KPIX Evening News
“A group of meteorologists from San Jose State University are collecting data from the huge wildfire burning near Yosemite in an effort to understand how such conflagrations create their own weather. Maria Medina reports.”
Posted by the San Jose Mercury News on Aug. 23, 2015.
By Sophie Mattson
SAN JOSE — When students returned to classes last week, San Jose State students were greeted by baby blue banners and posters advertising the campus’s new smoking ban rather than throngs of students and teachers puffing away.
Posted by the Los Angeles Times on Aug. 20, 2015.
By Laura J. Nelson and Emily Alpert Reyes
The ride-hailing revolution holds the potential to radically change the way people get around. But the political battle over Uber and Lyft in California has focused on something more obscure: fingerprints.
Uber is facing some of the fiercest challenges to its business practices from an array of California officials who claim the Silicon Valley-based company does not adequately screen its rapidly expanding pool of tens of thousands of drivers…
A number of other issues such as insurance coverage and liability have swirled around the rise of Uber and similar services. But for both elected officials and their constituents, questions of criminal histories are “a much more immediate concern if you’re deciding whether to use one of these services rather than a traditional taxi,” said Melinda Jackson, an associate professor of political science at San Jose State University.
Posted by ABC 7 on Aug. 17, 2015.
By Cheryl Jennings
The president of San Jose State University is saying goodbye to his university life and beginning a new role as chief advisor to the president of Afghanistan.Monday was the last day on the job for Dr. Mohammad “Mo” Qayoumi, Ph.D. He leaves for Afghanistan later this week. We spent some time with Qayoumi recently, learning about his new job.
“It was a major decision. It was not an easy decision to basically uproot myself,” Qayoumi said.
View full story.
Posted by the San Jose Mercury News on Aug. 14, 2015.
Mercury News Editorial
There’s been a rush to judgment on Susan Martin’s appointment as the interim president of San Jose State University upon Mohammad Qayoumi’s departure. As she settles into the campus this week, we hope the faculty and community leaders will look at her overall record, not just the flash point of Eastern Michigan University’s Huron logo controversy.
And we hope they’ll talk to her. It will be easy. Communication was not Qayoumi’s strong point, but it is Martin’s.
A number of factors combined to turn local sentiment against Martin. The CSU chancellor appointed her quickly without consulting local faculty, who had expected someone within the CSU system. But opponents mainly have focused on her decision in 2012 to include an old Indian-head Huron logo as one of two historic logos on an inside flap of the university’s band uniforms.
Posted by Re/code on July 20, 2015.
By Mark Bergen
It is no exaggeration to say that Omid Kordestani may be the most likable person in Silicon Valley.
Posted by NBC Bay Area on July 16, 2015.
By Scott Budman
According to a recent survey by Jobvite, San Jose State University is the top school in the nation pushing for tech talent.
The Jobvite survey shows that SJSU has the most students hired by top tech companies in the Silicon Valley.
“We promote and advocate internships and having that real-world experience while you’re in school, so that when you walk out of here with a degree, you also have years of experience as an intern,” said Daniel Newell, Program Manager of Workforce and Economic Development.
Posted by the San Jose Mercury News on July 2, 2015.
SAN JOSE — Jimi Yamaichi was 19 when he and his family were torn away from their farm in San Jose and incarcerated in a desolate, treeless internment camp in northern Wyoming with thousands of other Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
For Yamaichi and the dwindling number of surviving Japanese-Americans who were forced into the camps, this dark period of American history is an indelible part of their own stories.
Over the next two years, San Jose State and 14 other campuses in the California State University system will be digitizing 10,000 documents into a searchable database called the CSU Japanese American History Digitization Project. A $320,000 grant from the National Park Service will soon make these pieces of history available to the public online.
Posted by KGO-TV on June 26,2015.
By Cheryl Jennings, Weekday Co-Anchor
“The terrorists came did not believe in the freedom of women, they did not believe in women’s rights, to get an education,” Malala said to the crowd.
Posted by the San Francisco Chronicle on June 26, 2015.
By Carla Marinucci, Senior Political Reporter
Malala Yousafzai, the world’s youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told hundreds of people in San Jose on Friday that “education is every child’s right” and urged support for widespread efforts to guarantee secondary schooling for children around the world.
Malala, the 17-year-old Pakistani human rights activist, issued the call during comments at San Jose State University, where she was greeted with cheers and a standing ovation by an enthralled audience packed with girls and women, many clutching her best-selling memoir, “I Am Malala.”
Posted by the San Jose Mercury News on June 24, 2016.
By Sal Pizarro
San Jose State University will be in the spotlight at this year’s Rose, White & Blue Parade, which will wind its way through San Jose’s Shasta Hanchett neighborhood on July 4.
Ho Chi Minh City
San Jose State changed forever when Saigon fell 40 years ago today. Refugees who settled in the neighborhoods near campus grew into one the nation’s largest Vietnamese American communities. These days, many of these immigrants and their descendants are SJSU students, faculty and staff members, and alumni.
SJSU Professor of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Science Hien Duc Do fled Vietnam at age 14 just days before the fall. Drawing from his research on the Vietnamese American experience, Do appears as an expert commentator in many news accounts of the lasting impact of the war. These include special reports by the San Jose Mercury News, KPIX TV, KGO radio, KCBS radio and KLIV radio.
Prominent Vietnamese American writer and journalist Andrew Lam, who left his homeland at age 11, is teaching this term at San Jose State. He shares his views on Vietnam then and now with the Los Angeles Times, Al Jazeera America, San Jose Mercury News, KPIX TV, KQED radio, and KLIV radio.
In a cover story on the Fall of Saigon, the Spartan Daily student newspaper profiles four local Vietnamese Americans. Accompanying the report online is a video documentary featuring, among others, a pastor, poet, and city council member. The student videographers discuss their work with NBC Bay Area. South Bay Pulse, an iPad app created by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, features the video and full-length profiles.
“The war created ripples that span generations,” the Spartan Daily says. “But despite the conflict, people have been able to start anew.”
Posted by Al Jazeera America March 23, 2015.
SJSU President Mohammad Qayoumi discusses the future of U.S.-Afghan relations on the occasion of Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani’s first state visit to this country. Qayoumi was born and raised in Afghanistan, and is active in efforts to rebuild his homeland. He and Ghani were college roommates. Watch the video.
Al Jazeera
Posted by the San Jose Mercury News March 14, 2015.
By Sal Pizarro
The Engineering Club at Downtown College Prep Alum Rock is leaving for a big adventure next week, and the school — which shares a campus with Independence High School in East San Jose — cheered them on at an assembly Friday.
The club is one of 15 national finalists in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow STEM Competition and are leaving Tuesday for the finals in New York City, where they hope to be selected as one of five national winners that will receive a $120,000 technology grant (the public can vote online through March 25 for one of the winners). Luis Ruelas, the engineering and geometry teacher who advises the club, encouraged students they could succeed on the timely project, a household system to recycle water from washing machines and showers for use in toilets and garden irrigation.
He said it not a surprise to see high-achieving schools from high-income parts of the Bay Area succeed in contests like this one, which just makes the scrappy effort by the DCP team resound even more. The team of freshmen and sophomores is mostly Latino and includes several girls, both groups Ruelas says need more representation in engineering fields.
“It tells society that our students might have the talent but don’t necessarily have the resources,” said Ruelas, an engineer who graduated from Independence High and San Jose State.
Posted by the San Jose Mercury News March 4, 2015.
By Sharon Noguchi
With fresh credentials in hand, enthusiastic and energetic teachers charge into classrooms hoping to change young lives. But in the first year they often end up feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and unprepared to teach and manage classes.
Now the Obama administration wants to improve teacher training so that newly minted teachers arrive prepared and able to deliver high-quality instruction. Too many teacher credential programs focus on theory, critics say, and devote too little time to instructing teachers on how to teach. And reformers say too many teachers — 40 percent — leave the profession in the first five years, in part because they’re unable to handle a complex, tough job…
While California colleges may dismiss rankings of their programs, proof of success shows up in school superintendents’ recruitment. The Franklin-McKinley School District finds its best recruits in Midwestern universities, Superintendent John Porter said, and also in a San Jose State program that provides a yearlong residency, longer than other schools.
“We get superstars out of that program,” said Porter, who believes quality training is critical.
Posted by the San Jose Mercury News Feb. 27, 2015.
By Sal Pizarro
ANIMATED WINNERS: When Disney’s “Big Hero 6” was announced as the Best Animated Feature at Sunday’s Academy Awards, there was some cheering at San Jose State. Three Spartans alums were involved in the film’s production: Scott Watanabe was the lead art director, Kendelle Hoyer worked as a story artist and Lauren Brown was a publicist.
Posted by the San Jose Mercury News Feb. 2, 2015.
By Bruce Newman
SAN JOSE — When his son was born 40 years ago, Jose Montes de Oca was running a magazine that covered the Chicano movement at San Jose State University — a movement Montes de Oca had been breathing life into since he arrived on campus.
“There were not that many Chicanos at San Jose State at that time,” recalled Montes de Oca’s longtime friend, Macario Ortiz, “so when you saw a brown face it was a good thing.”
There also weren’t that many single dads in those days, and fewer still who were doggedly attempting to raise a child in a 3-bedroom apartment, where he was living with five college roommates — including Ortiz.
“He was the first single parent that I ever met,” said Ortiz. “Jose was always taking that baby to meetings, going everyplace with his son.”
The six young Latino bachelors who raised Jose Junior called themselves “the Roommates,” and were planning to watch the Super Bowl together Sunday, until word came last week that Montes de Oca had died on Jan. 28, at age 61, from complications of liver cancer. Last June, he revealed his grim diagnosis to a wide network of family and friends on Facebook.
Posted Jan. 28, 2015 by KTVU.
By Amber Lee
AN JOSE, Calif. (KTVU) — Oakland Raider James Jones has won a Super Bowl, but what makes the wide receiver stand out is how he gives back to the San Jose community that once helped him when he and his mother struggled with homelessness.
Since Jones signed with the Raiders last March, he has paid several visits to Family Supportive Housing, a shelter in San Jose that housed him when he was growing up.
Visiting the shelter for families is like coming home for Jones.
“When I was growing up, I was in and out of shelters for 15 years,” explained Jones.
At the shelter, he spoke with a man who recently lost his job and a place to live.
“Been in the same situation. Everything is temporary,” Jones told the homeless father.
Being at a homeless shelter was actually comforting for Jones while growing up, because he says it meant stability for a while.
“There were times where me and my mom slept on a park bench. At times, we were in and out of motels. That was probably the hardest time,” said Jones.
Jones credits determination and hard work first at Gunderson High School and later at San Jose State for helping him succeed.
Posted Dec. 18, 2014 by The New York Times.
Irene Dalis, a versatile and fiery mezzo-soprano who starred at the Metropolitan Opera for two decades before building a second career as the director of Opera San José, an innovative company she founded in her California hometown, died on Dec. 14 in nearby Saratoga, Calif. She was 89.
Her daughter, Alida Loinaz, confirmed her death.
Ms. Dalis did not set out to be a singer or an impresario. She studied piano and music education at what was then San Jose State College before earning a master’s degree at Columbia’s Teachers College in Manhattan in the late 1940s. The plan was to go back home and teach.
Posted Dec. 15, 2014 by the San Jose Mercury News.
By Mark Emmons
SAN JOSE — Irene Dalis, the beloved Grande Dame of the South Bay arts scene who reached the lofty heights of international stardom as a mezzo-soprano opera star before returning home to found Opera San Jose, has died. She was 89.
Dalis was a towering figure in the local artistic community and remained the driving force behind Opera San Jose until retiring as director in June after three decades with the organization.
“Irene had many, many wonderful attributes, but her greatest was an undying love of San Jose,” said her close friend Andrew Bales, president of Symphony Silicon Valley. “She had a major international career as a performer, as an amazing diva. And then she came home for what, in her mind, was something that was far more important — creating Opera San Jose. Her passing really is the end of an era and a terrible loss for San Jose.”…
She was born Yvonne Dalis on Oct. 8, 1925, and grew up on Delmas Avenue in downtown San Jose, the last of five children of a Greek hat maker. She rose from humble origins to embark on a long, storied career, performing at the highest levels of world opera, including at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.
A prodigious musician — who considered herself more a pianist than a singer — Dalis received her bachelor’s degree from San Jose State College (now San Jose State University), in 1946 and her master’s degree in music education from Columbia University Teachers College. There were honorary doctorates, and before launching her stellar career, Dalis was a Fulbright scholar.