research

Faculty Spotlight: Sonja Martin Poole

Posted on by craseadmin

Sonja Martin Poole’s research explores gamification and influencing behavior. During our conversation, we discussed her path to becoming a professor and how she navigates interdisciplinary research.

Sonya Poole
Sonya Martin Poole

When you started at the University of California Berkeley, were you focused on becoming an academic or did you consider going into business?

Even though I come from a long line of educators, I wasn’t focused on becoming an academic. My grandfather was a geography professor for many many years at Southern University in New Orleans, which is where I’m from, and my grandmother was an elementary school teacher. My mother is an elementary school teacher. I have an uncle and two aunts who are university professors. I wanted to do something different than everyone else in my family, so I initially went to college with the intent to be a lawyer. In the middle of freshman year, I decided that I wanted to go into business. However, I took microeconomics, one of the prerequisites of the business major, and said, “This is it. This is a new way of thinking. I love this.” I got a bachelor’s in economics and then later a master’s in public sector economics. I had no idea at the time what I would do with my economics training. I was just intrigued by it.

While I was in graduate school, I worked as a high school teacher in a public school. It was then that I started asking economic questions about educational institutions. I became interested in studying the ways in which education resources are distributed in our society and if there’s a way that we can develop educational systems that are more efficient. That’s what I studied in my Ph.D. program.

Somewhere along the way I then became intrigued by the ways that educational institutions strategically attracted students, maintained a student body, and communicated value. That’s a marketing question, so after my Ph.D., I did a post-doc in marketing.

Was it the experience in the classroom that made you want to change the world?

I really wanted to improve people’s lives, and I saw how educational systems can influence people’s beliefs, behaviors, and life trajectories. In graduate school, I wanted to study how we can improve these structures.

What work are you most proud of?

Right now, I’m looking at the ways in which games can influence people’s behavior. I first became interested in this topic when tracking devices for fitness came out like Fitbit. This device had a gamified aspect. Within the application, users can compete not only against themselves and their own progress but against others that you may or may not know. It presents an incentive to do more. I found myself drawn to this device and to the activity that the device personally encouraged me to participate in.

I then began to wonder if gamification can be used to influence other behaviors, ones that have a big impact on our environments and communities. Can we use it for getting people to recycle more, drive safer, or donate to charitable causes? What about using the tool to reduce or eliminate social problems such as racism, poverty, or disease? Can we get people to do things that they otherwise wouldn’t do just by making it fun? I am interested in the practice of influencing people to do things that are not only good for them, but also for society as a whole.

How does your research come into the classroom?

My students are the best people to run my ideas by because they’re honest, and they’ll give me hypotheses to test in my research. For that reason, I love dealing with students regularly because they bring fresher ideas to light.

A few years ago I developed a course called Marketing for Social Change. In this course we examine marketing strategies that can influence individual and collective behavior for social good, and while teaching this course, I identified my interest in gamification. Gamification was introduced as a possible means to encourage pro-social behavior and I got a sense from my students that it is worthy of further study.

Your work sounds very interdisciplinary. How do you navigate the different disciplines or how do you try to work between them or with them?

Economics is the basis of all that I do. It’s all about incentives, incentivizing behavior, and that is my foundation. When I was in my Ph.D. program, I got into educational policy with the idea that I was going to apply economics and economic decision-making tools to education policymaking. As a marketing professor, I now use behavioral economics to understand and explain consumer behavior. Marketing and education are both disciplines that are based on some other foundational discipline, such as psychology, sociology, or economics. We use the foundational disciplines to inform what we do in marketing and education. I tend to think like an economist.

How has being at USF impacted your research?

USF has been supportive of the kinds of things that I want to do. Every activity that I’ve been involved in has been not only encouraged but also supported through resources and collaborations and people wanting to help. I feel that spirit of helpfulness throughout everything that I’ve done here and almost every interaction at USF, and that includes writing retreats that are supported by the school to make sure that researchers get research completed and writing done.

USF also provides opportunities, such as the Ignatian Faculty Forum, to consider our role as professors, Ignatian values and mission, and how those things relate. The development opportunities help to shape my ideas around what I want to do in the classroom and in my research. In addition to that, I participate in different faith formation activities here at USF. They are particularly valuable for thinking people. I appreciate the opportunity to participate in those kinds of opportunities whether they be the Spiritual Exercises or silent retreats, or any other University Ministry activities. That’s really the unique aspect of being here at this University—finding out how your spirituality and your sense of self relate to your work. It’s very hard to separate that out—who you are spiritually and your vocation are intimately connected, or at least I believe they should be. I really appreciate those opportunities to think through and talk to other people about these ideas.

What brought you to USF?

I believe that the university mission is in line with my own personal mission. I came to USF because I wanted to be an agent of change. As long as the university continues to be about social justice and life-changing action, I will love being here.

A Visualization for Parents Navigating the SF Public Elementary School Admissions Process

Posted on by craseadmin

SF-Map

https://sfelementary.github.io/

As any parent in San Francisco knows all too well, enrolling your would-be kindergartener in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) system is a daunting process. The challenges include countless tours that often “sell out” and each last an hour or more. These tours culminate in showing up at the SFUSD office for an in-person paper application process that has taken at times over 3 hours to complete and makes the DMV look like a well-oiled machine by comparison. Parents largely suffer this time-consuming process out of love for their child but it is harder to imagine a more frustrating and anxiety ridden process to have your child attend kindergarten.

The single largest source of parental anxiety related to this activity is the amount of random chance in the process.  While we won’t review the lottery process in all its glorious detail, the process boils down to this: Each parent applies and ranks a large number of SFUSD kindergartens, each with an abysmally low probability, and hopes that one or more coins comes up heads. The highest-ranked winning pick (if a winning event actually occurs) is awarded to the kindergartener. Again, the process is more complicated than we have described and includes complex tie-break systems, as well as language categories bucketing, but ranking and low probability coin flipping is an essential feature of the process.

