Category Archives: Faculty Notes

Faculty Notes for September 2016: Publications, Quotes and More

Craig Clements

Craig Clements

Wildfire expert Associate Professor Craig Clements, Department of Meteorology, was interviewed by CBS-SF regarding Monterey County’s Soberanes Fire and its effects on the air quality of the Bay Area. “The winds in the Bay Area are very complex,” Clements explained. “The wind may be moving in one direction…but the plume of smoke can get injected into the upper atmosphere and transported from the south to the north.” As of September 13, the fire burning in the Ventana Wilderness of the Los Padres National Forest, started by an illegal, unattended campfire on the Soberanes Canyon trail, has consumed more than 100,000 acres.

Professor Jan English-Lueck, Department of Anthropology, was interviewed in June by the Mercury News about “Silicon Valley speak” and “learning to talk tech.” English-Lueck is also a research affiliate at Palo Alto’s Institute for the Future.

Department of Art and Art History Professors Craig Hobbs and Robin Lasser collaborated on a large-scale video, Migratory Cultures: Mapping the Distance from Me to You, projected outside the San Jose Museum of Art after sunset on July 21. Featuring stories from San Jose and Bay Area immigrants, the video has also been shown outside the Pajaro Valley Arts Gallery in Watsonville and the Sunset Magazine building in Jack London Square, Oakland. For more information, visit their Facebook page.

Professor Joseph Pesek, Department of Chemistry, was named a CASSS Distinguished Fellow in July, honoring his service to the biopharmaceutical community and his retirement from the CASSS board of directors. “Being a board member for eight years gave me the opportunity to meet scientists from all over the world and provide input into the direction…of CASSS,” he said. A not-for-profit professional scientific society, CASSS is comprised of more than 4,000 industry-based, academic and regulatory professionals.

Associate Professor Aaron Romanowsky, of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, recently had an article published in the Astrophysical Journal in July, “High Stellar Velocity Dispersion and ~ 100 Globular Clusters for the Ultra Diffuse Galaxy Dragonfly 44. Working with a team of international astronomers, Romanowsky and his colleaues found a massive galaxy that exists entirely of dark matter. Read the abstract online. Romanowsky has another article pending in Nature.

Assistant Professor Emily Slusser and Professor Maureen Smith, Department of Child and Adolescent Development, were interviewed by the Mercury News on the subject of elementary school-age kids, their activities and development. “Overscheduled kids lose the value of free play, whether it’s playing with Barbies or climbing a tree. Unstructured free time—daydreaming—is how we find our identity,” Smith said.

iSchool Assistant Professor Michael Stephens published The Heart of Librarianship: Attentive, Positive, and Purposeful Change (ALA Editions) in June, a collection of essays first written for his “Office Hours” column in Library Journal. Visit his website and blog online.

Carolyn Guidry Chair in Engineering Education and Innovative Learning Belle Wei co-authored an op-ed for the Mercury News calling for a “systematic change to provide technology education to more women.”

Faculty Notes for April 2016: Publications, Quotes and More

Richard Kos, back left, poses for a photo with students who worked on the Greater Washington report.

Richard Kos, back left, poses for a photo with students who worked on the Greater Washington report.

Professor Emeritus Donald Anthrop, Department of Environmental Studies, published an op-ed in the East Bay Times on California’s need for additional water storage and the proposed enlargement of Los Vaqueros Reservoir.

Department of English and Comparative Literature Lecturer Sally Ashton and Professor Emeritus Nils Peterson, both former Santa Clara County Poet Laureates, were among the poets featured in the Legacy of Poetry Day, held on campus May 5. In celebration of the tenth year of this annual event, Director of Creative Writing Alan Soldofsky spoke with SFGate, crediting College of Business Professor Annette Nellen with the idea to “celebrate and remind people how far back poetry on our campus goes,” he said. (In 1899, alumnus Edwin Markham published his world-famous poem: “The Man with the Hoe.”) Current U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera gave the keynote reading at this year’s event.

Coinciding with rallies in Sacramento and Stockton this month in support of Bernie Sanders, KCRA Sacramento interviewed Professor Emeritus Larry Gerston, Department of Political Science, about Sanders’ effect on the presidential election. “Sanders wants to make sure that his values and the values of his followers are heard all the way up to and through the convention,” Gerston said. “The more Sanders campaigns prior to (Clinton) winning the nomination, the more he inserts himself into the discussion and perhaps the future of the Democratic Party.”

