Read more on the conference.
http://www.sacnas.org/

SACNAS National Conference Abstract
http://bit.ly/sacnas-conferenceabstract2010 (pdf)

View renderings, and learn more about the project’s timeline, funding and history.

http://morecampuslife.com/

Read the CSU resolution (page 5).

http://www.calstate.edu/BOT/Resolutions/Sept2010.pdf

There’s another hearty offering of fascinating courses at “Classes Without Quizzes,” the free event Saturday that kicks off San Jose State University’s Homecoming Week.

The subject matter is a lot more interesting than Econ 101, with topics like “Lessons Learned from the Haiti Earthquake,”

“Bioengineering in the 21st Century” and “Know Mexico’s Son Jarocho.”

If that last one sounds unfamiliar, it’s a talk about the growing musical style by former Mexico City journalist (and SJSU alum) Lindajoy

Fenley. See what you can learn?

Nearly two dozen courses are being taught by SJSU professors and lecturers in three 50-minute sessions, followed by a barbecue lunch on campus.

Advance registration ends Friday at 9 a.m., so don’t delay. The course listings and registration information are at www.sjsualumni.com.

Last spring, recruiters from Google paid their first-ever recruiting visit to San Jose State University, snatching up four graduates of the the Management Information Systems (MIS) department in the College of Business.

The company hired Alex Khajehtoorian, Kobi Laredo, Marcos Ramirez and Ed Saucedo, all class of 2010, into its highly competitive Internal Technology Residency Program. The program is a 26-month immersion into end-to-end support for Google’s massive internal IT systems.

Google worked with the campus Career Center to specifically target its recruiting effort, validating the program’s reputation for providing excellent training at the intersection of technology and business. The company plans to expand its recruiting at SJSU, according to the Career Center. “This shows that we are current and relevant,” said department chair Timothy Hill. “It proves that our students can compete with all the other students in the area.”

View the full report
http://bit.ly/aiercollegepdf

Learn more about the study
http://bit.ly/aier2010collegedestinations

A transcript of this slideshow is also available.

Join us for Homecoming 2010, beginning Sept. 25 with Classes Without Quizzes and ending, of course, with the game! Kickoff against UC Davis will be 5 p.m. Oct. 2. Go Spartans!

Need the details? No problem! Stop by the tents outside all three parking garages Monday Sept. 27 for a free muffin and events schedule.

Highlights include the Alumni Scholarship Reception at 4 p.m. Sept. 28 in King 225, Greek Olympics at 4 p.m. Sept. 29 on the grassy area along El Paseo de Cesar Chavez, Fire on the Fountain at 6 p.m. Sept. 30 on Tower Lawn, and the International Quiz at 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 1 in the Student Union’s Barrett Ballroom.

The Campus MovieFest Grand Finale at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 1 in Morris Dailey Auditorium will feature super short flicks produced in the past few weeks by our very own students, who in past years created films that scored top prizes in national and international competitions.

Get an events schedule.
http://www.sjsualumni.com/activities/homecoming.php

View Campus MovieFest films.
http://www.campusmoviefest.com/

Register for the I Quiz.
http://www.sjsu.edu/ihouse/

At a time when state budget cuts are increasing fees for young students at California State University, a little-known program allows senior citizens to enroll for free.

The “Over 60 Program” waives tuition for Californians 60 or older, regardless of income. Meanwhile, since its creation 30 years ago, annual tuition for younger students has climbed from $160 to $4,230. And last year, CSU cut back enrollment by thousands of students, while continuing to allow any interested elders to register for open classes.

It’s a small program — only 900 of 433,000 CSU students participated last year — but the education is worth an estimated $2 million to $3 million annually.

For students such as Timothy Fitzgerald, 64, it enables a lifelong path of education. While living on meager Social Security and disability benefits, he’s completing his fifth degree at San Jose State University and his third master’s.

“I see it as a benefit that the state can offer older citizens, helping us pursue a life of the mind,” said Fitzgerald, a conscientious student who has spent every recent afternoon at SJSU’s Martin Luther King Library preparing for a philosophy exam.

“I never would have had an opportunity to go to school unless there was support for tuition,” he said. “I do not want to sit on the sidelines.”

Another CSU student, 76-year-old Frances Gordon, made headlines in 2002 when she graduated summa cum laude from the San Marcos campus, arriving at graduation ceremonies on a red Honda motorcycle.

Space is scarce

The senior students don’t bump younger students; they register after regular students are enrolled and if there’s no space, they don’t get a seat.

