2021 Gerald and Sally DeNardo Lectureship: Ziad Obermeyer, UC Berkeley, and H. Westley Clark, SCU. Click on the image above to view the presentation of the DeNardo student awards and Dr. Obermeyer's lecture.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

I am so thrilled to see all of the student work that is included in this week’s issue—from Child Studies to Environmental Studies & Sciences to Psychology. Students are the core of our work here at Santa Clara and I very much enjoy seeing the fruits of our collective labor. 

This week, we held the annual DeNardo Lectureship in the Health Sciences and welcomed UC Berkeley’s Ziad Obermeyer M.D. to speak at a public lecture as well as a private discussion with students, both moderated by Westley Clark (Public Health). Dr. Obermeyer was an interesting and engaging speaker for close to 200 remote attendees to the public lecture—you know you have a great topic and presenter when the speaker spends 40 minutes answering a dozen questions, but still has another dozen in the queue! The student conversation was a personal reflection of his journey, with practical advice and mentoring. 

As part of this lectureship, we celebrated our DeNardo Science Scholars and this year’s three DeNardo Senior Prize winners. Congratulations to our senior prize winners, Christian Jimenez ’21 (Biochemistry), Natalie Rovero ’21 (Neuroscience and Psychology), and Riley Scherr ’21 (Anthropology and Biology) who all conducted outstanding scientific research throughout their time at Santa Clara. I also want to welcome our incoming DeNardo Science Scholars, Emma Figueredo ’22 (Biochemistry), Christopher Mendez ’22 (Psychology), Linnea Rothi ’23 (Neuroscience and Biology), and Kaitlyn Twadell ’22 (Biology and Neuroscience), who will receive research funding through their graduation. 

Finally, I am heartened to learn that graduating Broncos will be able to participate in a commencement procession, in person, with two guests. It's not yet the graduation bash that we have come to respect and love, as we see our students off on their post-graduate journey, but it’s a far cry from June of 2020, when we had to stay in lockdown. I will certainly be there in hood and robe to congratulate them in person.

Sincerely,

Daniel

Highlights

On April 19, a team of Child Studies students that included Vivian Cho '21 (Psychology and Child Studies), Gaby Fernandez '21 (Child Studies), Kaitlyn Leung '21 (Biology and Child Studies), Kelsey Lyons '21 (Pysychology and Child Studies), Sydney Meyer '22 (Theatre Arts and Child Studies), Sydney Nobles '21 (Political Science and Child Studies), Taylor Monge '21 (Psychology and Child Studies), Mireya Villarreal '21 (Child Studies), and May Wallace '21 (Psychology and Child Studies), and Barbara Burns (Child Studies) presented a 90-minute workshop at the Learning Stories Conference: Responsiveness in the Times of Injustices, hosted by Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle, WA.

Their workshop title was "Using Learning Stories with Families to Support Anti-Bias Goals in Early Education". This workshop was based on a class project from CHST 101 (Early Childhood, Family and Community). In this project, they first created storytelling videos based on picture books that exemplified anti-bias goals related to culture, racial identity, family structure, gender, different abilities, and economic class. They shared these videos with families and then based on their observations of children during this experience, they wrote “learning stories” directed to the child to further amplify the learning experience. They also created extended learning experiences (games, activities, etc.) for each child. The final part of their workshop summarized evaluations from parents about the experience and their overall lessons learned. They concluded the workshop with a mindful art reflection on the urgency of incorporating an anti-bias lens in early childhood education.

Image: A representation of an anti-bias lens in early childhood education (created by Vivian Cho '21)

Tom Plante (Psychology) was awarded the 2021 Pope St. John Paul II Academic and Research Excellence Award from the Catholic Psychotherapy Association, April 2021.

During Earth Week, a group of Santa Clara University students presented their research at the New Horizons in Conservation Conference organized by the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Sustainability Initiative within Yale’s School of the Environment. Under the guidance of Christopher Bacon (Environmental Studies & Sciences), Chloe Gentile-Montgomery '21 (Environmental Science and Ethnic Studies), Julia Jenak '21 (Environmental Science), and Ben Grundy '21 (Environmental Science and Political Science) are uncovering the reality of food and housing insecurity among students at SCU. Following the conference, the student’s reported that their research was well received by the poster judges and the other researchers in the session. One of the biggest takeaways for the student research group was how important it is to collaborate and share information with community members, other researchers, and the general public in order to address issues of environmental injustice. While expressing her satisfaction with the conference, Chloe Gentile-Montgomery said that she “appreciated how marginalized voices were highlighted and how open the discussion was.” The team hopes that their research will help inform the University on student basic needs, increase access to resources for students dealing with food insecurity, and break down the stigma so that all students can move towards food sovereignty.

Naomi Levy (Political Science) published a peer-reviewed article entitled "Measuring Peace from the Bottom Up with the Pasto Indigenous Group in Nariño, Colombia" in PS: Political Science & Politics as part of a profession symposium on Collaborative Methodologies. In the paper, along with her coauthor, Pamina Firchow of Brandeis University, Levy describes an ongoing research project that employs a collaborative methodology to produce a bottom-up barometer of peace for the Pasto Indigenous group in Nariño, Colombia. The project builds on the Everyday Peace Indicators pioneering methodology to source indicators of peace at the community level using focus group discussions and indicator-verification community meetings. This project aims to extend the applicability of bottom-up measures of peace by including local voices in the measurement of peace at the meso level. The paper discusses the tensions entailed and lessons learned in developing a methodology by which a set of locally-sourced indicators can be applied in a wider set of communities.