Richard Kos, a lecturer and practioner-in-residence in the College of Social Sciences’ Urban and Regional Planning department, and CommUniverCity have been recognized with the American Planning Association’s California Northern Chapter Academic Award. They will receive the award in June for the “Greater Washington: Voices of the Community Report,” a planning document that was produced in both English and Spanish for the downtown San Jose neighborhood. Kos also received the CommUniverCitan award at CommUniverCity’s 11th anniversary celebration in April for his work on the report, the East Santa Clara Street Urban Village plan and his dedication to teaching his students.

Virginia Lehmkuhl-Dakhwe, director of the Jay Pinson STEM Education Program, was quoted in an opinion piece published at InsideSources, citing the need to train more students in cybersecurity education. “The number of jobs in information security is going to grow tenfold in the next 10 years,” said Lehmkuhl-Dakhwe. “We have to do much more if we want to meet that demand at the university level as well as K-12.”

College of Education Associate Professor Roxana Marachi was interviewed about the success rates and outcomes associated with online and blended learning educational programs by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on innovation in education. Read more at: http://hechingerreport.org/hit-pause-button-online-blended-learning.

School of Music and Dance Keyboard Studies Coordinator Gwendolyn Mok, a member of the chamber music group The Eos Ensemble, performed with the group at the Bankhead Theatre in Livermore, the concluding concert in the 2015-2016 Dell Velle Fine Arts chamber music series. Mok performed selections from French composer Maurice Ravel’s “Miroirs,” a suite for solo piano. Earlier in her career, Mok studied with Vlado Perlemuter, a pianist who studied with Ravel himself.

This summer marks the beginning of a new role at our school for Dr. Virginia Tucker who has been a lecturer since 2005 and completed her doctorate through the College of Applied Sciences and Arts’ School of Information San Jose Gateway PhD program in 2013. Tucker accepted a new position as assistant professor with a specialization in information systems and knowledge structures. “I am thrilled to join the iSchool faculty in this new role and contribute to both research and instruction in information retrieval systems design,” she said.  Read more in the iSchool April newsletter.

Faculty Notes for April 2016: Publications, Quotes and More

Emeritus Professor of Political Science Larry Gerston was interviewed in the Los Angeles Times about the Republican primary.

Emeritus Professor of Political Science Larry Gerston was interviewed in the Los Angeles Times about the Republican primary.

Former Lucas College and Graduate School of Business Associate Dean Natalya Delcoure received the Outstanding Educator Award from the Federation of Business Disciplines at the 2016 conference of the Southwestern Finance Association in Oklahoma City. She has been dean of the College of Business Administration at Texas A&M University – Kingsville since August 2013.

Seattle-based photographer Peter de Lory, who previously taught in SJSU’s Department of Art and Art History as well as at the University of New Mexico and The Art Institute of Chicago, is currently photographer-in-residence for Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority. An exhibition of his work, “Walk in the Woods,” at Basecamp Books and Bites in Roslyn, Wash., runs through June 6.

Department of Sociology Professor Hien Do, director of the College of Social Sciences’ Student Success Center, was interviewed by ABC News San Francisco about Assembly Bill 1726, proposed legislation that would require higher education institutions and public health institutions to collect more information on Asian American and Pacific Islander populations, including specific ethnicity.

Professor Emeritus Larry Gerston, Department of Political Science, contributed a Los Angeles Times op-ed on California’s 2016 Republican primary, published April 7. “California has a long history of its political parties fracturing over philosophical extremism, competing racial and ethnic differences and stark geographic contrasts,” he wrote. “Given so many sources of division, any sudden unity in the California delegation would be a remarkable and unprecedented change in political behavior. But then, again, so far 2016 has been a remarkable year.”

Frederika Harmsen, previous visiting scientist at Moss Landing Marine Laboratory and current special assistant to the president on sustainability initiatives at CSU Sacramento, is a finalist for the position of provost/vice president of Academic and Student Life at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. Her recent research focuses on climate change and sustainability, marine habitat mapping and STEM education.

Assistant Professor Funie Hsu, American Studies Program, took part in a panel discussion celebrating Asian Pacific American History Month at Ohlone College. The first such panel hosted by the college, Hsu and other participants shared the significance of the Asian American community in their own lives and discussed the media’s representation of Asian Americans, among other topics.

Department of Pscyhology Professor Emerita Ellyn Kaschak, author of Endangered Lives: A New Psychology of Women’s Experience (Basic Books), established a grant for undergraduate students at New York’s Binghamton University to support summer research in the field of social justice for women and girls. As reported in the university’s student newspaper, Kaschak hopes the grant will present a “different experience” than the classroom experience and persuade recipients of  “the need for social change.” Known as a founder of feminist psychology, Kaschak credits the feminist movement of the 1970s with developing her “consciousness of the power differences among people and nations” and prompting her decision “to do something about it.”

