As the campaign progresses, faculty and staff are making contributions to a variety of departments, funds and campus organizations, including chemistry, the Support Our Staff Scholarship, the Student Emergency Fund, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisesexual and Transgender Resource Center, and the Center for Community Learning and Leadership.

“The students continue to inspire me as a staff member,” said Joy Njema Vickers from Student Outreach and Recruitment. “So giving back, as was once done for me, is my contribution to continuing the legacy.”

The annual faculty and staff campaign continues through April 19.

Phyllis Simpkins

By Pat Lopes Harris, Media Relations Director

San Jose State is set to honor the life and extraordinary commitment of Phyllis Simpkins,’46 Home Economics and Marketing, on Friday, Sept. 7 at 3 p.m. in Morris Dailey Auditorium. A reception will follow in the rose garden and bell plaza area outside Tower Hall. Both events are open to the public.

Mrs. Simpkins, who passed away July 7 at 87, and her late husband Alan Simpkins, ‘48 Physics, were lifelong supporters and donors to SJSU. Among San Jose State’s most generous benefactors, the couple committed nearly $20 million to many athletic and academic programs.

The Simpkins’ led the effort to restore the Spartan Marching Band in 1977 after several years of absence. Last year, Phyllis provided seed money for a campaign to provide the band with new uniforms. On Sept. 8, when SJSU football takes on UC Davis, the band will wear those new uniforms in a half-time show dedicated to the couple. Sewn inside each uniform is a label bearing the name of a donor, including Phyllis and Alan Simpkins.

Among SJSU Most Generous Donors

“The legacy created by Phyllis Simpkins’ leadership and generosity will benefit San Jose State University students for generations to come. Not only did she give generously, she inspired others to support San Jose State,” said President Mohammad Qayoumi. “It is important that we pay tribute to the many ways in which Phyllis and Alan supported our students and university as a whole.”

Gifts from the Simpkins support the following:

• Phyllis Forward Simpkins International Center (the SJSU International House)
• Alan B. Simpkins Intercollegiate Athletics Administration Building
• Simpkins Stadium Center
• Moss Landing Marine Laboratories
• Department of Nutrition and Food Science
• Department of Kinesiology
• School of Music and Dance

Giving and Getting Involved

But the Simpkins did much more than give to SJSU; they got involved. The International House was a personal passion for Phyllis who, in addition to being a regular visitor and occasional cook, oversaw its purchase, renovation and upkeep. Phyllis served as president of the SJSU Alumni Association in 1977. She and with her husband were among the founders of the association’s Santa Cruz Chapter.

San Jose State and the California State University have honored Phyllis and Alan Simpkins many times over the years. In 1979, Phyllis Simpkins received the Tower Award, SJSU’s highest honor for philanthropy and service. Phyllis and Alan Simpkins were named CSU Philanthropists of the Year in 1989. Both Phyllis and Alan Simpkins also received honorary Doctorates of Humane Letters at the SJSU commencement in 1996.

Parking for the event is available in the South (Seventh Street) Garage, located at South Seventh and East San Salvador streets.

In 1988, Harvey was a postdoctoral fellow when he was tapped to be part of a team of scientists involved in the rescue of three gray whales trapped underneath the ice near Barrow, Alaska. Rescue team members Mark Fraker (left, oil company), NOAA’s Dave Withrow (center) and Jim Harvey (right, seated). (Dave Withrow/NMML/NOAA image)

(Editor’s Note: The following was originally published in the Acceleration Update on March 7, 2012).

A lot has changed since Jim Harvey first stepped foot on the campus of San José State. He earned a Ph.D. and helped rescue a few gray whales. He found the job of his dreams and became the interim director of a leading marine research lab. He’s married, mentored more than 75 graduate students and—perhaps most noticeable—he’s grown a couple feet taller.

Few people can claim a deeper association with SJSU than Harvey. His father was a professor in the College of Science and Harvey grew up in a home that valued science. Harvey remembers coming to campus as a child and taking trips with his father to do research on giant sequoias in the Sierra and marsh restoration in San Francisco Bay. Later, Harvey would become an alumnus when he attended San José State as an undergraduate.