In what is quickly becoming an annual tradition, students working in the labs of several Psychology faculty mentors staged a benevolent takeover of the Western Psychological Association annual conference last week. These undergraduate students were actively involved in collecting and analyzing data, developing and submitting conference proposals, and presenting their work at this virtual conference. The 33 students who worked on and delivered poster and symposia presentations were Daniel Teramoto '22 (Psychology), Antionette Aragon '22 (Psychology), Katherine Rose '21 (Psychology), Brie Lyon '21 (Psychology), Lindsay Baerg '21 (Psychology), Kahana Wong '21 (Psychology), Sarah Chue '21 (Psychology), Keelin Dillon '22 (Psychology and Spanish Studies), Charlotte Parque '22 (Psychology and Music), Kayla Neumann '22 (Psychology), Brianna Wingard '22 (Psychology), Georgia Ellis '22 (Psychology), Sarah Zasso '22 (Psychology and Communication), Alexandra Folks '20 (Psychology and Political Science), Liya LaPierre '20 (Psychology), Tannaz Azimi '22 (Neuroscience), Sydney Campbell '22 (Neuroscience and Biology), Chris Wanis '21 (Ethnic Studies and Political Science), Paige Clement '22 (Psychology), Ava Bean '20 (Psychology and Child Studies), Robert Hutto '20 (Management and Psychology), Frida Arias Rivera '22 (Political Science and Psychology), Anna Alberico '22 (Public Health Science and Psychology), Aidan Gallegos '21 (Psychology and Philosophy), Sara Rabinowitz '21 (Psychology and Communication), Rose Zhang '22 (Psychology and Child Studies), Katrina Ying '22 (Psychology), Brianna Mireku '22 (Public Health and Psychology), Grace Gaffney '21 (Psychology and Child Studies), Amina Imran '21 (Psychology), Sofia Sandoval Larco '21 (Psychology), Marcello Vial '21 (Psychology and Philosophy), Kara Murray '22 (Psychology and Communication), Esveide Gonzalez-Lombera '22 (Psychology and Sociology), and Cambria Markezich '21 (Psychology). Their faculty mentors were Jui Bhagwat, Katy Bruchmann, Lang Chen, Birgit Koopmann-Holm, Kirsten Read, Tim Urdan, and Lisa Whitfield. Congrats to the students for their excellent work. Nobody was harmed during the benevolent takeover.

In early April, Tim Myers (English) did a webinar for the National Consortium for the Teaching of Asia called "Embracing the World: Teaching Japanese Culture Through Basho, Haiku, and Tim J. Myers' Basho and the River Stones." His essay with accompanying art on James Baldwin, "The Fire This Time," is now available on the Center for the Arts and Humanities blog. His essay with accompanying art "Finding the Center" will be coming out from America Magazine. He's also placed a photo essay, "There Is No Ordinary," with Clerestory Magazine, has two photos and one artpiece coming out in other journals, and has had four works accepted for an upcoming art postcard series. Finally, his "Full of Empty: The Story of the Story," will soon appear on the Familius.com website.

Image: "Earthly Rose, Mystical Rose" by Tim J. Myers

Bachana Lomsadze (Physics) published a perspective article "Frequency comb-based multidimensional coherent spectroscopy bridges the gap between fundamental science and cutting-edge technology" in the Journal of Chemical Physics.

Birgit Koopmann-Holm (Psychology) received the Early Career Research Award from WPA, the Western Psychological Association. "The WPA Early Career Research Award is given to a WPA member relatively early in her/his career (10 years or fewer post-doctorate) who has demonstrated outstanding promise in research. Such promise can be demonstrated through success in publishing articles, chapters, and books and through success in obtaining grants for research." 

Birgit also gave a talk at WPA's 101st Annual Conference on how people in WIERD (Western, Industrialized, Educated, Rich, and Democratic) and Non-WIERD cultural contexts conceptualize compassionate responses.

Autumn Inman '21 (Political Science and Environmental Studies) and Iris Stewart-Frey (ESS and the Environmental Justice and the Common Good Initiative) gave a presentation on "Sources of Air Pollution in Stockton and the Boggs Tract Neighborhood" at a workshop entitled "Fighting for Clean Air - Community-Academic Partnerships for Clean Air in Stockton" on April 14th. The work Autumn presented grew out of an ESS senior capstone project conducted with teammates Moni Adeyi '21 (Environmental Studies) and Bri Platt '22 (Environmental Science) and followed up by EJ&CGI research assistant Meghan Adams '21 (Ethnic Studies and Environmental Studies). The student team worked in coordination with student groups at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. Stewart-Frey co-organized the workshop together with leaders from local environmental justice community organizations, Catholic Charities, Little Manila Rising, and Fathers and Families of San Joaquin, as well as colleagues from Stanford University and UC Berkeley.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar