Santa Clara University

News for the Campus Community
The Faculty-Staff Newsletter, e-mail edition
Santa Clara University, May 2, 2005, Vol. 4, No. 14

Table of contents

Staff Assembly Council hosts forum on facilities and fundraising
Frank C. Damrell Jr. to speak at SCU law school commencement
Everything’s coming up roses
School of Engineering hosts senior design competition
Summer digital video camp for teens
Santa Clara Law
Women in Business conference
SCU in the news
Campus events
Grants, awards and publications

Staff Assembly Council hosts forum on facilities and fundraising

The Staff Assembly Council held an open forum in Sobrato Commons in early April to offer updates on ongoing and planned facilities projects as well as the progress on the Campaign for Santa Clara.

Joe Sugg, assistant vice president of university operations, discussed SCU’s efforts at sustainability—“meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs”— in every new project. He provided updates on projects that are goals of the ongoing Campaign for Santa Clara, the University’s $350 million fundraising effort.

• The Library for the 21st Century, which would expand on the existing Orradre Library, will be 50 percent larger than the current structure, Sugg said, adding that ground will be broken within six months of the money being raised to fund the project.
• The planned business school building will offer 84,000 square feet of space, nearly 25,000 more square feet than the building has now.
• The new Schott Stadium, the baseball-only facility, will allow Bellomy Fields to be dedicated to non-intercollegiate sports and Buck Shaw Stadium to be renovated into a 6,000-seat soccer stadium.

Sugg also discussed components of the University’s 10-year capital plan, which includes a 25,000-square-foot multi-use facility across Palm Drive from the School of Arts and Sciences; expansion of the Heafey Law Library; and a 10,000-square-foot expansion of Benson Center on its west side. More immediately, construction is underway on the new Kennedy Commons in the Kennedy Mall between Swig and the Walsh and McLaughlin residence halls. Plans also call for the visitors’ kiosk on Palm Drive to be moved closer to the front entrance of campus to make it easier to route traffic—particularly to the parking structure.

Also at the forum, Nancy Calderon, assistant vice president for development, said that the Campaign for Santa Clara had raised $272 million of its $350 million goal, including $189 million in cash. The remainder consists of multi-year pledges to SCU. She said that she is confident that the campaign goal will be met by the Dec. 31, 2006 scheduled end-date. Calderon said 15 fund-raisers, more than 40 development and gift processing staff, 25 support staff, and several University leaders are working on the campaign.

Frank C. Damrell Jr. to speak at SCU law school commencement

Frank C. Damrell, Jr. a federal district court judge with the Eastern District of California, will speak at SCU’s law school commencement on May 21. He was appointed by President Clinton to the United States District Court on Nov. 12, 1997.

Damrell is a master in the Anthony M. Kennedy American Inn of Court, McGeorge School of Law, at the University of the Pacific. He founded Operation Protect and Defend, modeled after Justice Kennedy’s "Dialogue on Freedom," in which teams of federal and state judges and lawyers visit high school government classes to discuss historical and current issues concerning constitutional and civic values. Damrell earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1961 and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1964.

Prior to his appointment to the United States District Court, Damrell served as deputy attorney general the State of California (1964-1966), and deputy district attorney of Stanislaus county, (1966-1968). The law school commencement ceremony will be held at 10.30 a.m. in the Mission Gardens.

Everything's coming up roses 

Try a staff of 12 gardeners, two landscape technicians, as well as Chris Young, team leader for landscape maintenance, all of whom make sure the bountiful spring floral vistas come to life each year. May and June are when you see the most color on campus, Young said. Look for profusely blooming pink Indian hawthorn, colorful impatiens, and flowery abelia. Or feast your eyes on the daylilies, euryops, cosmos, begonias, statice, lavender, ceanothus, lantana, viburnum, or any of the more than 1,000 roses bushes on the grounds.

“The crew works hard. There’s no wasted motion. Their eight hours a day are definitely full,” said Jeffrey Charles, director of facilities. “There’s plenty to keep us busy,” said Young, who joined the SCU staff in 1987. Before spring blooms flower, the gardeners use the winter months to prepare flowerbeds by composting and rotatilling.

This year, as in years past, they updated the shrubbery by planting 230 new bushes. They also planted 700 flats of impatiens, cosmos, and begonias (a total of more than 25,000 plants), a task they’ll repeat with winter flowers come late October. Though the very old wisteria in the historical Mission Garden area may get the most scrutiny from visitors, all parts of campus get equal attention from the landscapers.

Each gardener is assigned to a specific area of campus. “It’s the dedication of the individual gardeners that keeps the campus beautiful,” Young said. “They take a lot of pride in their work.” Though Young ultimately decides what is planted, the gardeners give him input and have the autonomy to determine their own routines, deciding when each week to cut the grass, tend to the flowerbeds, concentrate on weed control, etc. As the rose season progresses, pruning can become a full-day job.

The hard work of the staff certainly shows. Parents of students have told Charles that the attractive appearance of the campus factored into their children’s decisions to enroll at the University. Although that is welcome and positive feedback for Young, it’s not his primary motivation for keeping the grounds picturesque. Simply put, he said, “I love my job.”

School of Engineering hosts senior design competition 

The time-honored afternoon design competition is a chance for engineering students to pull together what they’ve learned as undergraduates and see how it looks to professionals from the outside world that they soon will enter. It follows hours of work on weekends, and in some cases, all-nighters, as the event approaches.

Entries come from the various departments in the school, and include such categories as civil, computer, electrical, and interdisciplinary engineering, and sustainable engineering systems. The competition pits students working solo or in groups of up to six against each other. Each group is guided by a faculty advisor.

