Santa Clara Magazine

16/10/2024

Round-trip, the journey from Earth to Mars and back again is estimated to take about three years. Kamak Ebadi Ph.D. ’20 did it in 45 days. Well, sort of. After earning a doctorate in electrical engineering from Santa Clara University with an emphasis in robotics, Ebadi completed a simulated journey to the red planet inside NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) habitat at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Read more about his experience in the Fall 2024 issue of Santa Clara Magazine: https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/fall-2024/mars-within-reach/

12/09/2024

Hopefully, this will make all the kitchen gadgets more polite :)

SCU School of Engineering’s new program in responsible artificial intelligence aims to lay the groundwork for a holistic understanding of AI.

05/06/2024

The social sciences and humanities posted some of the biggest declines in majors over a 10-year period in 2022, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Questions have been raised nationally about whether to continue requiring undergrads to take courses in these fields. And some states have specifically targeted fields like sociology and ethnic studies as part of an ideological broadside that has also included banning books, the teaching of Critical Race Theory, and diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

And yet... sociology remains “one of the most popular majors in the country,” says Santa Clara Professor Margaret Hunter. The recent scrutiny of sociology is disappointing, Hunter says, but not all that surprising. “Sociology has been characterized as an advocacy-oriented discipline that isn’t based in research,” she says. But that’s false. It’s scientific, producing quantitative or qualitative research: “It’s systematic investigation.”

Read more: https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/fall-2024/sociology-gen-ed-and-breaking-the-rules/

29/05/2024

Maddy Javier ’23 worried what she’d do with her communication degree. “What am I going to do if I don’t want to go into journalism or film?” she thought. But then she was introduced to virtual reality, which opened the door to previously unknown opportunities in communications research. Now, she and a team from SCU’s Imaginarium Lab are preparing for a trip to Australia to share their findings on accessibility and inclusion in the VR platform Meta Horizon Worlds. https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/fall-2024/career-paths-multiply-in-a-virtual-world/

17/04/2024

Originally trained as a litigator at , S. Isabel Choi J.D. ’02 hoped to follow in the footsteps of her grandfather—who served as the chief justice of South Korea’s Supreme Court—in becoming a judge in California. But though she found work at a wonderful firm in the Bay Area, the work itself felt less than wonderful.

So she turned to writing, always a comfort. In 2024, Choi was named a creative writing fellow. Her generational memoir, Let the River Run, starts with the life story of that same grandfather. https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/spring-2024/from-litigator-to-writer/

09/04/2024

At any moment in a nondescript building that once held a bank vault just off campus, you might find a drum practice, album recording, or jam session. But you might not hear it. That’s thanks to renovations to Benton Street Studios, home to Santa Clara University’s jazz program.

Read—and hear!—more: https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/spring-2024/drumroll-please/

27/03/2024

From Twitter’s origins in 140-character banter to becoming one of the world’s most consequential tech companies, the book unveils the human dynamics behind the platform’s corporate curtain. Through insider employee accounts and exclusive interviews, Kurt Wagner ’12 explores how the clashing personalities of a subtle Dorsey and a not-so-subtle Musk reshaped not just Twitter but the digital landscape around it, disrupting the flow of news and mass information users once knew. Read more: https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/spring-2024/feathered-fortunes/

05/03/2024

As soon as she could drive, Gabrielle Pitre ’26 pre-registered to vote. She counted herself lucky to live in Washington, one of 18 states and the District of Columbia that allow 16-year-olds to pre-register, putting them on a list to be sent a ballot upon turning 18. For Pitre, voting is an elemental part of being a citizen, and her right to it as a person of color was hard-won.

Of course, not every college student is so motivated to exercise their civic duty. As Election Day 2024 nears—and California holds its primaries on March 5, which is also Super Tuesday—political scientists like Sekou Franklin ’94 hope to encourage young people to vote. Especially in light of ongoing voter suppression.

Read more: https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/spring-2024/whats-in-a-vote/

21/02/2024

Like any revolution, the ultimate end is unclear at its spark. The true costs of developing more intricate, more powerful AI are unknown.

Questions circle the excitement: How will artificial intelligence used by the general public change lives? Will it replace or enhance human creativity and labor? Is training computers on human-generated work stealing? Will AI meet our expectations?

