CHSS Connection

Congratulations to the 2023 CHSS Faculty Excellence Award Winners!

SF State’s College of Health & Social Sciences will present its 2023 Faculty Excellence Awards at the College’s Fall Opening Meeting. These awards were established to underscore the College’s deep commitment to excellence in teaching, scholarship and service.

Excellence in Teaching Award (Tenured Faculty): 
Sherria Taylor, Associate Professor of Child & Adolescent Development

Excellence in Teaching Award (Lecturer Faculty):
Martin Dixon, Lecturer Faculty, Kinesiology

Excellence in Service Award:
Sonja Lenz-Rashid, Professor of Social Work

Excellence in Scholarship Award:
Julie Chronister, Professor of Counseling

Pictured: Jennifer Daubenmier (left) with Sister Angelica and Judy Daubenmier in 2014

Jennifer Daubenmier, associate professor of Holistic Health Studies, published a peer-reviewed paper in American Catholic Studies, “The Nun Hit by a Brick: Sister Angelica Schultz and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Chicago.” Daubenmier and her mother, Judy Daubenmier, Ph.D., provide a historical analysis and narrative of the life of Sister Angelica Schultz, OSF, a Catholic nun who marched in the Chicago open housing marches with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the summer of 1966. Sister Angelica was hit by a brick by white Catholics as she peacefully marched through the white neighborhoods with an interracial crowd and became a footnote in history as possibly the first clerical figure to be attacked by people of her own religion in the service of civil rights. She participated in at least three other marches within two weeks of being attacked. The article details Sister Angelica’s motivation to step into harm’s way, the backlash she received and how she used her relative power and status as a white Catholic nun in the struggle for social change. Jennifer Daubenmier is the great-niece of Sister Angelica.

Professor Erik Peper (Institute for Holistic Health Studies, Department of Recreation, Parks & Tourism) co-authored an article, "The Healing of Vulvodynia from the Client’s Perspective," with Pamela Jertberg in the Spring 2023 issue of Biofeedback. In the article, a client describes her personal journey of healing from vulvodynia with use of biofeedback techniques.

Over the past two months, Clare Sears, associate professor of Sociology and Sexuality Studies, has presented their historical research on anti-crossdressing laws and drag show bans at multiple events. On March 3, they delivered the keynote speech at the 2023 Women and Gender History Symposium at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne. On March 28, they presented at a Sociology and Sexuality Studies brownbag at SF State. On April 7, they gave the opening keynote talk at the Queer Your Mind conference at SF State. And on April 29, they spoke at Legalize Drag, a community drag show fundraiser at Club Oasis in San Francisco. Sears also published an article on the history of drag show bans in Jacobin magazine, and they were interviewed about this work by Berlin newspaper nd.DieWoche.

Jessica Wolin, lecturer in the Department of Public Health, will present on May 31 at the 2023 CSU Academic Resources Conference for staff of all CSU campuses. Wolin and colleagues from Cal Poly Humboldt and CSU Monterey Bay will lead the workshop, "Education with Dignity: Supporting Students’ Basic Needs on CSU campuses." They will discuss how all faculty and staff have a role to play in fostering a community of care on CSU campuses.

Holistic Health students Nicholas Heinz and Singing Chen had posters accepted for presentation at the 53rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, to be held May 31-June 3 in Orlando, Florida.

The posters to be presented are “Benefits of holistic health stress management classes Outcome Comparison between in-person and online classes” (authors Heinz, N., Peper, E., Harvey, R. & Almendras, M.) and “Improvement of health: Decrease in menstrual cramps” (authors Chen, S., Peper, E., Heinz, N, & Harvey, R.).

Students and faculty from campuses across CSU met for the CSU Health Policy Conference, held April 10-12 in Sacramento. Students majoring in public health or related health sciences were joined by faculty to get a unique opportunity to see firsthand how public health policy is made and shaped. The conference included meetings with state legislators, administration officials, policy advocates and staff from the state Department of Public Health.

Associate Professor Aiko Yoshino took students from RPT 230: Growth Through Adventure on a three-day overnight camping adventure in the Presidio, which is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Students used critical lenses to observe non-traditional visitors’ experience from equity and inclusion standpoints, visited and learned the challenges experience by people on this land based on their intersectional identities, created and shared poems, and made connections of the primary outdoor adventure experience with the literature that they read in the course, such as “The Unlikely Thru-hiker: An Appalachian Trail Journey,” by Derick Lugo.

The Department of Sociology & Sexuality Studies held a ceremony on May 1 to name its new undergraduate student lounge in HSS 375 in memory of student Briana Fernandez Diaz, who died in September 2022. Members of her family were present for the dedication.

Anastasia Garcia, a student in ENG 695: Internship in Professional Writing and Rhetoric, completed an internship working with CHSS Director of Communications Michael Broder. Her assignment was to write a series of five stories on the theme of student success. For this work, she interviewed CHSS faculty, students and advisors, and wrote on the topics of student organizations, advising, changing majors, learning problem-solving skills and developing relationships with professors. The stories were published individually on the CHSS website as they were written. They are now published together as a resource for students with the heading “Student pathways to success.”

SF State Transforms, a campus National Science Foundation ADVANCE grant, has released a Spring 2023 project newsletter highlighting faculty and the project’s equity-focused efforts to transform campus. SF State Transforms aims to increase the participation and advancement of women in academic STEM careers, with a focus on TT faculty positions and advancement.

This newsletter (the project’s fifth) celebrates the accomplishments of Valerie Francisco–Menchavez, CHSS assistant dean for restorative and transformative racial justice; announces this year’s PERC Portal Launch; and highlights Transforms programs, partnerships and other campus equity efforts. Please reach out to transforms@sfsu.edu for more information.