The information provided by the SFUSD is neither user friendly nor capable of easy digestion to help parents make informed decisions. In response to this, second year Analytics Assistant Professor Yannet Interian created the visualization tool  using leaflet, a java script library for interactive maps, to help parents navigate the complex application process by providing a brief but informative snapshot of each of the 72 schools in the system.

“I have a 2-year old and I thought about what information I would want to help navigate the complex application process. Putting all the relevant data together in a clear and easy to read format can help parents figure out how to rank schools more efficiently,” said Professor Interian.

She sorted through some of the information available about each school to identify the schools in high demand but also highlight how difficult and challenging it is to attend the best schools in San Francisco. After choosing a few set parameters such as number of applications, number of available seats and California Assessment of Student Progress and Performance (CAASPP) scores, they developed a simple visualization system to understand the landscape of elementary schools plotted directly onto a city map of San Francisco. Professor Interian teamed up with software engineer Morgan Whitmont to build the first version of this prototype site.

While many “metrics” of school quality exists, Professor Interian developed a simple localized SF ranking using CAASPP Math and English scores, with the formula included in the visualizaiton. While more comprehensive measures of the health of a school than these two exist, for this first go around Interian and Whitmont created a data visualization tool that provides a partial — but important — overall picture of each school. One of the most important but depressing figures easily found by scrolling over each school is the percentage of applications that were accepted. For example, at Grattan Elementary, 1446 applicants vied for 65 open seats in kindergarten which is reported as 4.5%.  Sadly, the actual probability of applying and getting into Grattan for many parents is vastly lower once you factor in the tie-breaking system and it is likely sub 1% in the last round of the tie break.

Interian and Whitmont look forward to receiving feedback from SF parents on how to improve the visualization so that it becomes an essential tool in understanding the elementary school landscape. They have plans to incorporate diversity statistics as well as other metrics of the health of the school in future versions. In addition they would like to further separate and add to the visualization the different language tracks at the schools that have them.  For now, Interian and Whitmont hope the visualization allows parents to move forward armed with the information needed to make an informed, (slightly more) confident decision about their children’s education.

Faculty Spotlight: Amy Gilgan

Posted on by craseadmin

Amy Gilgan works with students and faculty as a Gleeson Library reference librarian and education liaison. During our conversation, we discussed the issues she’s passionate about and how research shapes her teaching and activism.

Amy Gilgan

 

How did you end up at the University of San Francisco?

Initially, my background was in archives. I became interested in preserving queer culture while volunteering at GLBT Historical Society. As an archives intern, I processed collections on AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), a direct action AIDS advocacy organization, and my internship lead to a grant funded position at the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Archives where I helped process the Kem Lee photograph collection. When the project concluded, I accepted a position as a librarian at an arts college in San Francisco. I did a lot of instruction there and discovered I have a passion for it. I also worked for a short period of time at City College of San Francisco as a reference librarian. When I was hired at USF as a reference and instructional librarian, I was excited to grow my teaching skills in an environment committed to social justice.

How did you first become interested in research?

I have always had an interest in science, art, and activism. Library science allows me to research across disciplines. I was drawn to the way librarians empower folks to learn about the world around them. Here at USF, I work primarily with students and faculty in the School of Education. It’s really rewarding to provide research support for folks invested in social change.

How did you first become interested in activism?

I grew up in a white working class community, and discovering the punk subculture was my gateway to activism. The subculture connected me to human rights organizations and the movement against neoliberal capitalism. Currently, I’m very interested in housing rights. I didn’t have a lot of resources growing up working class, but I never had to worry about not having a home. Moving to the Bay Area in 2003 really radicalized me around housing. I became more active around housing in 2008, when Proposition 98 threatened to overturn rent control in the state of California. Through political organizing, I learned a lot about the history of displacement in San Francisco. This isn’t a new narrative; working class communities of color have been facing displacement in the Bay Area for decades.

How does that play into your role here at USF?

One of the nice things about USF is the “Change the World from Here” emphasis on social justice. I really appreciate the opportunities to weave in my passion for community activism into the work that I do. In addition to supporting the research of faculty and students, I have created social justice resource guides to support the annual Critical Diversity Studies Forum and the Office of Diversity Engagement and Community Outreach. I strive to not only connect students to information but also grassroots community organizations.

What is your role with the School of Education?

As the liaison to the School of Education (SOE), I make sure that students and faculty have access to the resources they need for their research. I also provide library research instruction for classes, particularly when the students are working on literature reviews. If students or faculty need additional help, I meet one-on-one to help them formulate search strategies and use citation management tools, like Zotero or RefWorks. I learn so much about teaching and facilitation from activist educators.

What other projects have you learned a lot from working on them?

For four years, I taught a section of the Information Literacy Class for the Muscat Scholars Program, an immersion program for first generation college students. As an instructional librarian, I often do single class sessions where I see the students for 1-2 hours. With Muscat Scholars, I got to work with the students for two weeks. I love learning about their experiences and interests, and the students have taught me a lot about resilience and hope.

It sounds like you inhabit a lot of roles here at USF—you help with research, you’re teaching, you’re also active in the community. How do you define your role or do you define it all?

As a librarian, my primary focus us to help folks connect to resources. I strive to help students not only learn about social justice issues but also connect to community organizations engaged in the struggle.

How do these roles play into Open Access and educating faculty and students about resources?

When faculty publish in a proprietary journal, their work is often placed behind a paywall that not everyone can afford to access. Open access publishing can provide a way for faculty to build their professional portfolio while making their research freely available to a much broader audience. I encourage faculty to work with Charlotte Roh, our scholarly communications librarian, to explore open access options.

I work with a lot of teachers K-12 teachers in the School of Education. Some of the schools they work for cannot afford subscriptions to scholarly databases. There is so much information that their students can’t afford to access. It’s a big issue.

How do you bring your own personal research into those interactions when teaching?