Now, Harvey is a professor and Interim Director of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. If you’ve driven down the Pacific Coast Highway in Northern California, you’ve probably cruised past the marine research consortium’s headquarters, which is operated by the CSU and administered through San José State. The facility is located in Moss Landing, Calif., and offers a well-regarded graduate program in marine science.

Recently, Harvey and his wife decided to bequest a portion of their estate to Moss Landing through San José State. It was a decision that grew from their deep connection to the lab and the confidence that their gift would go to good use. Read more.

The Senior Gift gives everyone the opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of graduates,

By Pat Lopes Harris, Media Relations Director

How will you honor your favorite San Jose State graduate this spring? Consider contributing $20.12 or more to the 2012 Senior Gift fund.

The Senior Gift gives graduating students, along with their family and friends, the opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of graduates, while contributing to a program that will directly support current and future students.

Donors get to vote for one of three recipient organizations. This year’s choices include the SJSU Alumni Association Scholarship Program, the Educational Opportunity Program and the Student Emergency Fund.

Last year, 165 SJSU graduates, parents, and faculty and staff members gave a total of over $3,800. The money raised went to the Educational Opportunity Program because it received the most votes.

Honor someone special and vote for this year’s Senior Gift recipient. Your name and the names of those you honor will appear in May’s commencement program and the Donor Honor Roll.

To learn more, contact Carolyn Canete, annual giving manager, at 408-924-1782. Give now.

A rendering of the Bill Walsh Center exterior view (SJSU Athletics image).

San Jose State forges ahead with Bill Walsh Center

Posted by the San Jose Mercury News Feb. 10, 2012.

By Jon Wilner

The San Jose State athletic department is planning to build a massive football complex that will include a facility named in honor of its most famous alumnus.

The Bill Walsh Center will be the spiritual and intellectual heart of the 60,000-square-foot, two-building complex rising above the north end zone of Spartan Stadium. A football operations center also is in the works.

With an estimated cost of $9 million to $14 million, the project is expected to begin next winter and be completed by the start of the 2013 football season.

“We’re very excited,” said Walsh’s son, Craig. “There’s enough synergy in the community to get it done. It’s one thing to say you’re going to do it and another to get the financing. But they’ve closed that loop. They’ve worked hard.”

San Jose State president Mohammad Qayoumi supports the project provided that funding goals are met, according to university media relations director Pat Lopes Harris.

No state money will be used. The complex will be paid for by donations to Spartan athletics, which is using a committee of Walsh’s friends and former players to help raise money.

Athletic director Tom Bowen said enough money has been pledged to start the project but that fundraising is ongoing.

“The commitment by the university is there — this project will happen,” Bowen said. “We’ve been working on it for four years. This is the fulfillment of a promise that (former SJSU president) Don Kassing and I made to Bill. It’s something he wanted to do.”

According to at least one influential faculty member, it’s something the Spartans need to do.

“There are facilities needs in athletics to modernize, improve and expand in order to best serve current and future students at the highest levels, which includes the fact that we are a Division I institution,” said professor Annette Nellen, chair of the university’s Athletics Board, which serves as a liaison between the faculty and the athletic department.

“I think there has been appropriate research and input from many on-campus and off-campus sources to identify where fundraising efforts are needed.”

The football operations center will include offices for coaches, a locker room and player lounge, medical and training facilities and a dining hall.

It’s designed to allow SJSU to remain competitive in the Western Athletic Conference, where numerous schools have built new athletic facilities since the completion of SJSU’s last project, the Koret training center, more than a decade ago.

“We’re behind, and this will get up right there with them,” Spartans coach Mike MacIntyre said. “It will help in recruiting, in our daily function and help with the overall culture of the team and the community. People will realize football is important, and perception’s huge.”

But the centerpiece of Bowen’s plan is what SJSU is calling “The Bill Walsh Center: Institute for the Development of Human Potential.” It will hold lectures and seminars promoting Walsh’s vision of leadership.

San Jose State is the first Bay Area sporting institution to name a facility after the legendary coach, who played for the Spartans and earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from SJSU.

Walsh’s wife, Geri, also attended the university, and they met there. Walsh died in 2007.

“It’s where Bill got his start, and it’s appropriate,” said Bill Ring, who played for Walsh with the 49ers and remains a close family friend.