Read more from our Spring 2024 issue: https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/spring-2024/make-ai-the-best-of-us/

13/02/2024

Colloquially called the “Genius Grant,” the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship is an annual prize awarded to about 20 people whose work shows promise on moving the needle on some of the world’s most significant social challenges. Jason Buenrostro ’09, a first-generation college graduate, is the first Bronco to get the “genius“ nod for his research on gene expression. https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/2023/spring-2023/a-genius-among-us/

02/02/2024

Old spaces received snazzy updates and several new buildings opened their doors, thanks to gifts from the Bronco community. A billion gifts, to be exact.

The final new building to open its doors, the John A. and Susan Sobrato Campus for Discovery and Innovation, includes lab spaces and room for interdisciplinary work. Get a feel for it and the other new digs on campus in our Spring 2024 feature, A Campus on the Rise.
https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/spring-2024/a-campus-on-the-rise/

30/01/2024

What can a super-powered Santa Clara University do? In the pages of our forthcoming special issue discover the impact—in scholarships, state-of-the-art facilities, research, and more—of a decade-long fundraising campaign. This monumental success, Santa Clara’s biggest fundraising campaign ever, makes SCU one of a small number of universities nationally to raise $1 billion. Thank you, Broncos, for building a better tomorrow. https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/2023/spring-2023/a-billion-for-tomorrow/

30/10/2023

“One day, I was at the house very early when no one else was there, and I heard the clearest footsteps treading on the metal roof above me.” Meet Janan Boehme ’81, the first-ever historian of the Wi******er Mystery House.
https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/fall-2023/haunted-or-not-we-ask-the-winchester-historian/

24/10/2023

As the Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business turns 100, faculty reflect on how LSB has blended technical business analysis with the Jesuit socially minded ethics that have been present since the school’s founding 100 years ago. It crosses disciplines. It is rooted in the advanced technology that drives Silicon Valley’s economy and name recognition.

Perhaps most important, though, the team was more interested in developing a solution than just pointing out a problem.

Read more: https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/fall-2023/ahead-of-the-curve/

19/10/2023

In the crowded stands for the Santa Clara Women's Soccer triumph at the 2021 NCAA championship were four former Bronco champions—Brandi Chastain ’91, Danielle Slaton ’02, Aly Wagner ’02, and Leslie Osborne ’05—cheering their faces off. On board the team’s flight back to California, they could practically smell victory. Surrounded by accomplishment and unbridled female joy, they decided to do something a little crazy: They would start a professional women’s team of their own.

This spring, that dream became a reality. Their plan for an expansion team was officially selected by the National Women's Soccer League out of 82 bids from cities across the country. Bay Football Club is the ’s 14th team, with a record-setting investment of $125 million. It starts play in the 2024 season.

While the spark for Bay FC fully ignited on that plane ride, its foundation was laid long ago. Back when Chastain, Slaton, Wagner, and Osborne were little girls, swimming in their children’s rec league jerseys, barely bigger than the black and white ball they attempted to dribble. Because, like so many little girls who play sports, they were told to temper their expectations of what’s possible.

Read “A Team of Their Own,“ featured in the Fall 2023 issue of Santa Clara Magazine, here: https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/fall-2023/a-team-of-their-own/

11/10/2023

”The best way I can describe having tics is like being a marionette that’s involuntarily pulled every which way. But nobody can see the cruel puppeteer conducting the strings.

I’ve been that doll for as long as I can remember. ...

Tourette’s is one of the most visible invisible disorders in the world. Your suffering is on full display, but no one understands what’s causing it. And sufferers have to accept that they’ll never have complete control over their bodies, that their presence might make many uncomfortable. I’ve often felt the urge to apologize for existing in a body that just won’t stop moving.“

Read “Moving On,” an essay by Francesca D'Urzo ’24 appearing in the upcoming Fall 2023 Santa Clara Magazine, online now: https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/fall-2023/moving-on/

05/07/2023

“We’re Off.” So says the very first issue of The Santa Clara newspaper, printed on Feb. 17, 1922.

In a bombastic note, the editorial team asserts the paper is a response “to a genuine need to record history in the making.”

In the 101 years since, student reporters and editors have wielded their journalistic independence—as promised in that first issue—to serve as “the voice and work of all.” https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/2023/spring-2023/the-news-santa-clara-can-use/

26/06/2023

Some call rugby the game they play in heaven. Imagine: The full-tackle sport typically described as a cross between American football and soccer wherein players don’t wear protective pads or armor—that’s what the angels and saints are playing on the hallowed field of clouds above us.

At Santa Clara, for members of the women's rugby team, the sport is a game of respect despite all the aggression, and the field is a safe haven.