But the entire system is under stress. Tuition has increased seven times in eight years. And CSU has taken other budget-cutting measures, such as reducing enrollment, implementing furloughs and cutting staff.

“Free education for folks over 60 is a nice thing for the public to support,” said Steve Boilard of the Legislative Analyst’s Office in Sacramento, who studies the state’s higher education spending patterns. “But the question isn’t ‘Is it good?’ but rather, ‘Is it the best way to spend our education dollars?’ ”

Further, Boilard noted, “Turning away recent high school graduates while providing slots to retirees isn’t the best way to allocate scarce enrollment slots.”

San Jose State parent Marie Ciano is 59, but said, “I do not believe it is fair for anyone to receive a waiver because of age.” Upon turning 60, she said she’d welcome paying a small fee. “I would like to attend some classes for the joy of the knowledge without placing a burden on the resources of the university.”

There are some tuition breaks offered to a few other groups of students, as well. For instance, children of dead or disabled veterans get a free education, regardless of family income. So do children of dead or injured firefighters, police officers or victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack — but they must prove financial need.

The Over 60 Program was established by CSU trustees in 1979, when California’s economy was strong and the state supported 90 percent of the cost of a CSU education — and the total cost of tuition was merely $160.

Faculty say they cherish the program and its older students.

“Such a program fits squarely with CSU’s mission and therefore should be celebrated, along with all other drives for equity and access in education,” said English professor Stefan Frazier.

“I was delighted to have them in my classes, said professor John Engell, chairman of the Department of English and Comparative Literature. “These older students exemplify the idea of education as a lifelong endeavor, and they bring to class a wealth of experiences and wisdom. They therefore serve as role models for younger students.”

“However, I wonder if SJSU might find a positive way to urge these over-60 students to become active financial contributors to the university during our current budget crisis,” Engell said.

Positive step

Some students also believe the program is a positive step.

“I fully support the Over 60 Program,” said Eric Acedo, a San Jose State junior majoring in environmental studies.

“Although relentless fee increases make staying in college more and more unattainable for regular students, that does not justify creating more difficulty in pursuing further education by revoking the benefits of the Over 60 Program. The less economic barriers there are to battling ignorance, the better.”

Boilard, of the Legislative Analyst’s Office, suggested “means testing,” so that wealthy retirees would be expected to pay. Several parents suggested a way for older students to “audit” courses, rather than taking them for academic credit.

Meanwhile, Fitzgerald is hitting the books. Fitzgerald has enrolled in the program since 2006, earning a 3.4 GPA in courses such as Political Sociology; Poverty, Power and Wealth; and a graduate seminar in financial inequality.

If he passes his exam, he’ll have graduate degrees in philosophy, history and sociology. He hopes it will help him publish his memoirs and a study of Later 20th Century Life in San Jose and the Far West.

“I am not likely to take more coursework from San Jose State,” he said, sadly. “What would they admit me to study, if they did?”

The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. The most ambitious Beethoven study center outside Bonn, Germany, where Beethoven was born, is celebrating its silver anniversary with a sold-out fundraising banquet and concert next weekend — and with a free exhibit titled “25 Treasures for 25 Years.”

I spoke with William Meredith, the center’s director going back to 1985, about the exhibit, which opens Saturday at the Martin Luther King Library. (That’s where you’ll find the center, on the fifth floor). It includes letters penned by the composer, first-edition musical scores, rare paintings and other images of Beethoven — as well as a famous lock of his hair. (A bestselling book, “Beethoven’s Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved,” by Russell Martin, tells its story.)

Beyond the exhibit, Meredith explained the uniqueness of the center, which grew out of a collection of Beethoven’s letters, scores and memorabilia donated to the university by the late Ira F. Brilliant. He was an Arizona real estate developer whose life, like those of millions of others, was transformed by Beethoven.

Q Bill, I’m going to let you brag on your anniversary. Outside of Bonn, Germany — home to the Beethoven-Haus center, the world’s biggest — is there any other Beethoven research center that rivals the one in San Jose?

A
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There isn’t anything like it anywhere, actually. It’s very American, very open and accessible. When you walk in, you can actually sit down and play some of the instruments in the collection, very fine reproductions of instruments similar to those played by Beethoven and his contemporaries. So elementary school kids come in, and they get to try the harpsichord and the clavichord and the early piano. Well, this just blows them away, and they stay for hours.

We also have original, antique instruments from Beethoven’s time, including a Broadwood piano, made in London in 1823 — and similar to the instrument Beethoven owned in Vienna, the one on which he composed his late sonatas. Someone from the staff will demonstrate the Broadwood — and our other vintage instruments — for the school kids, or whoever’s visiting.