I am very open about my housing rights activism. I talk about my own biases and how they can affect my ability to find and evaluate information. I also give personal examples of times when my assumptions lead me to believe misinformation. I want students to realize that critical thinking will not only help you write a better research paper but also help you when strategizing for social change.

Tips for Creating a Semester Plan for Faculty Success in Writing and Research

Posted on by craseadmin

At the CRASE Plan Your Semester workshop, 17 faculty and staff, including several new faculty members, worked on developing a semester-long plan. Below, Professor Christine Yeh summarizes key steps in creating a Semester Plan using materials developed by the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD).

plan your semester

When creating a concrete Semester Plan, the main challenges academics often face include: (1) unstructured time, (2) varied and time consuming commitments, (3) prioritizing, and (4) underestimating the time required for research and writing. Due to these challenges, writing time often gets pushed aside and replaced by smaller but time-consuming tasks such as email requests, committee responsibilities, administrative reports, and student issues. Because we perceive having free time to write, we often allow these duties to take over in the hope of finding time elsewhere in our busy schedules, but it is important to prioritize our scholarship and personal goals.

To make a successful Semester Plan, know what you need and what you need to accomplish. Create a realistic plan to meet all of your needs including personal and professional goals, and build in support, structure, and accountability.

Five steps can help you create and implement a strategic Semester Plan:

  1. Identify your personal and professional goals
  2. Map out the steps and work to accomplish your specific goals
  3. Introduce your projects to your semester calendar and schedule them in
  4. Build in the support and accountability for completing these goals
  5. Work the Semester Plan

Identify Your Goals

People often start the process by identifying their goals and then stop, but it’s important to remember that according to NCFDD, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” When you start to put together a Semester Plan, identify both research/writing goals and personal goals. During the workshop, participants identified three research/writing goals and three personal goals to get the process started.

Once you’ve identified your goals, the next step is to make them SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attractive, Realistic, and Time-framed. By reframing goals as SMART goals, they become more concrete and realistic. An example of a personal goal would be to spend time outside, but once transformed as a SMART goal, it may look more like mountain biking once a week on Saturdays from 9-11 am or to try a new 3-hour hike on the first Saturday morning of each month.

Map out the steps and work to accomplish your goal

Working with the SMART goals, you can now write out the steps required to make each goal happen. For example, when developing a book proposal, you may need to draft different sections, create a table of contents, and select a publisher. Break down your goals to individual to-do tasks that you can schedule into your calendar.

Introduce your projects to your semester calendar

Now that you have the steps to accomplish each goal, it’s time to start scheduling them into your calendar. We recommend opening Google Calendar, or the system that works for you, and add each item into your calendar. It’s important to accurately estimate how much time the task will take. Scheduling tasks into your calendar will help you see how busy you are with other commitments such as mid-term grading and travel plans, and you can adjust your timeframe to match the semester.

Build in Support and Accountability

The next step is to make sure you have the support and accountability to make sure you get your tasks completed. Some ideas for support include making plans to write on-site, online writing groups, accountability group check-ins, or a writing buddy/coach.

Work the Plan

Once your strategic plan is complete, schedule a meeting with a mentor, writing friend, or accountability group and share your goals. As you work through your Semester Plan, some tasks may take more time than you estimated, but you can always adjust your timeframe. Understanding how long tasks will take will help when you plan future semesters.

Faculty colleagues who successfully completed their semester plans shared some helpful tips. These include the following:

  1. After entering writing tasks and goals into your calendar, color code them based on the type of writing project.
  2. Assign specific times to each goal so you can best estimate how much time to spend on them.
  3. Share your priority goals with collaborators so they are also on board with your time frame and deadlines.

It is important to be able to adapt and change your Semester Plan should you finish your goals early (or late). The plan is there for structure, accountability, and clarity about your goals, but it is also important to be flexible as you navigate the academic context. Personally, I look at my goals weekly to add and change things as they come up. I also create a plan for each semester to ensure I am prioritizing the important goals in my life.

Hidden Stories in My Cluttered Office

Posted on by craseadmin

Christine Yeh, Professor of Education and Psychology, considers the objects, notes, and items in her office and how the clutter reveals special relationships and different kinds of hidden and unfinished stories.

Christine Yeh's drawer

In my desk, I have a catchall drawer with a random collection of objects, some necessary—a pair of black shoes, bags of “healthy” snacks—and others perhaps confusing things—a small hand-carved boat from Samoa, a marble from El Salvador, and an intricate weaving made of scrap paper and yarn. These “confusing” and rather unacademic items each have a story connected to it, but I often wonder if I have gone too far in contributing to the chaos of my daily life.

When I moved into a new office last summer, I seized the opportunity to purge my space of boxes of forgotten files, old data, and things that do not fit into any obvious work related category (think a pile of heart shaped rocks in a bowl). I Googled photos of “Zen office spaces” and studied Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing and paid particular attention to her thoughts on office cleaning. She offered the following insights and directions on how to create a space free of clutter:

  • Hold each book in your hand, and if it gives you a thrill of pleasure when you touch it, keep it. Otherwise, it must go.
  • If you think you’ll read a book “one day,” discard it.
  • If an item doesn’t spark joy for you, but is necessary to get work done, you may keep it.
  • Discard all paper unless in use, is needed for a limited period of time, or must be kept indefinitely.

I contemplated the hundreds of pages and papers that could justifiably be recycled according to her rules. These included my 9 years of ideas brainstorms, and sketches kept in colorful Japanese notebooks, ethnographic notes and memos from my international research travel journals, and personally revealing artwork from past students exploring their identities and culture on paper. My most meaningful keepsake is the partially completed picture book drawn on scrap paper by a 5th grade boy in Western Samoa, depicting the story of how he lost his family in the 2010 tsunami. He gave me this precious book because I was the first person in more than a year to ask him to share his story. He left the last few pages blank—unfinished—because his future was still unsure.

As I inspected my belongings, I realized that much of my clutter included different kinds of unfinished stories—blank pages that serve as a reminder of the work that is yet to be done, experienced, or imagined. My scribbles and sketches comprise urgent notes to self, fights I have yet to fight, and emotional rants about inequity that hold me accountable. I also wondered if I am particularly drawn to works in progress rather than the finished, printed, or framed final pieces as they are glimpses of the creative process and moments of possibilities. Where do these unfinished, incomplete, in progress stories, doodles, and projects fit into Kondo’s rules about what to keep?

I could also not let go of many objects in my secret drawer because they are symbols of connections I have made that inspire me to be the best version of my self. I find these items are especially grounding when I am feeling overwhelmed by the busy work of academia. It occurred to me that perhaps in our creative and scholarly work, our criteria for what to keep and what to toss includes Kondo’s ideas but may extend beyond whether or not an object “sparks joy” or has use and I came up with my own guiding questions for creating an inspiring office space.

  • Does the object inspire you?
  • Does it tell part of an important story in your history?
  • Does it symbolize a critical aspect of your multiple identities?
  • Does it highlight a journey or process you are experiencing?
  • Does it serve as a reminder of your vision for your work?

When I began cleansing my office according to Kondo’s rule, I picked up each book to see if it would “spark joy” as she requires in her philosophy. But as I held each book, joy was not the predominant feeling. Rather, I thought about the books that were difficult, intense, and heart-wrenching. These were books that were painfully transformative in my thinking about justice. Seeing these books on my shelf (organized by color to spark joy) provided historical evidence of my evolving identity as a researcher. As I flipped through the pages, I was reminded of why I entered academia in the first place. I was reminded of conversations I had with friends and colleagues. I contemplated and grappled with ideas about equity, and I felt deeply inspired.

I also tried to organize my papers and notebooks using my new rules around organizing for inspiration. I appreciated reading through pages of my writing in notebooks –snapshots of urgent ideas and passions for my work. Sadly, many of these reflections and raw emotions remain hidden in these journals as they are regularly deleted from my manuscripts by journal editors during the review process because they are not seen as “scholarly.” Keeping them nearby feels refreshingly humanizing as they hold me accountable to my vision and to the communities I partner with.

Prehistoric bird sculpture
Prehistoric woodfired stoneware bird by Simon Levin on quarter sawn oak.
Photo credit: Estella Pabonan

Kondo believes that if something does not spark joy, then you must get rid of it. Similarly, I repeatedly asked myself, “Does this inspire me?” as I went through each object in my cluttered space. Finding inspiration is unique to the individual, but I did find that the guiding questions I listed above helped me make decisions about what to cleanse. For example, the art featured in my office are mostly photographs, paintings, drawings, and sculptures from people I am close to—a prehistoric wood-fired stoneware bird head mounted on a thick piece of oak wood envisioned and created by a potter friend? Definitely keep. Scribbled note in Chinese from a second grade student I taught in Nan’ao village in Taiwan? Keep. Old handouts from meetings, workshops, and schedules? Recycle.

Though the heart of my research is outside of my office and in local and international communities, I find I need to be very intentional about creating a space at work that attempts to reflect the collective voice of these relationships. After many iterations and attempts at office organization, I may not have achieved the sparse Zen office I originally thought I wanted, but I feel I have created a space of experimentation and inspiration. Like the blank pages of my precious picture book from Samoa, this new space has an openness to the possible stories that are yet to come.

Faculty Spotlight: Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales

Posted on by craseadmin

Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales’s research has been influenced by the U.S.-Mexico border, Bay Area, and Central Valley. During our discussion, we discussed undocumented students in higher education and the work establishing the Undocu-Ally workshop at the University of San Francisco.

Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales

How did you first become interested in research?

My research is rooted in my upbringing and my political engagements around migration, young people, education, and border politics, and more broadly, racial politics in California. I grew up on the U.S.-Mexico border. I was in high school during an age of violence on the border and violence against migrants. That really shaped my political identity, my personal identity, my racial identity. When I came to graduate school, it only made sense that my research would be in conversation with those pieces of who I am.

What were some of the earlier political moments that shaped your interests?

I grew up in Chula Vista, which is just a few miles from the US-Mexico border. In the mid-90’s, there was a moment of scapegoating against immigrants—Proposition 187 tried to exclude undocumented residents of California from public services like public education and emergency medical services and Operation Gatekeeper developed a stronger, more lethal border fence. The racial undertones of those conversations are very explicit, and I don’t know if you can be a Chicano kid growing up in such close proximity to the US-Mexico border and not be aware of inequality and racism.

When I teach and when I speak, I often tell people that I’m a proud beneficiary of affirmative action, that I was admitted in the last class at UC Berkeley under affirmative action policies. Sometimes people say, “Oh, why are you selling yourself short? Why do you admit to something like that?” For me, it’s really a point of pride. There was something really significant about that moment in California when affirmative action policies were being questioned and ultimately legislated out. I landed on a college campus that was in the midst of major transformation, major social unrest, and student movements. My engagement in that work also shaped my trajectory academically.

How did this translate into your undergraduate and graduate studies?

As an undergraduate, I studied Ethnic Studies, Education, and Chicano Studies, and I found a passion in those disciplines. I ultimately decided to go back to graduate school. My dissertation work was about undocumented migrant students and, specifically, ways in which engagement around the Dream Act catalyzed broader political activism and the development of political consciousness. Now, my work is very interdisciplinary. I am in a School of Education, but I pull very explicitly from Ethnic Studies and Chicano Studies but also Anthropology, Sociology, and other fields.

What specifically pulled you to focus on undocumented students in higher education?

One piece of it was I wanted to look at social movements as a place where education “happens”, and undocumented students were leading the fight at that point. The other part was that I was working for a scholarship program advising underrepresented students of color on the UC Berkeley campus and learned about the unique challenges facing undocumented college students in the context of that work. I was working with these students, and I also had this connection to the ongoing struggles at the border and struggles around racism and xenophobia because of my own background and political work.

What is your current research about?

Currently, I study undocumented community college students in the Central Valley of California. There have been significant legislative changes in California around undocumented students and access to higher education in the last several years. It’s really been the movement of undocumented young people who have made these changes possible. There is this emerging story about California being the national model for service for undocumented students, but I think there’s a danger in telling and propagating that narrative about California as the national model because the reality is that not all students are benefitting from this legislation. I’m talking to undocumented students who qualify for the California Dream Act and are getting significant tuition assistance but who are living in such deep poverty that they can’t afford the bus ticket to school. Or they can’t afford not to work the two hours that they would be in class because their family depends on the wages that would be lost if they went to school instead. If we are actually going to situate California as a national model for servicing and supporting the educational trajectories of undocumented students, then we need to position political economy at the center of that analysis. We need to complicate the conversations around who undocumented students are, what they look like, what kind of work they’re doing, and what kind of barriers they’re confronting.

The access to higher education story is a very specific story within this broader conversation. I think we need to be able to situate it appropriately and connect it to these broader struggles in service of bringing about a more just immigration policy.

What originally drew you to USF?

I wasn’t always positive that I was going to be in academia, but I wanted to be in a place where socially engaged, social justice research was welcomed, and I also wanted to be in a place where teaching was valued. Both of those things led me to USF. When a position opened in Higher Education Student Affairs, I was really excited about it because I had all this practical experience in student affairs and it was in an institutional environment where social justice, racial justice, immigrant rights are things that are talked about explicitly. I have really amazing colleagues that made me feel at home right away.

What work you have done through the USF task force?

When I came to USF, I engaged in conversations on what support for undocumented students looks like here. There were many people on this campus who have been working to support undocumented students for many years but there was a new opportunity to try to coordinate it and bring it to the surface as critical work of the university community. I spoke with Mary Wardell, and she said, “Why don’t you start a task force?” To meet the needs of undocumented students at USF, we need data on how many students we have and what issues they struggle with.” We convened a task force of students, staff, and faculty across campus to collect data from undocumented students, and we made recommendations to the Provost Council about how USF can be a more hospitable environment to undocumented students.

Are you beginning to see some changes or implementations of those recommendations?

I’d like us to not only welcome undocumented students but engage in the broader public discourse and narrative around pushing for more just immigration policy, more comprehensive immigration reform. I also want to have real financial support for undocumented students, which will put the commitment to undocumented students in a structural, institutional grounded way.

There are a couple things that I’m proud of. One is that the task force worked together with the university web services to create a page on the USF website. We worked with the university to create a page on the website that not only has contact people and resources but also makes a very clear statement that says, “As a Jesuit university, we welcome all students.” That public statement of support is not only symbolically important, it’s also really meaningful in terms of student experience on this campus.

Also, last Spring we did an Undocu-Ally workshop. Faculty and staff across the campus could learn how they can serve undocumented students who may come to them whether that’s in the counseling and psychological services, in student advising, or in the classroom. We put out the call inviting people to attend a training that was facilitated by the head of the undocumented programming over at UC Berkeley. Because it was a really busy time of year, we were hoping we’d get 20 people to sign up for the workshop, and we had an overwhelming response from around 50 people and another 15 or 20 who said, “I really want to do this but I can’t make that date.” To me, it signified that there’s really an interest and a need on this campus for that educational work. People want to step up, and the faculty and staff want to integrate this into their work and live up to the mission of the university.

Faculty Spotlight: Angela Banks

Posted on by craseadmin

During our conversation, Angela Banks, Associate Professor in the School of Nursing and Health Professions, shared her passion for patients and her research in cardiovascular disease. We discussed her Fulbright experience in Jordan, bringing stories of her patients into the classroom, and running her first marathon.

Angela Banks

 

How did you first become interested in research?

At a very young age, I knew that I wanted to become a registered nurse. I enjoyed taking care of people that were sick, and whenever my family members became ill, I embraced the idea of helping them get better. I have a PhD in the Philosophy of Nursing.

While I was completing my PhD at UCSF, we had to select a particular area of interest, and I chose cardiovascular disease. I became quite interested in this area because I had a couple of family members who died prematurely as a result of cardiovascular disease.

How did you decide to come to USF?

The USF Nursing Program has a wonderful reputation in the community, and it’s highly respected throughout the state of California. I heard about USF long before I decided to come here. It was my first and only choice. I decided that after I graduated I wanted to work at this university, and it was also the only place where I interviewed. I’ve been here for 11 years and experienced many challenges, but overall I really enjoy teaching and the wonderful opportunities it has to offer.

How do you bring your research into the classroom?

Well I teach pharmacology and pathophysiology, so the heart is a fundamental aspect of my research. When I talk about the heart, I also share my research findings with my students. I want my students to be informed and understand the importance of cardiovascular disease and become advocates for their family members and themselves should they become diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.

Is there something in particular about working with the students and the program at USF that keeps you motivated?

Because of my many years working in the intensive care unit and also the emergency room, I have had an opportunity to bring those life experiences to the classroom. It brings the classroom alive. Students remember the stories that I tell them, the stories about my patients—how I advocated for my patients, how I advocated for their family members, and how they can do the same thing. I always say to them, you are the next generation of nurses. I’m just happy that I’m able to play a significant role in making you an excellent nurse. So when you graduate from this university you will have the necessary skills to care for people in the clinical setting or the community. One of these days you may have the opportunity to take care of me, or my loved ones and I want you to be well prepared for that responsibility.

What are the questions you’ve been thinking about recently?

I’m interested in cardiovascular disease and its impact on the female population. There are a lot of people that might not be aware of the fact that cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of all women. It’s actually the number one killer of all Americans—men and women—but it really does impact the female population considerably more. With my dissertation, I was specifically concerned about the African American population because, even though all women as well as men in the US are impacted by this disease, it has a significantly higher consequence on the African American population. I wanted to better understand why people wait to go to the hospital when they experience signs and symptoms associated with heart disease.

What leads to these delays and disproportionate impact?

From my research, when African Americans experience cardiac signs and symptoms, they wait to see if the symptoms will disappear. Many of them are wondering if these signs and symptoms are associated with something that’s not cardiac in origin. Several people experience denial, and believe that their signs and symptoms are related to something less serious, especially the female population because women do not necessarily experience cardiac symptoms in the same way that men do. Many healthcare providers, especially male physicians are reluctant to diagnose women with cardiovascular disease even though they present to the emergency room with the classic signs and symptoms. Physicians tend to attribute the symptoms that women are having to a condition that’s less serious compared to men experiencing the same symptoms when they arrive at the hospital.

You spent some time doing research in Jordan. What brought you to the Middle East?

I was in Jordan as a Fulbright Scholar, and it was a wonderful experience. I wanted to visit a place where the language, the religion, and the culture were very different from my own, so I specifically selected Jordan. I had a lot of fear associated with the Middle East, and if you listen to the media, most people would be frightened to travel to the Middle East. I wanted to branch out to a different part of the world, and it was one of the best decisions that I have ever made for my personal and intellectual growth.

How did your research collaborations work?

At the Jordan University of Science and Technology, you really needed to be fluent in Arabic in order to conduct research, and Arabic is a very difficult language to learn. So I collaborated with professors who spoke fluent English. For instance, there was a professor who was doing some interesting work on diabetes, which is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, so we worked together and were successful in publishing a manuscript.

The professors also had their graduate students collect data, and then together we would analyze the data and write up the analyses. There was a tremendous amount of collaboration across disciplines, which is something I haven’t had the opportunity to do at USF. I would love to have the opportunity to work with professors across disciplines at USF, because we can learn from each other and disseminate the information to a broader audience.

I look forward to the opportunity of collaborating with my colleagues here at USF, specifically individuals who have an interest in how culture, and racial prejudice intersect with my area of research. I am currently working on a project dealing with culture, and oppression in the African American population who is suffering with heart failure.

How has your research impacted you individually?

I’m very conscious about my health, and I’m very much aware of the risk factors that will increase the chances of me developing heart disease—I try to eat a balanced diet and exercise as often as I can.

In Jordan, I actually ran my very first marathon for my students at the university. It was never my plan to run a marathon, but the whole purpose was to raise money for my students because in the Middle East students rarely have the funds to purchase books. They will usually purchase one book and make copies for all of their classmates, so I wanted to assist my students in paying tuition and buying books. Even though I didn’t raise a lot of money, all the money was donated to the university, and my students and colleagues were impressed. I encouraged people to run with me, but very few people in the Middle East run. Most people in the Middle East who run marathons are foreigners from other countries, the US being one of them.

I decided because I’m getting older and it’s such a burden on your body—that constant jarring when you’re running—so I decided to take up swimming. So now I swim because that’s the type of exercise that I can actually do for the rest of my life.

It seems like you’re always working on this goal of learning more, focusing on the community, and disseminating the information. Do you have a large goal for your research?

It’s a work in progress. If we can just get people to the hospital when they experience signs and symptoms associated with cardiovascular disease, that would be phenomenal because so many people, not just African American but also individuals from other ethnic groups, delay in getting to the hospital. When it comes to the cardiac muscle, time is very important because the longer you wait, the more damage you actually do to the heart muscle. If someone is aware of this knowledge about cardiovascular disease, it places them in a much better position to advocate for themselves and their family members.

How do you inform people about your research?

I’ve tried to reach the African American community, and educate women in general. In April, I spoke to a group of over 250 women about heart disease and shared the classic signs and symptoms. It is so important that they advocate for themselves if they go to the doctor, and if they feel like they might be experiencing symptoms associated with cardiovascular disease. It is important to get the physician to listen to them and not dismiss their concerns. A lot of it is education, but I’ve also found that even with educating people, it may not necessarily change behavior. So we still have a lot of work to do.

CRASE Innovations with Geographic Information Systems

Posted on by craseadmin

The USF Geospatial Analysis Lab (GsAL) partnered with CRASE to host three workshops on Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The workshops were developed and facilitated by David Saah, Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science  Director of GsAL, and Megan Danielson, GsAL Manager.

CRASE Innovations in GIS
CRASE Innovations in GIS

The first workshop provided an introduction to GIS resources on the USF campus and allowed participants to explore features of GIS by creating a map of earthquake risk in California. Two additional GIS Boot Camps allowed participants to develop further their skills and consider how to use GIS in their own research, teaching, and collaborations. Many faculty and staff worked on proposals for specific GIS mapping projects such as investigating unsafe public transportation to public high schools in San Francisco; migration patterns in Europe, Middle East, and North Africa; community-based ecological asset mapping; mapping urban development and arts nonprofits in West Oakland over time; and looking at voting patterns by geography. During the semester, nearly  50 people participated in the GIS Workshops. Here are some of the testimonials from our participants:

“The instruction was great–it was tailored to each of us and also gave an overview of GIS and various applications in different disciplines. It was also great to have research assistants/helpers there to provide 1-on-1 assistance.”

“Including tables and figures in my work is about as visual as my work has been. This definitely opened my eyes to how I could display information visually. It also made me think about kinds of research questions I can ask given the data sets that are available and the tools I have access to. I also see a lot of room for collaboration in this space. For example, as someone who studies workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, I see how I could collaborate with folks in politics or law to map non-discrimination policies, instances of discrimination, political attitudes, cost of discrimination, etc. ”

CRASE plans to continue its collaboration with GsAL in the 2016-2017 academic year, and we are excited to see further development of the proposals started by faculty and staff.

Kindred Spirits

Posted on by craseadmin

Joshua Gamson, Professor of Sociology, reflects on his book Modern Families: Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship, and he explores self-determination in making of families and expanding our understanding of kinship.

