November 24, 2017

November Newsletter 2017: Provost Update – Countless Reasons to be Thankful

As we return from Thanksgiving break – refreshed and ready for the final weeks of the fall term – I want to take a moment to express gratitude for our students, staff, faculty and alumni. One of my favorite duties as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs is working with inspirational colleagues who are dedicated, hardworking and generous.

Provost Andy Feinstein and the Academic Affairs Leadership team host an appreciation breakfast to say thanks to the 500+ staff members who support faculty and students in the division. (Photo: James Tensuan, ’15 Journalism)

Earlier this month, I hosted the Academic Affairs Staff Appreciation Breakfast with the division’s leadership team – a great opportunity to see our staff members come together and to hear from their supervisors about the great work they do each day. This year, we invited peers to share positive stories about their colleagues. The shout-outs, as we called them, highlighted the many great things I see in our hardworking staff – greeting students with grace and enthusiasm; going the extra mile; acting with patience and good humor; seeking ways to help colleagues.

I also had the honor of recognizing some of our longest-serving employees at the 50^th Spartan Service Celebration, where 116 Spartan staff members were recognized for service milestones. I was moved by videos during which honorees shared personal memories.

An especially poignant story was Jack Harding’s. Jack began working as a lab technician 35 years ago in the aeronautics department (now Aviation and Technology) and since has moved on to become a telecommunications network analyst in IT.

Jack’s two sons grew up on our campus, regularly attending football games and campus events. Both eventually enrolled here as college students. His oldest son, Jack Jr., joined the Marines after graduation, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. He was welcomed back to the campus in 2011 when Jack Sr. and his wife were invited to present his lieutenant stripes in a stirring ceremony.

All of our staff – whether they have served SJSU for months, or decades – deserve our support. That includes professional development opportunities; I am pleased that we have the resources this year to again offer the Staff Professional Development Grant Program. These stipends allow staff members to develop skills that can enhance their capacity to serve our students. We have approved 229 proposals to date, and hope to issue another call for applications in early spring.

Many members of our campus community “pay it forward” by helping those following in their path. This includes our Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association (ERFA), which created a research, scholarship and creative activities (RSCA) grant program to help current faculty members advance their professional growth. Last year’s recipients included Anthropology Department Assistant Professor AJ Faas and School of Social Work Assistant Professor Nicole Dubus.

Another reason for gratitude is the many alumni whose financial support helps current and future students achieve their goals. A generous gift from Marion Cilker, ’39, established a scholarship for students interested in infusing arts into education and funded an annual conference. While Ms. Cilker passed away in 2012, her generosity lives on, supporting current and aspiring teachers seeking ways to incorporate art into diverse curricula for K-12 students.

Students also are benefiting from strategic collaborations. A partnership with nonprofit Braven Bay Area fueled a program for first-generation, underrepresented minority students that connects them with community mentors at high-tech companies and nonprofits and develops personal skills for future career searches.

These are just some of the people, programs and connections that are empowering us to power student success. In this season of gratitude, I’m especially mindful of your remarkable contributions. Thank you!

November 24, 2017

November 2017 Newsletter: ERFA Grants Support Current SJSU Researchers

Photo: James Tensuan
Anthropology Assistant Professor AJ Faas and Social Work Assistant Professor Nicole Dubus received the 2016-17 Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association Faculty Research and Creative Activity Awards. Applications for 2017-18 are due Dec. 6.

By David Goll

Research by San Jose State University professors into how societies and nations respond to and cope with manmade and environmental disasters – and what happens to individuals when they flee due to war, political instability or climate change – received support from the Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association (ERFA) in 2016-17.

The association of former professors is now welcoming applications for the SJSU ERFA Faculty Research and Creative Activity Award, due December 6. The two grants of up to $2,500 per person are awarded to tenured faculty, tenure-track faculty or lecturers with more than six years of continuous service to San Jose State.

“Four years ago, we had some additional money,” said Joan Merdinger, member of ERFA, which includes more than 300 former SJSU faculty members. “In the past, we made donations to the library, to faculty, to the deans to use in a discretionary fashion. We wanted to do something ongoing, to honor the mission of service to the university.”

Merdinger, who retired from SJSU after a 26-year career as a professor in the School of Social Work and a stint as Associate Vice President for Faculty Affairs, said the modest grants can help faculty members attend important conferences, or help secure the assistance of graduate students in conducting research.