Q This doesn’t happen in Germany?

A No! In Bonn and in most music instrument museums, you can only look. It’s very frustrating to look at something that wants to be heard. Here at the center, everybody gets the docent-led tour. Everybody gets to hear the instruments. And the same is true of the books on the walls: They’re open for everybody to use. Let’s say a high school kid wants to do research on Beethoven’s deafness. He can come in and look at all the books we have on the subject, whereas in Germany, the kid could never even get into the Beethoven Archive at the Beethoven-Haus.

Q The Bonn center obviously is much older than yours.

A Yes, nearly a century older. It opened in 1889.

Q And it’s much bigger.

A Sure. But we’ve got some rare stuff, too, and we’re always adding more. We’re just now raising funds for a second lock of hair — one that Beethoven’s secretary Anton Schindler, his first biographer, actually cut while Beethoven was still alive.

But we already have cooler things than that. We have several of Beethoven’s letters, some of which we’ve never had on display until now. They’re in the new exhibit.

As is a newly discovered painting of Beethoven — a very old copy of a lost painting, one of the earliest portraits of Beethoven, a historical image. In fact, we’re showing numerous images of Beethoven, including a copperplate engraving by an artist named Blasius Hofel: Beethoven once said of this engraving, “Several people have discerned my soul clearly from it.”

And there’s another engraving of Beethoven’s doctor during the time when Beethoven was writing his Heiligenstadt Testament. (In his “testament,” the composer despaired over his illnesses and increasing deafness, wondering if he would be able to fulfill his destiny as an artist.) It’s a really beautiful, high-quality picture, so you actually get to see what this doctor — who foolishly sent the composer to the countryside “to rest his ears” — looked like.

Q Impressive.

A I think so. But coming back to your question, the Bonn center will always have more autographs than we do — more manuscripts and musical scores from the composer’s hand.

But maybe in 75 years we’ll have caught up in other ways. We’ve already created what some scholars have called the greatest research tool for studying Beethoven — the Beethoven Gateway, an ongoing bibliography and resource for almost everything written about Beethoven, about 20,000 items so far. We’ve just started to add scores: You can click on the score and print a copy of the first edition. And we’re adding digital images from our large collection of illustrations of Beethoven and his world. (Go to www.sjsu.edu/beethoven, and click on “Beethoven Online”.)

Q Are there other Beethoven centers and museums?

A Several little boutique museums exist. The Brunswick Castle outside of Budapest has a Beethoven room that’s a little museum. There’s also a little Beethoven room in the Erdödy estate outside of Vienna.

Q What else is unique about the center in San Jose?

A We publish the Beethoven Journal — again, there’s nothing like it, anywhere. At the Beethoven-Haus, they publish a journal that comes out once a year, but it’s made up of scholarly articles written for other scholars and not intended for the general public. Whereas the Beethoven Journal, which comes out two times a year, always includes two or three articles that are scholarly, but it also tries to aim at interested non-professional people.

For example, the new issue includes an article about the origins of the only Beethoven museum in Vienna, the Pasqualati-Haus Beethoven Museum. It describes how, in 1939, the Nazis decried the “abomination” of a Jewish family living in what was mistakenly thought to be Beethoven’s most important apartment in Vienna. The family was thrown out, eventually sent to Auschwitz, and the museum was founded as a “sacred place of devotion.”

And now the author of the article, Walther Brauneis, reveals the sordid history of the Nazis’ founding of the museum and shows that it was all a mistake. Beethoven actually lived next door to the apartment that is the museum. All year long, Beethoven lovers visit what they think is Beethoven’s apartment, without knowing the horror and error of its founding.

That’s an example of what we do. The Beethoven Center works to break down the walls of academia in terms of sharing information about Beethoven with the world at large. Rather than having the view that the information uncovered by scholars is intended only for scholars, we’ve taken the view that it’s for everyone. And given Beethoven’s impact on the world, the more we know, the better off we are. It helps everyone to understand what his music means and what it can teach us about what it means to be fully human.

Q You’re coordinating a series of scholarly books on Beethoven?

A It’s called the North American Beethoven Series, and it’s put out some incredibly important books. I didn’t write them! The center has co-sponsored the series with other institutions and — because San Jose State doesn’t have its own press — with other university presses.

It contains the first collection, in three volumes (from University of Nebraska Press), of the letters that were written to Beethoven, rather than by him. You can finally read the other half of the conversation. Ted Albrecht is the editor.

And then there’s a collection of all the reviews of Beethoven’s works. So any review, say, of the Fifth Symphony that was published during Beethoven’s lifetime (he died in 1827), and then up to 1830, is in the book. And they’re translated into English, and I’m working on it with two other editors. We’ve published two of the four volumes so far, again from the University of Nebraska Press, and the next two will be published by Pendragon.

A reviewer from 1813 was already writing, five years after the Fifth’s premiere, that it was a “classic” of large-scale instrumental music, but he also pointed out that the famous Scherzo movement had fallen apart at every performance he had heard because of its incredible difficulty. Some critics were still dismayed in December 1826, four months before Beethoven died. One reviewer called the Fifth so crazy and wild that it was contrary to good taste, that it’s monstrously long, and the third movement is so “extremely fatiguing” that the listeners have no desire to hear any more music when the work finally ends. Thank God the poor Beethoven, already on his deathbed, didn’t see that one!

Contact Richard Scheinin at 408-920-5069.

’25 Treasures for 25 Years’

Exhibit at the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies
When: Saturday through Dec. 11: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, 1-5 p.m. Saturday
Where: Fifth Floor, Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Library, 150 E. San Fernando St., San Jose
Admission: Free

Professional success.  How does one define it?

For Viji Dilip, ’95 MBA, CPA and once controller for multiple Silicon Valley start-ups, a doctor’s visit, an unexpected diagnosis, and the very real chance that she would go blind from a tumor pressing on her optic nerve combined to reshape her career goals and work priorities. And in that reevaluation, “pocketing loads of money,” in her phrase, no longer counted as a primary motivation.

“It was 2003. I was working at a start-up,” recalls Dilip. “Once the tumor was discovered, I went in to tell my boss that I was scheduled for brain surgery and that I’d be back in three weeks. He said: ‘You’re not joking, are you?’ It was just so sudden. The doctors couldn’t give me more than a couple of days to get ready. They had to get me into surgery and get it done.”

The surgery went well. Dilip emerged with her eyesight intact. But the experience changed her perspective “on the way I looked at life,” she admits. “I said to myself what if? After that close brush with blindness, I decided I didn’t want to do anything more with accounting. I wanted to give back to society, to help people who didn’t have vision with their education so that they could become economically and socially independent.”

A different career track

A native of India, Dilip received a BA in accounting from Madras University and, with her husband, made the move to the Bay Area. She was still in SJSU’s MBA program when Hewlett-Packard recruited her and jump-started her financial career in Silicon Valley. She took a year off to have a baby and returned to the workforce in 1997—but not to HP.

“I started chasing start-ups,” she says. “The dot com business was booming then.”

After leaving HP she headed up the finance and accounting divisions for a string of newbie companies, including Vivace Networks, acquired by Tellabs in 2003, and Net6, acquired by Citrix in 2004. After her brain surgery, when she quit Net6 to pursue “something totally different,” Dilip says she intentionally “started small. First I volunteered for Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic in Palo Alto. Then, in 2005, I started volunteering for Bookshare, also headquartered in Palo Alto.”

Bookshare’s mission

A subscription-based, online library of digital books for people with print disabilities, Bookshare is part of Benetech, a company founded by former rocket scientist Jim Fruchterman. Also the founder of Arkenstone, a world leader in the production of reading machines for the blind, Pruchterman started Benetech in 2000 explicitly to solve social needs with technological innovation. In addition to the Bookshare program, Benetech sponsors programs in literacy, human rights and environmental conservation.

The 1996 Chafee amendment to U.S. copyright law allowing copyrighted books to be scanned and shared in digital formats for print-disabled readers means Bookshare doesn’t need to “talk to individual U.S. publishers,” Dilip explains. “Anyone with a print disability can pick up a book and have it converted to a format that he or she can use.”

Bookshare’s library now contains more than 60,000 books and 150 periodicals that can be converted to Braille, large print or synthetic speech. A community of volunteers scanned in the initial titles, most of which were novels. More recently, Bookshare has expanded its educational titles in conjunction with a $32 million grant from the US. Department of Education to offer Bookshare as a free service for all K-12 students.

Going international

An estimated 10 million people in the U.S. are unable to read a traditional printed book because of a disability. Worldwide, that number is far, far greater. From the beginning of her association with Bookshare, Dilip was thinking beyond U.S. borders.

“Because I’m from India, I started looking at the situation of the print-disabled people in that country, and I found there was a huge gap. India was a good 20 to 30 years behind the United States in terms of assistive technology for the blind,” she reports.