Joshua Gamson
Joshua Gamson, Professor of Sociology,

At the end of my recently published book, Modern Families: Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship, I began to think through the implications of telling family stories the way I’d done in the previous two hundred pages. In the book, I set out to tell personal, intimate tales of unconventional family creation—via adoption and assisted reproduction; by gay, straight, and trans folks; coupled, single, and multi-parent families—while revealing how they were shaped within and against social, legal, and economic structures. I asked how telling such stories as complex encounters with inequality might allow us to think and act differently rather than telling these stories as individual tales of inventive, dogged pursuits of parenthood.

The stories as I told them point toward an “expansive view of reproductive freedom.” Citing the sociologist and legal scholar Dorothy Roberts, I asserted that “reproductive liberty must encompass autonomy over individuals’ reproductive life—a woman’s choice to end her pregnancy, for instance—but must move beyond that,” to acknowledge and transform the economic and political inequalities that shape family-making decisions. “Reproductive freedom is a matter of social justice,” I quoted from Roberts, “not individual choice.” I noted that a commitment to reproductive justice doesn’t currently inform social policy, though it could, and I basically left it at that.

I don’t disagree with myself, but those bare bones could certainly use some meat on them. I’m trying now to flesh out the connections between reproductive rights in the sense long used by feminist pro-choice activists (the right for women to control their own reproductive lives), reproductive justice in the sense Roberts and other black feminists have articulated (in Roberts’ words, “not only a woman’s right not to have a child, but also the right to have children and to raise them with dignity in safe, healthy, and supportive environments”), and the sorts of family-making inequities I describe in Modern Families. Such inequities are multiple and intersecting, running through and across the stories in the book: The restrictions on family-making due to discrimination and stigma that queer people and single parents often face; the restricted access to assisted reproduction primarily to people, straight or not, with considerable financial resources; the potential and actual exploitation of poor women in the U.S. and elsewhere as paid surrogates; the vast inequalities in the adoption world between countries that “send” children and those that “receive” them, and between individuals who give up kids for adoption or fostering and those that become adoptive parents.

These various aspects of reproductive and family-making politics—which include different life experiences, widely varying positions of advantage and marginalization—are connected by a couple of shared threads. The first is the basic assertion that family justice requires self-determination in making of our families and in the use of our bodies in the creation of kinship, free from coercion and stigma. Clearly, that’s not where we are. When abortions receive no public funding and women’s health clinics are targeted; when adoption statutes and agency practices favor heterosexual couples; when in vitro fertilization is costly and not covered by most insurance; when surrogacy law is an uneven patchwork that requires money and legal assistance to pursue, and often leaves gestational carriers vulnerable; when black families cannot assume that their kids will be safe from state interference and violence; when paid family leave is only a reality for a small portion of the population; when the most effective methods of contraception are prohibitively costly for many: Self-determination about whether, how, and when to make a family is unevenly distributed and unevenly supported. When it comes to the personal, life-changed decisions about having or not having children, and about how to raise them, the most marginalized folks—women in the global South, poor women of color in the U.S.—have a lot less freedom than others.

The second connecting theme is that both culture and policy operate on a very narrow understanding of reproduction and kinship of what two recent critics have called “nuclear family privilege.” Family justice requires an expanded understanding of kinship that goes beyond the nuclear and beyond the biological. As the social change organization Forward Together puts it, most of us “fall outside the outdated notion that a family consists of a mom at home and a dad at work,” yet “too many of the policies that affect us are based on this fantasy.” Policy and resource allocation need to serve families as they really are and to tap into the insights, suppressed by marginalization and invisibility, of diverse family forms. What would family policy look like, for instance, if it centered on the effective ways single women often make use of extended, multigenerational social networks, as so many black, Latino, and working-class families have done for a long time? What would it look like if it built on the combinations of biological and social kinship—sometimes called “chosen families,” “fictive kin,” or “voluntary kin”—that foreground not biology so much as intention, commitment, and reciprocity in the making of family?

These two themes sometimes stand in complicated tension, in part because social class is a central constraint in reproductive and family choices in the United States. So, for instance, while being gay, single, or both means being subject to legal and bureaucratic restrictions in your decision-making, having money can quite easily help you bypass those restrictions—you can pay for adoption or surrogacy services and legal fees. And “family diversity” is expanded through decisions tied to social class: women who place children for adoption, donate eggs, or serve as surrogates for same-sex couples often do so (though not exclusively) because their financial circumstances make such choices rational. Securing reproductive justice for a gestational surrogate in India, not to mention in Indiana, may make it harder for same-sex couples building their family through surrogacy.

These tensions are hard but must be confronted. An expansive approach to reproductive justice certainly brings together disparate experiences of disadvantage. An economically privileged lesbian couple navigates family-making terrain quite differently than an economically marginalized single mother, just as the choice to pursue or terminate a pregnancy is quite different depending on whether you have access to healthcare, whether or not you face the racialized stereotype of single-motherhood-as-irresponsibility, whether you’ve got job security, and so on. But shared across these differences is the same pursuit: the freedom and conditions to make families if we want, when we want, how we want, and with whom we want. The challenge is to link ourselves, in thought and in practice, to those who are absent from our everyday lives but who are also struggling to make family freely, safely, and with dignity. We are, at the very least, political kin.

Faculty Spotlight: Desiree Zerquera

Posted on by craseadmin

Desiree Zerquera worked in student affairs, higher education policy, and research before becoming a faculty member at the University of San Francisco (USF), and her experience led her to her current research focusing on universities in urban settings. Our conversation explored the intersections of academic policies, the effects on students, and the connections to USF.

Desiree Zerquera

How did you first become interested in research?

When I was in college, it really illuminated both that I was marginalized in classrooms–there weren’t a lot of people of color, there weren’t a lot of women in my math major–but then also recognizing the privilege that I had. There were microphones that I had that other people didn’t, so how can I best leverage those privileges so that they’re utilized for change? In my master’s program, I worked with faculty who really stimulated my curiosity and let me ask questions and find answers to those questions. I wanted to work in higher education to have a greater impact and see that impact through research. As I went into my PhD, I was really focused on how research can inform the policy arena because for me research was all about finding a way to change and inform change in the world.