“The embodiment of what San Jose State is trying to do is exactly what Bill wanted — (after his coaching career) he really turned his attention to mentoring people. He was in it to give of himself, to teach.”

SJSU’s plans call for an eight-foot bronze statue of Walsh outside the complex. The buildings will be connected by a second-floor walkway, with the Walsh Center overlooking the north end zone of Spartan Stadium.

The first floor will house San Jose State’s athletic Hall of Fame and Walsh memorabilia, including his 500-page thesis on the flank offense, which Craig Walsh described as the precursor to his father’s famed West Coast offense.

But the facility is not a museum.

The second floor will have an amphitheater and meeting rooms, allowing San Jose State to host conferences, clinics and seminars based on Walsh’s philosophy of sports psychology and management.

After retiring from coaching, Walsh taught classes at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He is also the author of numerous books on coaching, organization and leadership.

“It’s going to be a think tank for leadership,” Craig Walsh said. “We want it to be a West Coast destination. Everything will be under the guise of innovation.”

For more on college sports, see Jon Wilner’s College Hotline at blogs.mercurynews.com/collegesports. Contact him at jwilner@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5716.

Students Jimmy Sigona (left) and Artem Shevchuk (right) in Hong Kong with the Thompson Global Internship Program (photo courtesy of Jimmy Sigona).

By Pat Lopes Harris, Media Relations Director

James E. Thompson, ’62 Aeronautical Engineering, has made a $950,000 gift commitment to San Jose State University supporting a College of Business program he helped establish in 2010. The gift is expected to support student participants over the next ten years. The competitive Thompson Global Internship Program sends undergraduate business students to tackle challenging, real-life projects identified by Crown Worldwide Group in cities where it operates such as Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. Thompson is founder and chairman of the Hong Kong-based business, the world’s largest privately-held international moving company. He created the internship so students could develop a truly global worldview. “My interest in funding this program was to encourage San Jose State students to realize the fact that globalization is now part of all our lives and we should embrace it,” he said in May as SJSU’s commencement speaker. “We’ve come very far in making the world a global society, and in my opinion there’s no turning back.”

To learn more, please contact Program Director William DeVincenzi, (408) 924-3488.

Ellen Junn at her first forum as SJSU's chief academic officer (Robert Bain photo).

By Pat Lopes Harris, Media Relations Director

Sunny skies greeted nearly 26,800 students beginning spring term 2012 Jan. 25 at San Jose State.

Around 800 transfers arrived on campus, including at least one San Francisco 49er. Donte Whitner lit up Twitter with tons of questions on everything from barbecue to student services.

New Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Ellen Junn became perhaps the first SJSU administrator ever to incorporate live audience polling via cell phone into a campuswide forum on the budget and strategic plan.

President Mo Qayoumi began the term with a welcome back message vowing to move forward on Vision 2012. “I am well aware that ‘strategic plans’ can become empty words. Let me assure you that this is not our path,” he said.

“Acceleration: The Campaign for San Jose State University” will continue to make progress toward its $200 million goal, while Governor Brown proposed a flat budget for the CSU in 2012-2013. He’ll update the numbers in May.

The University Police Department introduced an evening shuttle, providing safe transit for campus community members traveling between SJSU and nearby residences, workplaces, classrooms or public transit.

Students of course continue to work away on a wide range of academic and pre-professional endeavors. One example is a team of aspiring engineers developing a futuristic spherical drive system.

Athletics Director Tom Bowen will provide all faculty and staff two free tickets to a Spartan Basketball doubleheader Feb. 4, when rally towels will be given away to the first 500 people in attendance.

Later this semester, on Feb. 25, MSNBC political analyst Rachel Maddow will accept the John Steinbeck Award, “In the Souls of the People,” following in the footsteps of Sean Penn, Michael Moore and many others.

Spring term is for milestones. The Honors Convocation will celebrate its 50th anniversary April 20, recognizing students with top GPAs. The same day, an Investiture Ceremony is planned for President Qayoumi.

At Commencement May 26, SJSU will send more than 8,000 students into the workforce or on to graduate school. Go Spartans!

The effort will build on SJSU’s Bay Area Earth Science Institute, which offers a comprehensive, year-round professional development program for teachers of grades 4-12 (Elena Polanco photo).