Professor Melody Moh, Department of Computer Science, spearheaded a collaboration with Aeris, a market leader in the Internet of Things (IoT), to introduce SJSU students to IoT. Eight student teams presented their final projects to a panel of senior industry leaders. “This was a fantastic opportunity for our students to work with Aeris,” Moh said. In addition to hands-on training, each student received a certificate of participation.

Photographer Mimi Plumb, who taught for 28 years in the Department of Art and Art History, recently rediscovered a trove of her photographs documenting Cesar Chavez’s campaign to organize farm labor in the summer and fall of 1975. Those images are now part of a new National Steinbeck Center multimedia website, “Democracy in the Fields” and some were featured in an article in the Salinas Californian. Plumb received a California Humanities Grant in 2015, and her photographs have been collected by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art and the Yale University Art Gallery.

Department of Mathematics Professor Tatiana Shubin, co-director of the Navajo Nation Math Circles Project, spoke about the project at San Francisco’s Exploratorium earlier this month and screened, with filmmaker George Csicery, the film Navajo Math Circles, a documentary that reveals Navajo Nation challenges in education and demonstrates the math circles approach. The goal of the NNMCP is to attract more Native Americans into STEM fields, particularly mathematics.

Pride Center and Gender Equity Center Director Bonnie Sugiyama organized the Bay Area’s first ever LGBT Japanese American conference, held on campus earlier this month. The conference addressed Japanese American and Hawaiian LGBT identities, family, Japanese American queer art, Buddhist and Christian faiths and other topics. More than 150 people attended. “It’s been great to bring this opportunity to talk about issues of multiple identities…they really do have an impact on how we grow up and how we come out and how we are treated by society,” Sugiyama said.

Faculty Notes for March 2016: Publications, Quotes and More

Associate Professor Michael Cheers, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, is part of a team leading an immersive journalism program for 25 high school and college students this summer in Washington, D.C. During “Newsroom U: A White House Student Press Briefing and Multimedia Weekend,” students will focus on the election year issues affecting Washington metro-area millennials and post stories on an interactive website that will also be shared with other media outlets, including USA Today. George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs and the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication are also institutional sponsors.

Don Beall Dean of Engineering Andrew Hsu will become the University of Toledo’s provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs on July 1. Hsu is no stranger to Ohio. From 2010 to 2013, he held the position of associate vice president for research at Wright State University in Dayton and, earlier in his career, worked as a senior research engineer at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

College of Social Science Dean Walt Jacobs revisited his first published article in February, a piece about Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, when he interacted with AP English students who were studying the text at their high school in Iowa. The students read the book and Jacobs’ article, then posted questions to a blog to which Jacobs responded. He has coordinated with the AP English teacher in the past on a similar activity. “It was a lot of fun, and the students learned a lot, I hope,” Jacobs said, via his own blog.

Earlier this month, Professor Anne Lawrence, Department of Organization and Management, gave a public lecture at the University of Cape Coast on the topic “Social, Ethical and Environmental Responsibility in the Global Supply Chain,” stressing the need for multinational companies operating in Ghana and other regions of Africa to protect natural resources.

Lecturer Marc Privitera, Department of Biomedical, Chemical and Materials Engineering, was appointed to the technical advisory board of Canadian International Minerals. Principal engineer and co-founder of PreProcess in San Ramon, he holds numerous U.S. patents in the area of chemical process design.

School of Information Lecturer Scott Walker, finalist for the dean of libraries at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, gave a presentation to that campus community on March 8. His topic: “Vision of Academic Research Libraries for the Next Five Years.”

Professor Mary Warner, Department of English and co-editor of Teaching Writing Grades 7-12 in an Era of Assessment: Passion and Practice (Pearson Academic Computing, 2013), was interviewed by LifeZette.com about the importance of encouraging kids to read books in our “shorter, quicker” world of texts and tablets.

Project Director James Wayman, Information Technology Services, was interviewed by livescience.com about Amazon’s pending patent to have customers pay for purchases by means of a facial recognition system that would, in theory, stop fraud.  As reported, Wayman pointed out that governmental attempts to create security systems based on facial recognition have run into difficulties because “faces are not hard to fake.” In May, Wayman will lead a session on biometrics at the 2016 IEE International Symposium on Technologies for Homeland Security in Massachusetts.

Faculty Notes for February 2016: Publications, Quotes and More

Aaron Romanowsky

Aaron Romanowsky has been named a 2016 Cottrell Scholar.