“For the LGBTQ community, women of color, it’s so open,” says coach Paula Back ’17 of her time as a student athlete. “In my experience, it was the safest space to be at Santa Clara… we’d joke that we were the misfits—we didn’t fit in anywhere else but there.” https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/summer-2023/the-gentlewomen-of-scu-rugby/

05/06/2023

When one steps into Bucky’s hooves, there are three mandatory rules: Do not get caught speaking, do not appear in partial costume, and never disclose your identity. SCM intern Francesca D'Urzo ‘24 has the exclusive:

Who wears the sleek brown coat remains confidential, but the secrets behind Bucky’s mascothood are being leaked. And we have the exclusive. Join Santa Clara ...

17/05/2023

At first blush, there’s not much to relate to in the makeover story of Scott Vincent Borba ’96. His journey from founding a multimillion-dollar beauty brand and rubbing elbows with celebrities to entering a seminary as a penniless priest-in-training is a sort of reverse rags-to-riches tale not typically romanticized by our society.

But there’s a certain universality in Borba’s anxieties over being surrounded by people who seem to have found their purpose much earlier than he did. “When you’re sitting down for a meal with these guys at St. Patrick’s [Seminary & University of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno] and there’s a 20-year, 30-year age gap … it’s humbling,” Borba says.

It can feel unfair, even wasteful, to not figure out what you want to be when you grow up until you’re, well, a grown-up. But as it turns out, time spent wandering can be a special gift.

Read more: https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/spring-2023/reconciliation-recalibration/

15/05/2023

Once hailed a bulwark of digital freedom, the 1996 federal telecommunications law known as Section 230 has recently become the focus of critics who feel the liability protections it offers Big Tech have allowed the internet to become weaponized against society, a place where misinformation and hate speech are rampant.

The online content moderation frameworks championed by Professor Eric Goldman—widely recognized as one of the most influential and authoritative voices on Section 230—now face existential tests in the form of two Supreme Court cases as well as efforts by lawmakers and President Joe Biden to overhaul, and even repeal, 230.

In the face of this backlash, Goldman joined the movement to protect Section 230 in the courts of law and public opinion even as he recognizes that the public mood has cast an uncertain cloud over the internet’s next chapter.

“I don’t think people realize how close we are to having a different internet, and one that they’re probably not going to enjoy as much,” Goldman says. “The status quo is incredibly fragile and probably going to change very soon in ways that they don’t anticipate.”

Read more: https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/spring-2023/the-internets-last-true-believer/

03/05/2023

More than a century of good works by the Sisters of the Holy Family—the first women religious group established west of the Mississippi—also witnessed the growth of government support programs and new opportunities for women to work outside the home. The Sisters’ numbers dwindled. By the 2010s, they were confronting the end of their order and seeking a permanent home for the archives detailing their remarkable past.

“It was a major heartache for us, where it would all go,” says the group’s historian, Sr. Michaela O’Connor.

It’s not an uncommon problem. Some women religious groups continue to thrive, and their motherhouses, or headquarters, include a dedicated space where their order’s records and ephemera will be maintained. Others have found safe harbor in a few Catholic universities or associated women religious archives in the U.S. Others are not so lucky.

Read on at the link in bio about how Santa Clara University Library & Archives is becoming a beacon for women’s religious orders seeking to preserve their storied histories. https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/spring-2023/stewards-of-holy-history/

26/04/2023

From the feature well of our Spring 2023 issue:

“Soup is as good a metaphor as any to describe the ways in which humans have learned about spiritual traditions, practices, and items from cultures outside of their own, then altered and refined them to fit their personal circumstances. But as connection has become so much easier and faster through the internet and social media and the 24-hour news cycle, we must contend with how these modifications and makeovers add up.”

Read more: https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/spring-2023/spiritual-soup/

21/04/2023

In honor of Earth Day 2023, read about how a team of students worked with the SCU sustainable food systems program at The Forge Garden to harvest the hops grown there to produce an English-style pale ale called Forge Ahead.

Beyond exploring the ways urban agriculture can nourish communities, small projects like this locally-made beer demonstrate how we can build a more sustainable future on a global scale. https://www.scu.edu/news-and-events/feature-stories/2023/stories/farm-to-tap.html

22/03/2023

How has the pandemic affected what kids know? SCU’s Kirsten Read is researching what happened when less people read to our kids. https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/fall-2023/always-turn-toward-the-sun/