What were some of the early questions when you were starting out?

My master’s thesis focused on Latinos in community colleges. There’s a lot happening with the Latino community, but I was disappointed that Latino’s were talked about in this really pan-ethnic way, absent of the diversity in experiences. I recognized my own privilege as the child of Cuban immigrants who were able to get political asylum when they came to the U.S., so their immigration journey was one of privilege even though we’re working class. I was aware that there’s something different for us than there is for other groups, and we should be paying attention to the differences to better serve Latino students.

What’s the shape that your research has taken now?

The work that I’ve done since really focused on these types of institutions that are in urban areas that do research, teaching, and service. They’re focused on serving their cities and urban students, and they see their identity as being part of those urban surroundings. There’s a growth of these institutions, which are called urban serving research universities.

What’s happened over time is this perpetual framing of these universities as being less than, but these are the universities that have traditionally served Latinos, African American and black students, and low-income students because they have this commitment to serve their urban surroundings. At the same time there’s this framing in higher ed of excellence and what excellence means, but that framing doesn’t value the contributions of urban-serving research universities. You don’t get a higher ranking for the number of Latino students or black students you graduate. You get a higher ranking for the number of students you say can’t come here. This framing doesn’t fit with what these institutions do. I look at the ways these institutions are stuck in this tension of serving this equity agenda while also trying to compete for prestige in this oppressive way.

Some of my work has looked at the relationships between pursuing excellence in this framework and what that has meant to access for Latino and black students. I’m talking to administrators in these contexts to better understand the balance that they try to achieve, to what extent is equity part of that conversation, and to what extent is it fitting within this dominant paradigm or is there reclaiming of this space to do it differently, which is essential for fighting the stratification of higher ed where students are funneled in particular ways away from opportunity.

What are your current projects?

In addition to the work with urban universities I just described, I’m also doing work with formerly incarcerated students, and I think about the consequences of policies that structurally keep people out and keep people down. They have to change their major so many times because they find out they won’t be able to get a job with their major because they have a criminal record, and they’re misinformed, miscounseled, and misguided about what opportunity looks like.

What I intend to do with that research is to create workshops for practitioners and write policy briefs that reach campus administrators as well as people in Sacramento.

How does policy factor into your research?

My work focuses on the structuring of opportunity, so I naturally look at policy—financial aid policy, admissions policies. Policy is central to my research, but I know if I’m publishing in an academic journal, chances are that policymakers are never going to see it.

When I say policy, I’m not just thinking of Sacramento—I’m thinking of people who are making policies that affect higher ed. For me, that includes my students working in student affairs. They’re making policies about college campuses, so I make a real effort to articulate my research in different venues. There are certain journals for associations like the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. I’ve published there intentionally because I want to reach people who are going to use this information in a way that benefits students.

How do your students inform your research and teaching?

I learn so much from students. I try to make spaces in the classroom where people are able to address issues that are relevant to them and apply the different frames and the different skills. The students I work with are doing work that matters.

I really appreciate that the students are working and directly applying what we’re talking about in their work settings, and they’re bringing the issues from work to class for us to talk about. I learn so much from their process. I learn what are issues of relevance based on what the students bring to the class discussion, and I just learn so much that I can take back and reflect on my own praxis as a researcher and how do I make this matter.

How do you bring your research into the classroom?

Before teaching, I remind myself of that ripple effect this class could have. The students want to be leaders in organizations—higher ed organizations, K-12 organizations, etc. I try to integrate organization theory with critical perspectives that reveal power structures and power dynamics. I want students to be able to navigate that world as well and to challenge it and push it, so when they’re making decisions, they can bring another perspective that asks critical questions. My students have to do papers that talk about problems and find solutions. My doctoral students write a traditional academic paper, op-eds, and an organizational report so they get three different types of writing. They need to know how to navigate these different worlds, to articulate their points of view, and how to advance our better understanding in those different arenas.

Since you inhabit all this knowledge of critical theory and ways of seeing systems, how do you know where to focus your research attention?

I’m in a privileged place where it’s my job to ask these questions. There are people who ask these questions everyday but they’re busy with putting out fires. This student just got evicted. That student no longer has financial aid. You have the practitioners doing that work. You have administrators who are dealing with how do we get enough money to keep the university going. If they don’t, then they won’t have a university to support anyone. You have all of these people that are in positions that don’t always enable them to think in this way, but I’m in a privileged space where it’s my job to think about these things. It’s not enough to write about these things in a journal that no one reads. It’s part of my responsibility to make sure that it’s articulated in ways that reach people.

How has being at the University of San Francisco affected your research?

At USF, there’s a lot of discourse about doing publicly engaged scholarship, so research that’s grounded in communities. That’s the same kind of conversation that’s happening at these universities. I see a lot of parallels between these institutions that are of real interest to me and the fulfillment of the Jesuit mission within the context of decreased financial resources. It overlaps with what I think about in my research—how do we make sure, that within all these discussions about our decisions for financial viability, for survival, that we’re also keeping focus on our social justice mission. I’d like to contribute to literature around Jesuit universities so we can learn from these urban-serving research universities to inform Jesuit universities.

How is your research connected to the USF community?

Thinking of my work with these urban serving research universities, I see direct connections with what I see happening at USF. USF has a strong social justice mission and also has pressures to survive. There’s always these tensions in admissions, tuition, the types of students that are targeted for recruitment, so I see the research helping me better understand. I bring that with me in my roles that I have on campus—understanding the tension and how USF is finding ways to survive and to better serve the students. USF is doing such important work collectively—administrators, faculty, students—and at the same time there are these really strong tensions and difficulties that need to be navigated. I think the greater challenge is figuring out how to do that well, how to be most impactful.