Department of English and Comparative Literature Lecturer Sally Ashton and Professor Persis Karim were among the featured poets reading at a reception on Feb. 7 for the San Jose Quilt Museum’s “Earth, Water, Air, Fire” show. Ashton and Karim read ekphrastic poems specifically created for the exhibition and inspired by the fiber art on display. Ashton’s most recent poetry collection is Some Odd Afternoon (BlazeVOX 2010). Karim is co-editor of and contributor to Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian American Writers (University of Arkansas Press 2013).

Lucas College and Graduate School of Business Professor Emeritus Alvin Beckett, who taught at SJSU for more than 30 years, celebrated his 100th birthday on Feb. 10. His daughter, UC Davis Professor Dr. Laurel Beckett, reports: “Dad was a feminist and fighter for social justice for students and colleagues of color. Just one story: in the late 1950s, one of his top students got married and became pregnant and was going to drop out of college. My dad told her she needed to stay in school and helped her work out finances and childcare. She went on to graduate, get her master’s and have a very successful career. The baby boy grew up to be a doctor and he and his wife (also a doctor) are colleagues of mine here at UC Davis Medical School. Our families have stayed friends all these years.”

Professor Alison Bridger, chair of the meteorology and climate science, assured CBS SF Bay Area reporters that, despite a run of dry and warm weather this month, El Niño is still influencing weather patterns on the West Coast. The rain will return and, once it does, it will continue into April, Bridger explained. Regarding February’s mild spell, Bridger said she’s “telling all my friends: ‘Enjoy it while you can.’”

Professor Richard Craig, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, appeared on KGO Radio’s “Ronn Owens Show” to talk about the presidential primaries and his most recent book, Polls, Expectations and Elections: TV News Making in U.S. Presidential Campaigns (Lexington Books 2014). In researching the book, Craig analyzed transcripts of “CBS Evening News” broadcasts during the presidential election campaigns, 1968-2012.

Professor Emeritus Larry Gerston, political science, was guest speaker at Los Altos’s Morning Forum lecture series this month. His topic: “The 2016 Election: Why We should Care (and Why Few People Do).” Morning Forum series subscriptions are available to all. The lectures take place at Los Altos United Methodist Church on the first and third Tuesdays of each month.

Chair and Professor of Anthropology Roberto Gonzalez was featured on BBC’s Radio 4 on “From Savage to Self: Anthropology Goes to War,” on Feb. 1. Gonzalez discussed Cold War anthropology. “These areas were battlegrounds for ideas and the hearts and minds of people during the Cold War,” said Gonzalez, of Latin America, the Middle East and South East Asia, during the interview.

School of Information Associate Professor Lili Luo received the 2016 Association for Library and Information Science Education’s Best Methodology Paper award for a paper she co-authored titled “Vignettes: Implications for LIS Research.” The award carries a $500 honorarium and the opportunity to present a summary of the paper’s findings at the annual ALISE conference.

In January, former Assistant Professor Ralph McLaughlin, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, was promoted to chief economist of Trulia’s Housing Economics Research Team. He left academia in 2014 to join the company, an online home shopping marketplace. “As an economist and long-time house hunter, I understand what buyers, sellers and renters care about and why they need to know to successfully navigate today’s polarized housing market,” McLaughlin said. “Under my leadership, Trulia will continue to explore the growing divide between the ‘Costly Coasts’ in the booming West and Northeast markets versus the ‘Bargain Belt’ in the sluggish South and Midwest markets. It’s a trend that has important ramifications for the U.S. economy and housing policy.”

Professor Aaron Romanowsky, from the physics and astronomy department, has been selected as one of 24 scientists to be recognized as a 2016 Cottrell Scholars by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. He will receive a $100,000 to support his research and teaching. He is one of two CSU professor to receive the distinction since its inception in 1994. His most recent research article “Satellite accretion in action: a tidally disrupting dwarf of spheroidal around the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 253” was published in December 2015 in

Associate Professor Ryan Skinnell, who joined the faculty of the Department of English and Comparative Literature last fall, received the Theresa J. Enos Anniversary Award for the best essay published in Rhetoric Review in the preceding year. His essay, “Who Cares if Rhetoricians Landed on the Moon? Or, a Plea for Reviving the Politics of Historiography,” appeared in the journal’s April 2015 issue. His new book, Conceding Composition: A Crooked History of Composition’s Institutional Fortunes, will be published in September by Utah State University Press.

Communications Studies Professor Matthew Spangler received the top paper award in performance studies from the Western States Communication Association in San Diego in Feb. 28. He presented his paper, “Fall and Recover: The Making of Modern Dance with Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Dublin, Ireland” about refugees who are working in the performing arts in Ireland, and specifically, are making live performances inspired by their migration experiences.