The resulting awards program has benefitted six current faculty members to date, including the most recent recipients: Dr. Nicole Dubus, assistant professor in the School of Social Work, in the College of Applied Sciences and Arts; and Dr. AJ Faas, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, in the College of Social Science.

Dubus conducts research into a compelling global issue: how public agencies can cope with the worldwide epidemic of forcibly displaced people, who number 65.6 million, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. Examining how other countries, primarily in Europe, are dealing with waves of humans fleeing war, repression and political upheaval in Africa, the Middle East and other regions, Dubus said she hopes to bring some of the strategies being employed overseas to local communities and possibly incorporate them into the curriculum at SJSU.

In July, Dubus traveled to Malta, a tiny island nation in the Mediterranean Sea with 383,000 residents situated between North Africa and Italy. It has received thousands of forced migrants and asylum seekers in the past 15 years. While there, she studied the various stages of processing and assimilation of migrants and refugees from African and Middle Eastern countries who land in this first foothold of Europe, including how they gain access to healthcare and other public services.

Dubus met with Carmel Cefai, associate professor in the University of Malta’s Department of Psychology, director of the Centre for Resilience and Socio-Economic Health and a leading advocate for the concept of social and emotional resiliency among children, teenagers and young adults – including migrants trying to make successful transitions to a new society.

She would like to see that resiliency concept adopted locally as San Jose and other Bay Area cities struggle to assimilate adults and children fleeing dire social, political and economic circumstances. Dubus said she has also conducted research into how migrants and refugees are treated in Iceland, Germany and Sweden, having received grants from the National Science Foundation.

“I was able to spend two weeks in Malta and had a fantastic experience. I would not have been able to make the trip had it not been for the (ERFA) grant,” she said.

The $2,500 grant also proved instrumental for Faas to visit Bogota, Colombia this past June. Faas has been a member of the San Jose State faculty since 2014. He was invited to attend a meeting of 14 anthropologists, mostly from Latin America, by Virginia Garcia-Acosta, a prominent Mexican historian and social anthropologist. The group is collaborating on a book detailing the anthropological history of disasters throughout Latin America, including such watershed events as the 1985 Mexico City earthquake that killed 10,000 people, injured 30,000 and left thousands more homeless.

Faas’s academic research specialty is focused a bit further south in Ecuador, a nation of 12.5 million located along the west coast of South America. It provides no shortage of research opportunities for Faas, who began visiting the country regularly in 2009. His research includes an ongoing study of recovery and resettlement of Ecuadorean highlands residents as a result of volcanic activity.

“This is a country with 30 (mainland) volcanoes and close proximity to El Nino,” he said, referring to the meteorological phenomenon known officially as the El Nino Southern Oscillation that periodically develops in the Pacific Ocean and can lead to tremendous volumes of rain falling in some parts of the Americas.

He said that along with the disasters, Ecuadoreans have also had to cope with tremendous social and political upheaval, including adapting to 10 different presidents during a 14-year stretch between 1991 and 2005.

During his South American visit this past summer, Faas, also a member of the worldwide Culture and Disasters Action Network, said he was able to interview a number of Andean scholars for his research.

ERFA’s Merdinger said, as in past years, applications from the next group of grant proposals will be reviewed by members of the organization’s board of directors. For more information about the grant program, see application online.

November 24, 2017

November 2017 Newsletter: Staff Gain Skills Through Professional Development Grant Program

By David Goll

Whether they traveled across the country, 60 miles up the road — or never left their desks — employees in Academic Affairs made the most of the Staff Professional Development Grant program in 2017.

During the 2016-17 academic year, Academic Affairs Division awarded more than 50 such grants to staff members, which can range up to $1,500 for an individual or $5,000 for a group proposal. Designed to promote employees’ professional development and enhance effectiveness, the grants are primarily used to participate in training programs, in-service activities and team-building exercises, or to attend conferences and staff retreats.

April Gilbert, Institutional Repository Coordinator for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library at SJSU was one of those who traveled cross country. In March, she used her $1,405 grant to attend the biennial Association of College and Research Libraries National Conference held in Baltimore.

“It was a very valuable experience,” Gilbert said. “It’s a great place to find out about best practices in the industry; how to deliver better services and create better work flows; how to help researchers produce, publish and disseminate their work; how to better communicate with your faculty.”

