EVENTS
English & Comparative Studies: SJSU’s Writing Across the Curriculum program is offering a professional development workshop on responding to student writing. Come learn how to make grading faster and more effective! This workshop will feature the best practices for providing feedback to student writers, and will include a hands-on practice component. Participants will receive a booklet detailing best practices, as well as guidance in using our campus handbook, The Everyday Writer. As instructors, we all want to make a positive impact on our students’ success. Come discover, or re-discover, the ways in which our feedback can be transformative.
This workshop will be offered twice: October 13th (Tuesday) and November 18th (Wednesday). Both sessions are from 3-4:30pm and will be held in IRC room 101.
Please RSVP to Sara Cook: Sara.Cook@sjsu.edu or visit the WAC website: www.sjsu.edu/wac
Linguistics: Four faculty members from the University of Azad-Jammu and Kashmir will be on campus from October 1st to November 7th. They will work with the LLD faculty on various research projects and will also present their research work at a symposium organized by LLDSA.
Linguistics: 2015 Linguistics & TESOL Symposium – Call for Abstracts
The LLDSA is pleased to announce the 2015 Linguistics & TESOL Symposium at San José State University, and opens a call for abstracts. We welcome presenters from all academic institutions; participation is not restricted to SJSU students. This event will be free and open to the public.
Date: October 23rd (Friday)
Time: 11:00 am to 5:00 pm
Location: Engineering rooms 285 and 287
Music & Dance: Percussionist Dr. Andrew Spencer will be a guest artist in the music program for two days in early November. He will present a percussion master class on Monday, November 2, at 6pm on the Concert Hall stage. On Tuesday, November 3, he will address the weekly Composers Forum (3:30pm, Music Room 210), and he will perform a concert of music composed for him in the past four years (7:30pm, Concert Hall). SJSU faculty Dr. Brian Belet composed “Ion Trails (Cloud Chamber Storms)” for Spencer in 2012, and this work will be performed during the concert. All three events are open to the greater SJSU community, and the concert is open to the public.
Music & Dance: Join the SJSU Concert Choir and Choraliers for their 2015 Debut Concert. Jeffrey Benson will be conducting. The concert takes place on two separate nights in two different locations, so please take note of the details below.
Date: Friday, October 16, 7:30pm
Location: Campbell United Methodist Church: 1675 Winchester Blvd, Campbell
Date: Saturday, October 17, 7:30pm
Location: First Presbyterian Church: 1667 Miramonte Ave, Mountain View
World Languages & Literatures: Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez is an unrepentant border crosser, ex-dj, writer, painter, and academic. An Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Hispanic Southwest Literatures and Cultures in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico, he has also taught and lectured at the University of Iowa, Penn State, the Universidad de Salamanca, the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, the Universidad Pompeu Fabra, and Texas A&M University. He is the author of three collections of short stories, Algún día te cuento las cosas que he visto (2012), Luego el silencio (2014), and One Day I’ll Tell You the Things I’ve Seen (2015). His literary work has been published in anthologies in Spain, Italy, Latin America, and the United States, including Malos elementos. His better known works include Relatos sobre la corrupción social (2012); Pequeñas resistencias 4 (2005); Se habla español (2000); and Líneas aéreas (1998). His academic work focuses on U.S.-Latino cultural expression, and U.S.-Mexico border cultures. “Border citizen as he is, Santiago Vaquera has a great sensibility for peoples and places. Each one of his character’s crossings through the United States is a journey to our very own and most intimate truth” says Santiago Roncagliolo, author of Abril Rojo. Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, also comments, “Santiago Vaquera is literary lightning. He impresses, he illuminates, and when he is at his best you are left shaken, in awe.”
Come join us in MLK 255 on October 14, 2015, from 3:00 – 5:00 P.M. for a literary conversation. This event is co-sponsored by Mexican-American Studies.
ALUMNI
Design & Design Studies: 2015 marks the 20th anniversary of the famous Shrunkenheadman club of the Animation and Illustration program! To celebrate, the program organized a reunion and brought back to campus two decades of graduates for a formal dinner on Saturday at the historic Dolce Hayes Mansion, one of the south Bay’s most impressive and distinctive historical structures. The evening included a formal dinner, fun raffle prizes, guest speakers, and plenty of time to meet old and new friends. More than 300 Alumni travelled from all over U.S. to attend the event, and the excitement was visible in everybody’s face. On Sunday, a brunch and open house on campus brought together alumni and current students in a more casual atmosphere. Over 500 people were in attendance. Because many of the Animation and Illustration alumni are employed in some of the best studios in the country, the reunion was a fabulous opportunity for current students to network and meet other artists. Students from now and then came together to honor the past, to make new connections, and to exchange ideas about art and animation. The 20th SHM anniversary reunion will certainly stay in the hearts and minds of everyone attending!
STUDENTS
Humanities: Students in Creative Arts 100W transformed a written assignment–a group manifesto about gentrification–into social action and creative work. In keeping with their manifesto’s stated goal of raising awareness, the students organized and held an ice cream social on campus, where they passed out manifestos and chatted with people about gentrification. That very same week, the students produced a documentary about gentrification in the neighborhoods around SJSU and submitted it to the Campus Film Festival. Special thanks to Maribel Martinez and the César Chavez Center for Community Action for funding the ice cream social.
FACULTY
Art & Art History: Learning by Doing: The 2015 Summer Arts Institute (SAI)
The week’s activities focused on the collaborative arts process, hands-on arts content, and techniques for encouraging collaborative classroom environments. All of the attending teachers and teaching artists participated in two different arts disciplines so that they could experience different perspectives on teaching the arts. In the first session, the participants and SAI instructors worked together to create a mobile, which became the guiding metaphor for this year’s SAI. The mobile visually demonstrated the balance between the binary attitudes and behaviors essential to successful arts integration: Separation/Connection, Movement-Adjustment/Structure, and Unexpected/Predictable. The mobile provided a means for everyone to see and understand the relationships between different subject matter such as math or language arts and the arts. As Diana Ganz, an Ohlone Elementary School second grade teacher, said: By the end of the week participants were “more aware of the multiple opportunities for integrating the VAPA standards with the Common Core Standards” and ready to bring stronger and deeper levels of art and music to their classrooms.
Design & Design Studies: For more than 50 years, Graphic Design USA (GDUSA) has been a business-to-business information source for graphic design professionals. The editors of Graphic Design USA have selected Connie Hwang Design as a winner of the 2015 American Graphic Design Awards for the design of Come Home Exhibition Catalog. The catalog aimed to cover the breadth of the collection from art collector Héctor G. Puig, including the art of Santos carving in Puerto Rico and the work from Florida artists, featuring paintings, prints, drawings, and photographs. Connie Hwang is an Associate Professor in the Graphic Design program, Department of Design, and is the principal of Connie Hwang Design.
Music & Dance: Two new compositions by Dr. Aaron Lington will be premiered by the Taipei Jazz Orchestra in late October 2015. One of the pieces will be a medley of four Taiwanese Folk Songs and will feature a saxophone soloist playing soprano sax, alto sax, tenor sax, and baritone sax over the course of the piece.
Music & Dance: Dr. Brian Belet’s performance ensemble SoundProof (Patricia Strange, violin; Stephen Ruppenthal, trumpet; Belet, viola and computer processing) was the Ensemble in Residence for the International Kyma Sound Symposium [KISS 2015] held at Montana State University (Bozeman) in August 2015. SoundProof premiered eight compositions in four days, presented a workshop, lecture, and demo, and developed contacts for future projects. Composers from throughout the U.S. and Europe attended the event. SoundProof has been invited to a three-day residency in Lübeck, Germany as a result of this symposium, and a Summer 2016 European tour is now being assembled.
