MESA Engineering Program / Academic Spotlight

Photo: James Tensuan
Kinalani Hoe poses with her certificate at the 2017 Honors Convocation, where more than 4,300 students were recognized for achieving GPAs of 3.65 or higher.

By Barry Zepel

San Jose State University recognized the outstanding academic achievements of 4,338 students, a record number, at its 55^thAnnual Honors Convocation on April 28. A capacity crowd – including family, friends, faculty and staff members – filled the Events Center, to hear words of encouragement and inspiration.

Some of those words came from Persis Karim, honored as the university’s2017 Outstanding Professor and keynote speaker for the evening.

“Please don’t underestimate the power you have to affect this world and to affect and change the lives of other people,” said Karim, professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature in the College of Humanities and the Arts.

Karim, also the founding director of Persian Studies, directed her comments to the 430 President’s Scholars and 3,908 Dean’s Scholars from all colleges on campus. President’s Scholars are undergraduate students who have earned a 4.0 grade point average in at least two contiguous semesters of the three prior to the honors convocation. Dean’s Scholars are undergrads earning at least a 3.65 GPA in at least two contiguous semesters of the past three.

Among the honored students were 62 Spartan student-athletes, also a record total, with six earning President’s Scholar recognition. It was the third year in a row that a record number of students involved in Intercollegiate Athletics achieved the rank of Dean’s or President’s Scholars.

“Teaching is a two-way street,” Karim said. “Your journey here shapes and influences us, your professors. I pride myself on being a teacher who seeks to make an engaging and meaningful classroom experience where I set a high premium on students’ free expression and their ability to discover and articulate their voices.”

Many of the 2016-2017 scholars were proud to share how San Jose State affected their lives and to name educators who especially helped them on their successful paths.

Anna Adaska, President’s Scholar and dance major from the College of Humanities and the Arts, said “an experience that shaped who I am today would be my first performance with SJSU’s contemporary performing company, University Dance Theater. Our director, Raphael Boumalia, changed the way I viewed performing permanently… After speaking with Professor Boumalia, I viewed performing as an experience that is shared by the audience and performer, in which the performer’s only obligation is to share their art honestly.”

Eulises Valdovinos, President’s Scholar and industrial & systems engineering major from the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering, said being recognized by SJSU “is not only a huge honor, it is also a constant reminder that my family members’ sacrifices as well as the struggles of previous generations who fought for my education have not been in vain. Blanca Sanchez-Cruz (assistant director for student support programs for the SJSU Engineering Student Success Center) contributed so much to my success as a student, and even as I entered the professional world.”

Sanchez-Cruz hired Valdovinos as a peer advisor for the Mesa Engineering Program (MEP), a program that aims to support educationally disadvantaged and first-generation students in attaining four-year degrees in engineering.

“I learned how hard she works to make sure there are opportunities available for our students,” he said.

Wendy Adhearn, Dean’s Scholar and kinesiology major from the College of Applied Sciences and Arts, noted that she has learned a lot from all her professors.

“But in my second semester at SJSU, Dr. Bethany Shifflett gave me an opportunity to really challenge myself and to interact with other kinesiology students and professionals at the Western Society for Kinesiology and Wellness Conference in Reno, Nevada,” she said. “There I was able to present a critique of research that interested me and I received invaluable feedback and encouragement.”

Greg Lucio, Dean’s Scholar and a child and adolescent development major from the Connie L. Lurie College of Education, appreciates that he “has been fortunate to be enrolled in two classes with Professor John Jabagchourin.”

Lucio noted that his professor’s passion for teaching makes learning fun and easy.

“He makes lessons relatable to his students and has inspired me to use the theories and research that we discuss in an international way when working with children,” Lucio said. “It has given me a great understanding of how to work more efficiently with children.”

In addition to Karim, three other San Jose State faculty members were recognized at the Honors Convocation: Brian Belet, professor of music and an accomplished composer, as 2017 President’s Scholar; Chris Cox, lecturer in sociology and interdisciplinary social sciences, as 2017 Outstanding Lecturer; and Lui Lam, physics professor, as 2017 Distinguished Service Award winner.

Learn more about more of this year’s San Jose State scholars, as well as recent history about Honors Convocation, online.

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.”