By Pat Lopes Harris, Media Relations Director

Improving the sustainability literacy of California’s 450,000 sixth graders is the goal of a new pilot project uniting SJSU and Creative Change Educational Solutions, a national leader in sustainability education.

This effort will also form a network of teacher education faculty members from SJSU and CSU East Bay. They will develop a sustainability lens for teachers of grades K-8.

The California Alliance for Sustainability will be funded by a $71,333 grant from the the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation.

Professor of Geology Ellen Metzger will be the principal investigator. Assistant Professor of Education Grinell Smith, science education coordinator for elementary education, will be the co-principal investigator.

Over 20 in-service teachers and education faculty members from SJSU and California State University East Bay will participate in summer workshops. Then they will receive follow-up support as they significantly re-frame their instructional units and university courses using a sustainability lens, one that expands environmental education to include issues of social equity and economic sustainability.

Metzger and her colleagues will focus on sixth grade science standards, investigating and addressing barriers to implementing educating for sustainability in real classrooms.

Chevron provided $5,000 in seed funding for the project. The effort will build on Metzger’s role as director of SJSU’s Bay Area Earth Science Institute. Now in its 21st year, BAESI offers a comprehensive, year-round professional development program for teachers of grades 4-12.

“Being here at San Jose State is a dream come true. And the dream has brought me to places that I never thought I’d be as an undergraduate. What’s ended up happening is that I’ve become a nurse leader. If not for the Adaptive Technology Center, none of this would be possible,” said Rick Becker, ’12 Nursing.

When nursing student Rick Becker found out he was a San Jose State President’s Scholar, he rushed over to share the news with the Adaptive Technology Center staff. Becker says he wouldn’t have been able to earn a 4.0 GPA without their help. Through the center, Becker was able to test-drive several document readers to find the one that works best with the complex medical vocabulary and diagrams in his nursing textbooks.

Becker learns most effectively by listening to, rather than reading, course materials. He uses document readers, which take digital files and read them back aloud, to stay on top of The Valley Foundation School of Nursing’s rigorous coursework. He also uses voice recognition software to compose emails, presentations and evidence-based research papers.

A gift from Linda Starek, ’66 Education, will be used to update the center’s technology and make it available to students like Becker. Every year, about 1,200 students from every college and every discipline—with challenges ranging from cognitive to physical disabilities—go to the center to use and get training on adaptive technology. With the training and technology the center provides, these students overcome barriers to success.

Becker is making a name for himself among his peers and in the state of California. In addition to serving as president of the Public Health Nursing Club, he is also the first undergraduate student ever to hold a voting seat on the California Public Health Association-North’s Governing Council, which influences statewide health policies. Becker is also a member of the association’s Communication Task Force, which, among other things, ensures effective communication to the California public. “The help from the Adaptive Technology Center has allowed me to excel academically and to branch out,” says Becker. “The center’s staff uncovers what you can actually do.”

“It’s not that students who use the Adaptive Technology Center cannot learn. They just learn in different ways. And with online classes and new technology that’s used in classrooms, providing equal access to course materials becomes even more essential,” said Wendy Lin, adaptive technology center coordinator.

View the complete SJSU Tower Foundation Annual Report 2010-2011.

San José State’s MESA Schools Program works with secondary school teachers to encourage educationally disadvantaged students to pursue college degrees in science, technology engineering and math related majors.

Robot parts and computers to program the robots. Balsa wood for building bridges. Paper and pencils. A $30,000 grant from the Boston Scientific Foundation will, among other things, finance an interesting list of supplies for SJSU’s MESA group.

The MESA Schools Program, which worked with the San José State’s Corporate and Foundation Relations team to apply for the grant, was informed that it was being awarded the generous gift in October. Boston Scientific is a worldwide developer, manufacturer and marketer of medical devices. Its products are used in a broad range of interventional medical specialties.

This year’s grant follows on a prior grant for $10,000. The increase in grant funding developed out of a multi-level relationship between SJSU and Boston Scientific including Spartan alumni within the company, Boston Scientific volunteer participation with MESA kids and the demonstrable success of the program.

San José State’s MESA Schools Program—its name is an acronym for Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement—has worked since 1979 with secondary school teachers in the Santa Clara Valley to encourage educationally disadvantaged students to pursue college degrees in science, technology engineering and math related majors.

Read more.