Department of Music and Dance Associate Professor and Director of Choral Activities Jeffrey Benson directed a Prince William County high school choir at a concert held at Osbourn Park High School in Manassas, Virginia, in October. Benson also serves as artistic director of Peninsula Cantare, a community chorus in Palo Alto.
The Mercury News interviewed Assistant Professor Caroline Chen, Department of Accounting and Finance, about whether the GOP tax plan could lead Silicon Valley companies bringing “overseas cash home” during a proposed tax “holiday.” According to Moody’s report, U.S. companies held $1.3 trillion overseas at the end of 2016. “If the company isn’t in need of the cash to, say, build a new plant, I don’t see them wanting to pay even 12 percent on their cash,” Chen said. “Just because you lower the repatriation rates doesn’t mean we’ll see barges of cash from offshore coming into the Port of Oakland.”
Department of Political Science Assistant Professor Mary Currin-Percival, Associate Professor Garrick Percival and Professor and Chair Melinda Jackson collaborated on an op-ed article for the Mercury News: “Opinion: Hold elections for San José mayor, county DA, sheriff only in presidential years.” Since “low voter participation weakens…core tenets of democracy” and contributes to policies that are “often unrepresentative,” one solution would be moving key elections to coincide with presidential elections when voter turnout rates are higher, the trio proposed. Read more at: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/27/opinion-hold-elections-for-san-jose-mayor-county-da-sheriff-only-in-presidential-years
iSchool Associate Professor Christine Hagar was among an international group of presenters at the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience: Dealing with Disasters conference held at England’s Durham University in September. Hagar’s paper, “Strengthening Community Engagement and Resilience Efforts in Climate Change: Public Program Strategies,” discussed the crises informatics model she created for the Public Libraries Advancing Community Engagement (PLACE) project. “Disasters are often essentially local events and local organizations, such as public libraries, are critical in responding to them,” she said.
Associate Professor Roxana Marachi, Department of Elementary Education, delivered a keynote address at the Network for Public Education’s national conference in Oakland last month. In her presentation, Marachi, whose research encompasses students’ social and emotional wellbeing and the effects of technology on students’ health, criticized the “headlong dash to adopt devices and software without fully understanding their potential and limitation.” Read more at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-10-16-at-public-education-conference-educators-share-fall-outs-on-personalized-learning-privatization-and-edtech
The Mercury News consulted Department of Economics Professor and Chair Lydia Ortega for an article about delayed insurance reimbursements in the wake of tens of thousands of claims filed as a result of wildfires in California and hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Ortega warned that this year’s series of natural disasters “may pinch the reserves of even major insurers. No insurance company could have imagined something of this magnitude…they might not be able to pay fully.” Read more at: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/19/thousands-of-wine-country-wildfire-claims-jolt-insurers-pose-thorny-challenges-for-homeowners
Upcoming are staged readings of two of Department of Film and Theatre Professor Scott Sublett’s new plays. The Repeating Arms of Sarah Winchester, which explores Winchester’s response to spiritualism as a young widow in Connecticut, will be presented in the Hammer Theatre Center’s black box space, the Hammer 4, on December 4. “This is not the fictional, kooky Sarah of the tourist attraction house,” Sublett clarified. Charleston Harbor, a musical about Civil War hero and slave Robert Smalls, will be presented at Manhattan’s Amas Musical Theatre on November 30 and December 1. “Smalls was forgotten by history,” Sublett said. “It’s my hope that the play revives interest in Smalls by other artists, by scholars and particularly by historians.”