Dear College Faculty and Staff,

Some big congratulations are in order! 

First, I would like to congratulate our faculty colleagues who have received promotions, recently announced by Acting President Lisa Kloppenberg.

Promoted to the rank of full professor: Virginia Matzek (Environmental Studies and Sciences), Laura Nichols (Sociology), Iris Stewart-Frey (Environmental Studies and Sciences), Christopher Weber (Physics), Korin Wheeler (Chemistry and Biochemistry), and Justen Whittall (Biology).

Receiving tenure and promoted to the rank of associate professor: Anne Baker (Political Science), Kathryn Bruchmann (Psychology), Meilin Chinn (Philosophy), Charles Gabbe (Environmental Studies and Sciences), Mythri Jegathesan (Anthropology), Amy Lueck (English), Brody Sandel (Biology), Eric Yang (Philosophy).

Promoted to Senior Lecturer for their extraordinary performance in teaching, service and professional activity: Cara Chiaraluce (Sociology), Theresa Conefrey (English), Robert Shanklin (Philosophy), William Stevens (Music).

I’d also like to congratulate all of our students who have received departmental awards at the conclusion of this challenging year. All told, we have given out more than 100 well-deserved awards to our incredibly talented students!  

Lastly, I wanted to share with you all the website that my team has put together to celebrate and honor our seniors. The graduating Class of 2021 has worked so hard, during unprecedented times, to finish their education and earn their degrees. That deserves immense recognition. Please take some time to explore some of what our seniors have accomplished at SCU as well as their upcoming plans after graduation.

Daniel

Highlights

Outgoing ASG President Ciara Moezidis '21 (Political Science, Communication) invited Secretary Leon Panetta '60, JD '63 (Political Science) to speak at ASG Transition Senate, May 21, on his experiences as SCU Student Body President and on how incoming and outgoing ASG members can be effective leaders both at SCU and throughout their career.

Dan Ostrov (Mathematics and Computer Science), along with Sanjiv Das (Finance), Andy Radhakrishnan, and Deep Srivastav (both at Franklin Templeton Investments), had their paper "Dynamic Optimization for Multi-Goals Wealth Management" accepted by the Journal of Banking and Finance, a top tier finance journal. The paper shows how investors with multiple competing financial goals over time can optimally decide which goals they should fulfill, partially fulfill, or forgo and, at the same time, how to optimally change their asset mix each year. These decisions incorporate the investor's wealth, timeline, and personal preferences among their goals, as well as the cost of each of the goals.

Lauren Larson '20 (Psychology, Child Studies) had an article accepted by the Psychology Honor's Society for their journal Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research. The article, "Social Media Use in Emerging Adults: Investigating the Relationship With Social Media Addiction and Social Behavior," was based on her honor's thesis, for which Kieran Sullivan (Psychology) served as faculty advisor.

Kristin Kusanovich (Theatre & Dance) was a participant in two climate dialogues at Fordham University, and worked with the UN Paris Committee for Capacity-building network this year. She also attended multiple conferences on arts, sciences, and climate. She directed tUrn Climate Crisis Awareness & Action week, from April 19-23, 2021, that brought together 103 presenters (including 27 SCU student moderators, club leaders and researchers) with seven other Jesuit universities. Various guest speakers for tUrn4 were supported by a College of Arts & Sciences Dean's Grant, the Environmental Justice & the Common Good Initiative Research Grant, and ENACT Students for Environmental Justice. tUrn offered 30 interdisciplinary, intercultural, intergenerational headliner events and five climate action power hours over a five-day period from April 19-23. 1400 people attended. Please look for forthcoming announcements of tUrn's newly developing YouTube channel. The next tUrn week is October 2021—please reach out at tUrnproject@scu.edu.

Image by SLURP student researcher Bates Detweiler. A sampling of tUrn4 partners from earthweek 2021.

Eugene Schlesinger (Religious Studies) published his essay "Ecological Conversion, Social Grace, and the Four-Point Hypothesis" in Intellect, Affect, and God: The Trinity, History, and the Life of Grace, Essays in Honor of Robert M. Doran, SJ, Edited by Joseph Ogbannaya and Gerard Whelan (Marquette University Press, 2021).