Gilbert said she was especially interested in speaking with librarians from other universities nationwide to get additional ideas on how to promote her library’s collections, attract more people to use them, as well as how to encourage more SJSU faculty members to utilize the material in their own classes. Gilbert said she works closely with Emily Chan, interim associate dean for Research and Scholarship at the university’s library, to accomplish those goals.

“This conference was really great,” Gilbert said. “And I wouldn’t have been able to attend without the grant. It definitely made the trip possible.”

Lin Sao’s professional growth opportunity was a bit closer to home. Sao, who works as an academic advisor for undergraduate business students at the Jack Holland Student Success Center, received about $400 through the program to attend the annual conference of Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education, a 30-year-old organization that champions the success of Asian Pacific American college and university students, staff, faculty and administrators. Sao attended the April event held in Oakland.

“This is an organization helping students of Asian and Pacific Islander descent deal with the struggles and challenges facing them in higher education,” said Sao, who previously worked as an admissions communications counselor at SJSU. “At the conference, I learned about new and interesting ways to aggregate data on the Asian Pacific Islander student population. Asians may appear to be doing well when ethnic data is not disaggregated, but that’s not necessarily true of all Asian populations. Some Asian ethnicities such as Southeast Asians struggle in a college environment.”

Dave Daley’s grant-fueled travels were a bit further away. In January, he traveled to Las Vegas to attend the annual Consumer Electronics Show to get the latest on cutting-edge technology for possible application at SJSU. The Information Technology Analyst at the SJSU library used his $1,500 grant to attend the sprawling electronics industry extravaganza — centered on the Las Vegas Convention Center — but held at venues all over the city. The library covered the gap for his $1,711 trip.

“CES is a great place to go to find out about state of the art, cutting-edge technology,” said Daley, a 14-year employee of SJSU. “IT is usually the department frequently viewed by other departments as the place to go for new ideas.”

Daley said the panel discussions at the show can be just as helpful and informative as checking out the latest products being displayed by tech companies. He was particularly intrigued by industry representatives discussing the possibilities for 5G — or fifth-generation wireless systems — that, unlike current 4G technology, promise to operate at real-time speed, no delays and be fast enough to accommodate high-resolution videos on cell phones, he said.

“There are no (5G) products yet, but it’s so important to hear about the latest technology, and see what manufacturers are working on,” Daley said. “It’s good to hear the latest straight from the horse’s mouth.”

Daley’s colleague, Klaus Trilck, didn’t have to travel anywhere to participate in the intensive, two-day online presentation known as the Educause Learning Initiative. Educause is a Colorado-based nonprofit collaboration of colleges and universities that promote advances in education through the application of innovative technology. He received $400 through the staff grant program.

“Technology changes so rapidly it’s important for me to keep abreast of it. The students certainly do,” said Trilck, an eCampus instructional designer since January who has worked at SJSU for five years. His job is to help faculty members develop creative and relevant classroom presentations. “Participating in Educause helps me keep pace with hardware and software development.”

Trilck said he found the Educause online presentation helpful and informative through its dozen or so speakers and interactive format that allowed Web participants to ask questions in real time.

“This is very effective for professional and personal development,” he said. “And it keeps me active and viable as a university employee.”

October 30, 2017

Passion for Jazz Wins Chemistry Professor 2017 Bobby Jackson Award

By David Goll

Chemistry Professor Bradley Stone has been named the 2017 Bobby Jackson Award for Jazz Programmer of the Year by the weekly online industry publication, JazzWeek. (James Tensuan/San Jose State University)

Even as a toddler, Dr. Bradley Stone had an uncanny ability to choose music to entertain visitors to his parents’ Chicago home.

“When I was one and a half years old, my mother would ask friends and relatives to make a musical request,” Stone said. “They would look at her and say, ‘How can he do that when he’s so young?’ She would just laugh and say, ‘Go ahead. He can do it!'”

It was an early indication of what would become a lifelong passion and avocation. This past August, a very grown-up Stone observed the 32nd anniversary of his hire date at SJSU. But he is not a professor in the School of Music and Dance or even the Department of TV, Radio, Film and Theatre. He has been professor of Chemistry at SJSU since the 1985-86 academic year and served a stint as department’s chair between 2003 and 2012.

Along with all of his accomplishments in his chosen academic field, Stone takes great pride in winning the 2017 Bobby Jackson Award for Jazz Programmer of the Year by the weekly online industry publication, JazzWeek. It’s the third time the San Jose State professor has won the honor (tenth time overall as Jazz Programmer of the Year), this time for his weekly jazz music program titled “The Creative Source” available through the SoulandJazz.com website, based in the United Kingdom. Stone records the show, surrounded by his extensive collection including tens of thousands of CDs, in the radio studio he built in his Gilroy home. Nominations for the award come from jazz artists, record label executives, promoters, publicists and other programmers.

“It’s extremely gratifying to win this award,” said Stone, who received his award in the Internet and Non-Terrestrial category during an August ceremony at San Jose’s Hotel De Anza. “It’s wonderful to be recognized for your work by other members of the jazz music family. I like to think I’m recognized as a good programmer in the industry, and that others look to me for my playlists.”

Jackson, legendary Cleveland-based jazz programmer, became a good friend of Stone’s after the pair met years ago at industry gatherings. Jackson introduced Stone to Brian Hurst of SoulandJazz.com via a phone call just days before he died suddenly at age 57 in December 2013.

“I felt it was meant to be,” Stone said of the collaboration with Hurst at SoulandJazz.com.

Hurst, CEO of SoulandJazz.com, said Stone’s weekly selection of music — emphasizing jazz fusion and progressive jazz — is marked by his devotion to providing a platform for new artists, premiering music that would otherwise “fall between the cracks.”

“His accolades over the years suggest he’s a man to be both respected and trusted and in that word trust, you can begin to understand why people would consider his music selection to become the starting point to discover new artists, new styles, new sounds,” Hurst said.

It is motivated not only by Stone’s love of this American-born musical genre but of a variety of musical styles, including rock. He played in a rock band during his undergraduate college days at the University of Illinois, Chicago in the 1970s, then had his first disc jockeying job at campus radio station WQAX while pursuing a Ph.D. in chemical physics at Indiana University, Bloomington in the 1980s. He later became jazz music director at radio station KUCI while a postdoctoral research associate at the University of California, Irvine.

“I’ve been a music head my entire life,” Stone said.

He further honed his radio skills and expanded his knowledge of jazz and other musical styles just a week after arriving at San Jose State. That was when he launched a Saturday deejay gig at campus radio station KSJS that lasted from 1985 to 1997, then again from 2001 to 2012. He served as the station’s jazz music director for virtually that entire time, as well as a faculty adviser to students in the university’s Department of TV, Radio, Film and Theatre, before stepping down in early 2013.

“I have mentored literally thousands of students at KSJS,” Stone said of the job he did teaching on-air and behind-the-scenes skills, as well as radio station management.

William Reckmeyer, professor of Anthropology who retired earlier this year after 40 years at San Jose State, met Stone through yet another activity that has become a passion for the chemistry professor. Stone was named a Fellow in SJSU’s Salzburg Program, a global education program that sends several students and faculty members to study in Austria or Germany since 2005. Reckmeyer, instrumental in designing and implementing the European program, said he has become a big fan of Stone’s enthusiasm for the Salzburg program and his impressive record of accomplishments in academia and jazz music programming.

“He was instrumental in helping KSJS win national awards for being the best collegiate jazz station, besides all of the individual awards he won for programming,” Reckmeyer said. “I’m a rock ‘n roll guy, and I know a bit about jazz, but when you have a good friend, you take an interest in what they love. Brad is so knowledgeable and passionate about jazz.”

As Stone is, too, about chemistry. He developed an interest in the sciences at age 6, becoming fascinated by chemistry, physics, astronomy, entomology and geology as a youngster. Though focusing his academic career on the interdisciplinary field of chemical physics, Stone has also worked in molecular astrophysics, astrochemistry, biomedical engineering, computational fluid dynamics, forensic chemistry, non-linear optics and spectroscopy.

When asked if there is much connection between the world of hard scientific disciplines and the fluid, improvisational, creative nature of jazz, Stone draws strong parallels.

“I would say there is the mathematical connection,” he said. “Music theory definitely has a mathematical basis. The mathematical relationship between frequencies of notes is the basis for harmony. So, I don’t think it is particularly surprising that a large percentage of scientists are also musicians, at least on some level.”