Students are judged on such categories as technical accuracy, complexity, creativity, and analytical work. This year’s projects include such topics as “Mesh Anchorage for the Sustainability of Hay Bale Walls,” “Rainwater Harvesting,” “Real Time Bay Area Traffic Forecasting,” Signal Synchronization on Lawrence Expressway,” “Automated Wireless Authentication,” and “Seismic Roof Designs in El Salvador.”

Some of the projects will be on display during the competition and in the quad in front of the School of Engineering. The campus community is invited to attend the judging sessions in the Engineering Center, which runs from 2 to 5.20 p.m. The session on sustainable engineering will be transmitted live by satellite to the Universidad Centroamericano in San Salvador, El Salvador, as another example of increased cooperation between the two schools.

“On the final day, many are astonished by what they have accomplished, as are their parents, the judges, and we the faculty,” said School of Engineering Dean Daniel Pitt.

Summer digital video camp for teens 

With summer right around the corner, SCU’s Communication Department will host its first DVCamp at SCU for teens 13-18. DVCamp will provide teens with the “real-world” experience creating a short digital film and producing a television program.

The day camp runs for one week and is offered June 20-24, July 11-15 and August 8-12. Students will gain hands-on experience writing, shooting and editing their own video and work in SCU’s professional state of the art television and video post-production facilities.

Instructors will be a blend of SCU faculty and professionals, each specializing in an area of video production. By the end of the week, students will have an overall picture of the TV and film production process and a completed video! To register, go on line to www.SummerVideoCamp.com or call 408-551-7057. For more information, e-mail Melissa at mtenchstevens@scu.edu.

Santa Clara Law 

The Winter/Spring issue of Santa Clara Law is online, with a cover story on law alumni who serve as general counsel in top national companies, including Sun Microsystems, eBay, Intel, and Charles Schwab.

Other stories include a recently endowed scholarship started by the Eleven Easy Pieces, a law school flag football team from the early ’80s. Law professor Alan Scheflin contributed an essay on the phenomenon known as “repressed” memory or “recovered” memory (more accurately called “dissociative amnesia”), and how it relates to the child abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. The issue also includes extensive notes on faculty activities as well as alumni profiles and class notes.

Women in Business Conference

The Women in Business (WIB) Network at SCU’s Leavey School of Business will host the 2005 Women in Business conference "A Journey beyond Vision" on May 7 at SCU’s Benson Center, from 8 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. The conference offers women and men in business an opportunity to network with professionals and students from the Silicon Valley and meet aspiring business leaders like themselves while gaining a real-world perspective on business, career and life decisions from the speakers.

The third annual WIB conference focuses on four key business values: commitment, confidence, compassion and competence. Nancy Handel, chief financial officer of Applied Materials, and Cammie Dunaway, chief marketing officer of Yahoo!, are the keynote speakers. Other speakers include Patricia Mahan, mayor of the city of Santa Clara, and executives, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from Silicon Valley. To register for the conference, visit www.scu.edu/wibconf2005.

The San Jose Mercury News published an article "Digital knowledge sharing: Developing world needs knowledge more than hardware, speakers say" on the conference hosted by SCU’s Center for Science, Technology and Society.

The San Jose Mercury News published an op-ed on digital knowledge sharing by Geoffrey Bowker, executive director of the Center for Science, Technology and Society at SCU. Read the story.

Paul Crowley, S.J., acting chair of the religious studies department was a featured guest on the KQED show Forum with Michael Krazny. Listen to the show.

Religious studies professor Tom Beaudoin was featured in an article in USA Today on the election of the Pope Benedict XVI. Read the story.

San Jose Mercury News columnist Leigh Weimers’ column questioned a rumor about SCU’s name change. Read the story.

USA Today featured a study by SCU Professor Jerry Shapiro in "Superstitious players fill baseball rosters". More SCU in the News.

Summer Fun for Everyone: SCU’s human resources department hosts a summer fair for staff and faculty: Get tips and suggestions for planning a fun summer. Some of the subjects to be covered include:

• Travel tips for older Americans
• Preparing your child for the first camp experience
• Summer games and activities for children of all ages
• Planning a safe and healthy trip abroad

SCU’s Center of Performing Arts hosts Crimes of the Heart from May 6-14: Directed by Elizabeth Dale, the Pulitzer-prize winning play examines the lives of three maladjusted sisters who have come together after the youngest, Babe, shoots her husband. For more information on tickets and showtimes, click here, or call the box office at 408-554-4015. More SCU events.

Ed Schaefer of the mathematics department has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for the 2005-06 academic year. He has been asked to help found an M.Sc. program in information theory, coding theory and cryptography at Mzuzu University in Malawi.

Fred Foldvary of the economics department was recently accepted into the 2005 Academic Fellowship sponsored by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Francisco Jimenez was one of five writers selected to participate in the California for the Humanities' Writers in Conversation program. These events are part of a larger state-wide campaign initiated by the California Council for the Humanities, involving hundreds of story-sharing events designed to connect Californians and uncover the reality of California life.

Kris James Mitchener, of the economics department presented a paper on Trade and Empire at Harvard University’s Harvard Business School, and at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He also published an article "Bank Supervision, Regulation, and Financial Instability During the Great Depression" in the Journal of Economic History 65 (March 2005).

Professor Sunwolf was a featured speaker on the dynamics of jury deliberations in Phoenix, Ariz. at the Maricopa Public Defenders Office's annual training seminar. She was also one of the authors for the article "Rx Story-prescriptions: Healing effects of storytelling and storylistening in the practice of medicine."

To submit grants, awards, and publication information, click here.