The volume was planned as a festschrift in honor of Robert Doran, S.J., who passed away unexpectedly on January 21, 2021. The essay builds upon Doran's reception and development of a theological proposal in Bernard Lonergan's trinitarian theology in order to provide a basis for thinking about what Pope Francis calls "ecological conversion" in his encyclical Laudato Si', one which considers the ways in which the Trinity recruits human beings to share in divine missions, and which sees this mission of God as extending to the whole created order.

Mary Elaine Hegland (Anthropology) published an article about the dramatic changes in marriages in Aliabad and Iran in recent years: “Changing Perceptions and Practices of Marriage among People of Aliabad from 1978 to 2018: New Problems and Challenges,” 174-196, in Iranian Romance in the Digital Age: From Arranged Marriage to White Marriage, eds. Janet Afary and Jesilyn Faust.

In Aliabad and Iran, girls are more involved in higher education than boys and have generally become outspoken, independently mobile, and intent on openly pursuing their own interests. Average age of marriages for females has risen dramatically. When married, they limit children to one or two, and even divorce if their marriages are not satisfactory, replicating the trends elsewhere in Iran. Although improving living standards (until the recent economic problems and sanctions), internet and social media, trends toward nuclear rather than joint households, more knowledge about and replicating global culture, and higher expectations from marriage on the part of women and some men as well have sometimes enabled more egalitarian, “companionate” marriages, new challenges and problems regarding marriage have emerged as well.

Image: Married at an early age, as were other girls of her generation, this Aliabad woman, deceased some time ago, is reconstituting dried balls of yogurt. She dried yogurt in the sun in spring and then in winter, when milk and yogurt were less available, soaked them in water and pounded them into a smooth consistency to add to food. Photo by Mary Elaine Hegland, February 1979.

Davis Grininger '18 (Physics) and John Birmingham (Physics) published an article, "Dual modulatory effects on feedback from a proprioceptor in the crustacean stomatogastric nervous system," in the Journal of Neurophysiology. Their results suggest a general mechanism that may be particularly well suited for providing flexibility to biological neural networks that produce rhythmic behaviors such as walking, swimming and breathing.

Image: Davis Grininger

Amy Lueck (English) published an article, "Haunting Women’s Public Memory: Ethos, Space, and Gender in the Winchester Mystery House," in Rhetoric Review. The article examines the rhetorical framing of our own “Winchester Mystery House” tour to consider the role of spatiality in shaping the ethos and subsequent public remembrance of women. Portions of this research have been supported by SCU Dean's and Provost grants.

Image: The Winchester Mystery House, San Jose

Michelle Mueller (Religious Studies) gave an invited keynote for the World Conference on Women's Studies 2021. She structured her talk—titled "The Onus is on Us: The Unsolvable Problem of the Underclass Receiving the Bill for Solidarity"—as a critical response to the popular quote from Madeleine Albright ("There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women"). She shared anecdotally based strategies for "sharing the bill" (the costs and labor of solidarity) as an alternative to holding women and other lesser privileged groups more responsible than privileged groups for correcting inequalities. Her talk followed an international Workshop on Women's Rights led by Kamala Liyange, Professor Emerita of the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.

On May 22, 2021, the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology hosted the 48th Annual Western Anthropology and Sociology Undergraduate Research Conference with participation from undergraduates across North America, their faculty advisors, and members of our SCU campus community.

Enrique Pumar (Sociology) opened the conference, and the keynote speaker, Professor Reuben Jonathan Miller from the University of Chicago, delivered a talk entitled, “Halfway Home,” which addressed issues of racial justice. In the Q&A session, the audience engaged in an in-depth conversation with Professor Miller, facilitated by Patrick Lopez-Aguado (Sociology).

The afternoon sessions featured undergraduate students’ research in roundtable discussions facilitated by Enrique Pumar, Patrick Lopez-Aguado, Di Di (Sociology), Matt Kroot (Anthropology), Laura Robinson (Sociology), and Mika Abe '22 (Sociology). Undergraduate students from across North America presented their research, which addressed issues related to social justice, drawing from interdisciplinary perspectives. Lee Panich (Anthropology) gave closing remarks that concluded the event.

The Departments of Sociology and Anthropology, as well as organizing committee members, thank the student authors and their faculty advisers, the keynote speaker, and all those who helped make this conference a huge success. We look forward to seeing you in 2022!

Image: Keynote speaker, Reuben Jonathan Miller.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar