Pictured (left to right): Daniel Press, Sabrina Zirkel, Brigit Helms, and Kate Morris.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

This week we in the College are still basking in the amazing National Championship game we witnessed on Monday! At PayPal Park I was watching with Sabrina Zirkel, Dean of our School of Education and Counseling Psychology, Kate Morris, Acting Co-Provost, and Brigit Helms, Executive Director of the SCU Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and as it so happens Brigit is the aunt of our own SCU Forward Sally Menti ’24!

What a match, what skill, grit and tenacity! I am so proud of our SCU Women’s Soccer team and particularly the 20 Arts & Sciences student athletes on the team. We had a great showing from goalkeeper Marlee Nicolos ’22 (Communication) and all of our Bronco athletes who powered through double overtime, keeping the score tied at 1-1. I can’t tell you the elation I felt when we clinched the win with penalty kicks from Julie Doyle ’21 (Communication), Sally Menti ’24 (Undeclared A&S), Kelsey Turnbow ’21 (Finance), and Izzy D’Aquila ’23 (Biology).

I hope your classes, labs and studios go well as we finish this challenging year. Take good care, see you on campus soon.

Daniel

Highlights

Shhhhh......don't tell the gardeners, but Justen Whittall's (Biology) Plant Diversity course has been using campus botanical diversity as a living laboratory. Weekly face-to-face labs have explored the hidden diversity of what lurks in lawns, the pigments of pelargoniums, backyard biochemistry of blue flowers, tracking down trees, and the lengths and widths of leaves. Meanwhile, students from out of the area have been botanizing in their environs including Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Washington and around California. Students have risen to their weekly field challenges and brought unprecedented botanical diversity to the course. Great job team!

Congratulations to the SCU physics and engineering-physics (EP) majors who were selected as SCU Physics Geoff and Josie Fox Summer Research Fellows for 2021. These eight students will work on research projects with SCU Physics faculty mentors with support provided by an endowed gift from the Fox family. Students will present their summer research results this coming Fall at the annual SCU Physics Summer Research Symposium.

• Peter Hovland '23 (Physics), Skyler Weight '23 (Physics) - Bachana Lomsadze
• Sophia Flores '22 (Physics, Music), Weston Tierney '22 (Physics) -  Kristin Kulas
• Josh Mitchell '21 (Physics, Music) - Betty Young
• Hannah Aguirre '23 (Physics), Javier Garcia de Castro '23 (Physics) - Chris Weber, Erin Knutson
• Rob Cady '23 (Mathematics, Physics) - Guy Ramon

Thomas Meredith (Political Science) will have his paper "Bound Sovereignty: The Origins of Moral Conscience in Nietzche's 'Sovereign Individual'" published in Nietzche-Studien, the premier journal in the field of Nietzche studies.

Michelle Burnham (English) gave a keynote address to the European Association of American Studies annual convention on April 30 (in Warsaw, Poland, via Zoom). Titled "1620/2020: Colonies, Corporations, and Constructions of American Cultural History," the talk unravels the long intertwined history of joint-stock companies with the practice of colonialism in early North America, and describes how the violence of colonial corporations is concealed by dominant narratives of American cultural history that persist today.

Professors Christopher M. Bacon (Environmental Studies and Sciences (ESS) & the Environmental Justice and Common Good Initiative (EJCGI)), William A. Sundstrom (Economics, Data Analysis), Iris T. Stewart (ESS, EJCGI), Ed Maurer (Civil Engineering, EJCGI), and former SCU postdoc Lisa C. Kelley (University of Colorado Denver) recently published a study examining the effects of climate variability and change on the food and water security of smallholder farmers in Nicaragua. Their study is one of the first to analyze household seasonal food and water simultaneously. Using this integrated framework, the team found that seasonal patterns such as crop price, agricultural calendars, and precipitation correlate with farmers’ vulnerability to food and water insecurity, leading to 5-6 months of resource scarcity for farmers (see Figure).

The team also conducted farmer interviews, ethnographic research, and collected contextual data concluding that farmer’s vulnerability to food and water insecurity is exacerbated by both household dynamics and exposure to drought, coffee rust, and shifting commodity prices. They found that higher incomes, larger farm areas, and diversified farm production are correlated with improved food and water security for smallholder households in Nicaragua.

This work, emerging from five years of National Science Foundation-funded research, was published open access in World Development.

Francisco Jiménez (Emeritus, Modern Languages and Literatures) had his autobiographical story “The Circuit” reprinted in For the Love of Literature, an anthology of literature, edited by Rivka Lichtener. Jerusalem, Israel: A.E.L. Publications, 2021. The editor wrote: “Your story will hopefully continue to touch many hearts here in Israel in the years to come, and lead to more peace and tolerance among the many different nationalities / religions / sectors in this country.” In addition, he made virtual invited presentations on his writing to East Palo Alto, KIPP Esperanza Charter School and to Washington Union High School in Fresno, California.

L-R: Adriana Moses, Gwen Gao, and Jazzy Benes

Three undergraduate students, Adriana Moses '21 (Neuroscience), Gwen Gao '21 (Psychology, Philosophy), and Jazzy Benes '21 (Neuroscience, Biology, Studio Art) attended the 20th Annual Conference of the International Society for Autism Research to present three research posters mentored by Lang Chen (Psychology and Neuroscience). Their research examined the heterogeneous patterns of symptom presentations in ASD and the behavioral and neurobiological impairments in ASD with concurring conditions of ADHD. Adriana Moses also received a very competitive Student and Trainee Award from this conference for her excellence in the research work.

Hsin-I Cheng (Communication) published a short essay, Injured Privilege—Beyond “Model Minority” in Spectra, a National Communication Association online magazine. This article is a shortened and updated version of her recently accepted article “Injured privilege and misplaced ressentiment: Unpacking reactions toward Asian Americans after Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard,” to be published in the Western Journal of Communication. In this work, she expanded her theoretical concept of “relational citizenship” in her recent book, Cultivating Membership in Taiwan and Beyond: Relational Citizenship to the Asian American experiences. This concept argues for a shift in conceptualizing citizenship to elevate a relational dimension extending beyond the legal, social, and cultural realms.

Paul J. Schutz (Religious Studies) published an article, "En-Gendering Creation Anew: Rethinking Ecclesial Statements on Science, Gender, and Sexuality with William R. Stoeger, SJ," in Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society. The article argues that despite Pope John Paul II's call for “intense dialogue” between theology and science that excludes “unreasonable interpretations” of Scripture, ecclesial statements on gender and sexuality—including John Paul II's own works—deploy an interpretation of the literal meaning of Genesis to perpetuate a complementarian anthropology that contradicts scientific insights about the human body. After illustrating the implications of this hermeneutical inconsistency, this article presents Jesuit astronomer William Stoeger's theological method and hermeneutics of the full flourishing of life as an alternative approach, which fulfills John Paul II's vision for dialogue and paves a way toward reimagining church teachings on gender and sexuality.

"Heat Haze," a creative nonfiction essay by Jessi Joudy '21 (Computer Science, English), will be published in The Hellebore literary magazine's upcoming May/June issue. Jessi wrote this piece as part of Claudia McIsaac’s (English) Creative Writing and Social Justice class (ENGL 176) last quarter. “Heat Haze” is a coming-of-age short story that deals with themes of representation, pop culture, and childhood fears, describing how a small moment can end up becoming much more. McIsaac notes, “It's exciting to work with Jessi, not only because she's a passionate, gifted writer (She recently received second place in the Shipsey Poetry Contest) but also because she's eager to grow as a writer—and eager to revise! Whether she's writing about the devastating Haiti earthquake of 2010, Palestinian refugees, or her beloved parents, her language and vision are captivating.”

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar