Tag Archives: diversity

Head of Mineta Transportation Institute receives national award

Karen Philbrick, executive director, Mineta Transportation Institute and the Mineta National Transit Research Consortium.

Karen Philbrick, executive director, Mineta Transportation Institute and the Mineta National Transit Research Consortium.

Karen Philbrick, the executive director of Mineta National Transit Research Consortium (MNTRC) and the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI), has been awarded the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials (COMTO) Women Who Move the Nation Award in the academia category.

“I am so incredibly honored to be the recipient of this fine distinction,” said Philbrick, who has served as executive director of MNTRC and MTI since 2014. The programs are housed in the Lucas College and Graduate School of Business at San Jose State.

Philbrick was nominated by former Secretary of Transportation and former Congressman Norman Mineta, Nuria Fernandez, the CEO of VTA and Rod Diridon, MTI’s emeritus executive director. The trio nominated Philbrick for her role in developing MNTRC’s university partner relationships with four Minority Serving Institutions including SJSU, Howard University, Rutgers University and University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“Your status and role in the transportation industry is an inspiration to all women, particularly women of color,” wrote Mioshi Moses, the president and CEO of COMTO, in the award notification letter. “Your professional achievements and pioneering spirit have opened career paths for women across the country.”

Philbrick said the university transportation center is focused on research, education, technology transfer and workforce development.

“In our particular field, we have a crisis of people available to enter the workforce,” she said, noting that a majority of people in the transportation sector are eligible for or nearing eligibility for retirement. “It includes everything from bus drivers to logistics managers to pilots. It includes everything from management all the way to the people on the ground maintaining the system.”

The center offers a master’s of science and transportation management as well as undergraduate courses. It also is involved in a variety of initiatives for K-12 students, including the Summer Transportation Institute that is designed for underrepresented minority and female high school students. Since 2012, the four partner universities have received $10.8 million to support initiatives.

MTI’s research informed the placement of new bike lanes in San Jose and formed the basis of the Caltrans Bus Rapid Transit handbook. The research has statewide, national and international impact. A recent focus of research has been on connectivity.

“We are looking at how to connect people and we are seeing a lot of different trends,” she said, noting that recent research is finding that millenials want to live, work and play where they can walk or take public transit.

Prior to being appointed as executive director of MNTRC and MTI, Philbrick served as MTI’s research director for five years, with two years as deputy executive director and research director for both MTI and MNTRC. She led three MTI research subcenters, directed more than 200 principal investigators for both agencies, oversaw the completion of 122 research projects and the production of more than 175 peer-reviewed research reports and journal publications.

She serves on the U.S. Department of Transportation Transit Advisory Committee for Safety and as treasurer of the Executive Committee of the Council of University Transportation Centers.

October newsletter: SJSU Salzburg Scholars and Fellows change the campus and the world we live in

Claire Tsai, left, a 2015-16 SJSU Salzburg Scholar is one of 18 students who attended the summer program in Austria. She and the other scholars are actively engaged in promoting global citizenship. Photo courtesy of Salzburg Global Seminars.

Claire Tsai, left, a 2015-16 SJSU Salzburg Scholar is one of 18 students who attended the summer program in Austria. She and the other scholars are actively engaged in promoting global citizenship.
Photo courtesy of Salzburg Global Seminars.

Claire Tsai, ’16 Art History and Visual Culture, is only halfway through her time as an SJSU Salzburg Scholar, but she is already describing the experience as transformative.

“One main point for me is that I saw more clearly how dangerous it is to keep a single framework for understanding the world,” Tsai said.

Each year, the SJSU Salzburg Program coordinators select students to be scholars and faculty or administrators to be fellows for an 18-month period, with the number selected each year varying. In 10 years, 261 Spartans have participated, with many extending their involvement beyond their 18-month commitment, according to Dr. William Reckmeyer, the program director and a co-founder. The goal for students, faculty and administrators is that through the program not only are they transformed on an individual level, but that they have an institutional impact on improving global citizenship when they return to campus.

As a scholar, Tsai participated in a semester-long course on global studies last spring before attending the week-long Global Citizenship Program in Austria, now known as the Global Citizenship Alliance. She will be working with the other scholars and fellows to pursue projects that promote global citizenship, though she said the group is still winnowing down ideas for this year.

Blanca Sanchez-Cruz, the director of the MESA Engineering Program and assistant director of the Engineering Student Success Center, is a Fellow this year.

She said she was encouraging engineering students to apply when they suggested she should apply to be a fellow.

“It was a confirmation or validation of my thought about the need for more intentional and systematic efforts to globalize curriculum and bridge across existing efforts on campus,” she said of the summer session, via email. “In the context of the MESA Engineering Program, I work with educationally disadvantaged students, who because of time, finances or misconceptions, are often the most likely to hesitate to get involved or are at risk of being left out.”

Jessy Goodman, a lecturer in the College of Humanities and the Arts and the College of Social Sciences, has a unique perspective on the program as she has participated as a scholar and a fellow.

“It changed the course of my life,” she said, noting that she made connections through the program that led her to taking a lecturer position upon graduation. “It opened up a lot of ways of thinking.”

Goodman participated as a Scholar when she was an MFA student, taught the global studies course last spring to the latest batch of scholars and is a fellow this year.

“I got a ton of great ideas and tools to use,” she said, of incorporating concepts of global citizenship into her composition classes. “My students are so much more engaged with the material.”