, and hosted exciting hands-on activities; participants included SCU's Letterpress Collective, the Santa Clara Student Art League, and arts and humanities departments and units. Attendees had the opportunity to participate in the arts and humanities in various ways, including sharing their favorite lines from a piece of writing or music, taking digital photos with friends, painting rocks, designing tote bags, creating beaded bracelets, and writing original flash writing pieces alongside campus creative writers.
Got IT Questions or Issues?Stop by the 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. Biweekly. Next sessions: Today, Oct. 24, and Friday, Nov. 7, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Zoom link
Veterans Day Wreath-Laying CeremonySCU will commemorate Veterans Day with a formal wreath-laying ceremony on the steps of the Mission Church. Bronco Battalion cadets will begin a formation at 10 a.m. The ceremony will include posting colors, invocation by Fr. Matthew E. Carnes, playing of the national anthem, and speeches by Colonel Von Bargen (Military Science) and retired Admiral James Ellis, followed by a wreath-laying ceremony on the steps of the Mission Church with a live trumpet rendering of Taps. Tuesday, Nov. 11, Ceremony: 10:30-11:30 a.m.
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Open House. Top: Dean Daniel Press welcomed prospective students and their parents. Bottom: Student presenters (L-R) Shreya Murti ’27 (Political Science), Lilliana Onofre ’28 (Environmental Science), and Sahej Kaur Sidhu ’26 (Biology).
Photo by Meilin Chinn.
Stella Palumbo ’26 (Public Health Science), Carly Asherman ’26 (Psychology, Environmental Studies), Peyton DeSantis ’29 (Public Health Science), Benjamin Archuleta ’29 (Environmental Studies), Jonathan Velez '26 (Management), and Matt Driscoll (English) at Under the Redwoods Live in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum.
Top left: Amy Randall (History, CAH Director), Britt Cain (Dean's Office, CAH Manager), and Danielle Morgan (English, CAH Associate Director). Top Center: Italian Studies students Mae McGivney ’28 (English), Nora Kolerich ’27 (Political Science), Matteo Perrone ’28 (Economics). Top right: Kat Saxton (Biology, Public Health, Dean's Office) and Melissa McAlexander (Provost's Office). Bottom left: Art and Art History faculty Heather Clydesdale and Danielle Heitmuller. Bottom middle: Sahana Kumar ’26 (Computer Science, French and Francophone Studies). Bottom right: History Club members Noah Bruening ’28 (History), Cash Carrillo ’28 (History, Political Science), Dylan Ryu ’26 (History, Communication), Kaila Castanon ’26 (History, Psychology).| College of Arts and Sciences |
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