Even as a volunteer, she remembers constantly “bugging” Fruchterman about the need to expand internationally. “Then one day Jim called me in to say: ‘Okay, Viji, I’ve just got a grant from the Newcomb Foundation to take Bookshare international. Do you want to head that up?’ and I said, ‘Okay, Jim.’ So that’s how l became international program coordinator in 2007.”

Dilip works with organizations in Canada and the United Kingdom as well as in India, where Bookshare employs what Dilip describes as a “ground team” of four. In countries other than the U.S., procuring titles can be a slow and complicated process.

“In underdeveloped countries, the biggest problem we face is that copyright issues have not been addressed by government in the local area,” she says. “We get around those issues by talking to publishers on a one-on-one basis and gaining their permission.”

Thus far, 15 Indian publishers have agreed to share their titles, and others in the country—both publishers and authors—are coming forward to offer their books. Dilip’s first major coup in that regard was partnering with Seasons Publishing, based in Chennai, India. “Our next big win was Sahitya Akademy,” she says, a firm that publishes award-winning titles in 15 local languages.

To date, Bookshare offers texts in English, French, German and Spanish. Dilip and the engineers at Benetech expect to add Hindi and Tamil to that list by year’s end and other non-European languages soon thereafter. The additions will “make a huge difference in places like India where a huge portion of the population uses the local languages to continue their education,” Dilip says.

In efforts to improve Bookshare’s reach and effectiveness, Dilip collaborates with other international organizations, including the International Council for the Education of the Visually Impaired and Sight Savers.

“Those organizations already know the lay of the land, the people, where the technology exists and what can be easily secured,” Dilip explains, “so we partner with them.”

A good day’s work

With her Indian marketing team in place, Dilip has cut back on the multiple annual trips she used to make to her home country and concentrates instead on coordinating operations from her Palo Alto office. Her day starts early—6:30 a.m. or 7—with telephone calls to the Far East, Korea, India and the U.K.

Throughout the day, she works with the collection development and membership departments, vetting membership requests, all of which require proof of disability.

“I receive interesting requests from U.S. citizens who are situated in other countries—diplomats, people in the military—whose children are attending American international schools and following an individualized education plan based on an American curriculum while their parents are stationed abroad for a year or two,” she says. “I just recently set up accounts for American children with print disabilities attending a school in Sudan.”

And is Dilip, CPA turned International Program Coordinator, pleased with her career shift?

Absolutely.

“Receiving a phone call from a parent who says, ‘Thank you so much! My child can actually continue his education now!’ Or a call saying, ‘My kid is now able to read. His studies have picked up and he’s doing really well.’ That,” says Dilip, “is very, very satisfying.”

Contact: Pat Lopes Harris, 408-656-6999

SAN JOSE, Calif., — Academy Award winning filmmaker and author Michael Moore has been named a recipient of the Steinbeck Award “In the Souls of the People” by the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University.

Thomas Steinbeck, noted author and son of John Steinbeck, praised Michael Moore as a great selection for the award and a courageous man. “My father would have loved Michael Moore,” Thomas Steinbeck said. “My father was the Michael Moore of his time.”

Moore will formally receive the award at 7 p.m. Thursday, October 14, in SJSU’s Morris Dailey Auditorium, where he will appear in conversation with Metro Silicon Valley Executive Editor Dan Pulcrano.

The event is a benefit for the Steinbeck Center. Tickets are $25 general admission and $15 for students through Ticketmaster and the SJSU Event Center box office. The talk will be hosted by the SJSU Student Union and Thomas Steinbeck.

“The Grapes of Wrath” is the source of the phrase “In the souls of the people.” Past Steinbeck Award honorees include Bruce Springsteen, Studs Terkel, Sean Penn and Garrison Keillor.

The award goes to writers and artists whose work captures the spirit of Steinbeck’s empathy, commitment to democratic values, and belief in the dignity of people who by circumstance are pushed to the fringes.

Moore’s films include “Capitalism: A Love Story,” “Roger & Me,” “Sicko,” “Farenheit 9/11,” and “Bowling for Columbine.” His books, “Stupid White Men” and” Downsize This!,” are bestsellers.

Purchase tickets.

http://bit.ly/sjsumooretickets

View Moore’s official website.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/

Read more on the Steinbeck Award.

http://bit.ly/steinbeckaward

San Jose State — Silicon Valley’s largest institution of higher learning with 27,400 students and 3,190 employees — is part of the California State University system. SJSU’s 154-acre downtown campus anchors the nation’s 10th largest city.