students

The Spring/Summer issue of SF State Magazine includes a “Changemaker” profile of alum J Patterson, who received the California State University Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement.

Patterson, who has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from SF State and returned to the University last fall to earn a master’s degree in Social Work, says one of her dreams is to become a Bay Area social worker and provide youth services. Drawing from her experience growing up, Patterson made it her mission to work on issues around intersectionality to improve the quality of life for young people.

Read story in SF State Magazine

Undergraduate Hood: Davina A. Wizzard

Late in her senior year of high school in Valencia, California, Davina A. Wizzard (pictured above, left) had a nerve-wracking experience: She learned that her brother had been pulled over by police for a “routine stop.” The fear of what those stops could result in set her back to the summer of 2016. The horrifying stories she’d read online — about Black motorists and pedestrians killed by police during “routine stops” — had stayed with her.

For Wizzard, the experience was an awakening that shaped her college career at SF State. She sought out a job with the University’s Division of Equity and Community Inclusion, ultimately creating and coordinating programs on inclusion, diversity and the upliftment of marginalized communities. Those activities didn’t detract from Wizzard’s academics, however, and she graduated in three years with majors in Criminal Justice Studies and Creative Writing and a minor in Africana Studies, Summa Cum Laude.

Wizzard has begun applying to law schools so that she can continue her work for justice and inclusion in the nation’s courts.

Graduate Hood: Azisa Todd

Born and raised in Oakland, Azisa “Zi” Todd (pictured above, right) says she has the Oakland public education system to thank for grounding her in the principles of academic and community organizing. Upon graduating from high school, Azisa went to University of California, Los Angeles, where she served as a member (later director) of BlaQue, UCLA’s Black LGBTQ+ organization. Azisa developed and facilitated mandated anti-racism/Blackness workshops at UCLA, organized cross-campus conferences and spoke across the state. After graduating with a B.A. in Gender Studies, she decided to jump back into academia — and back to the Bay Area — to pursue a Master of Public Health at SF State.

As a graduate student, Azisa was instrumental in supporting the redesign of a cross-college minor in Feminist Health Studies. She also serves as an education and training coordinator within San Mateo County, leading LGBTQ+ awareness trainings for health systems and local organizations.

Azisa’s public health interests are in LGBTQ+ health and wellness, the intersectionality of Black and LGBTQ+ experiences, and community health education and training. She hopes to earn a Doctor of Public Health and share what she’s learned with college-level students.

2021-2022 Awardees

Kathy Angeles (Urban Studies & Planning) aspires to support and work closely with communities and impacted populations that have faced challenges with affordable housing and the injustices that come with environmental impacts within these communities. After graduation, she plans to pursue a career as a planner to improve the quality of life and reduce inequality in urban areas. She believes that it is essential for the community to have representatives who not only hear what they are saying, but also understand what is going on, and she feels that her close ties to her community have helped her gain knowledge about how to address these concerns. 

Taylor Davidson (Public Administration) has been working in the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) industry since completing her undergraduate degree. With an emphasis on affordable housing and criminal justice public policy, she hopes to use her master's degree to lessen our nation’s economic and racial disparity gaps. In her professional experience, Davidson recognizes the role that public policy and affordable housing play in undoing these disparities. By obtaining an MPA, she strives to play a crucial role in shaping these policies and increasing access to quality affordable housing. Davidson spends her free time enjoying friends and family, collecting vinyl records, traveling and spoiling her dog, Blue.

Temur Umarov (Public Administration) currently works for the Applied Housing Research Initiative at SF State. His previous housing policy related work experience includes internships and volunteering for Tenants Together, the Sustainable Economies Law Center and Public Advocates. Professionally, he hopes to work for the government (state or local) or a nonprofit on affordable housing policy. Ultimately, he wants to work to implement policy that promotes equity in the housing system because he believes affordable housing should be a human right.

SF State Apparel Design & Merchandising students, in collaboration with the Fashion Network Association and SF State's Disability Programs and Resource Center, announces the 27th annual student fashion show RUNWAY. One of our senior designers, Claire Gonsalves, has created a collection “inspired by female exotic dancers,” and her goal is to “encapsulate the beauty, thrill, and freedom without society's preconceived judgment.” Overall, our mission is to exemplify diversity, equity and inclusivity in the fashion realm without compromising art and creativity. On the runway, senior designers will showcase their final collections, a culmination of everything they have learned during their time at SF State. In addition, junior designers are crafting unique designs for disability models, emphasizing that quality fashion can cater to anyone and everyone! Following years of hardship that the pandemic created, we are now seeing designers push limits of their creativity to represent individuals and their fashionable expression.

The event will take place on Friday, May 6 on the SF State campus at Cesar Chavez Quad (Malcolm X Plaza). The show will start at 12 p.m. with an after-party at the Seven Hills Conference Center, Nob Hill Room. The show is
completely FREE, no ticket required. (all COVID-19 protocols must be followed to be present on campus.)

For more information, visit the RUNWAY 2022 BLOOM website  and Instagram.

After a two-year postponement, graduates from the classes of 2020 and 2021 will finally get their in-person Commencement ceremony at Oracle Park

The University planned to hold a make-up Commencement ceremony on Jan. 8, 2022, at Chase Center but that event was postponed due to the spread of the omicron COVID-19 variant. SF State President Lynn Mahoney was saddened by the sudden postponement and recognized the unique challenges the classes of 2020 and 2021 faced.

“For many, the pathway to graduation can be a winding and challenging one. For the classes of 2020 and 2021, those challenges were greater than we could have ever imagined, including the heartbreaking recent decision to postpone your ceremony yet again. Finding our way past these challenges to finally be able to celebrate together and in person will be incredibly gratifying,” Mahoney said. “You have all more than earned the right to be celebrated.”

More details about the May 26 ceremony will be shared as they become available. Keep checking the University’s Commencement website for updates.

Videos of the virtual Commencement ceremonies for the Classes of 2020 and 2021 are available on SF State’s YouTube channel.

Source: SF State News

J Patterson says award will help her continue transforming lives through social work

San Francisco State University graduate student J Patterson says that during her youth, she didn’t think college was in her future. There were many obstacles — including her struggle to come to terms with her identity as a queer, transgender person — that led to mental health issues and addiction.

Patterson eventually left the area where she grew up, Del Norte County in Northern California, but returned in 2013 with a goal. “I reconnected with my community to help build the support system I wished I had had as a young, queer trans person growing up,” she said. After founding Gender Talk, a youth-centered LGBTQ and gender justice community group, she discovered a passion for social work that inspired her to rethink her future.

Fast forward to today, and higher education is very much part of Patterson’s life: This semester she received the prestigious California State University Trustee Award for Outstanding Achievement, recognizing her commitment to giving back and the challenges she’s overcome. The annual award is the CSU’s highest recognition of student achievement for those who demonstrate superior academic performance and personal accomplishments.

“This award is so much more than just a lump sum of money. It means doors opening that I dreamed of,” Patterson said. “The contributions don’t stop here because everything I’ve done is to give back to others in some way. It is such a beautiful act to give.”

Patterson, who has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from San Francisco State and returned to the University this fall to earn a master’s degree in Social Work, says one of those dreams is to become a Bay Area social worker and provide youth services. Drawing from her experience growing up, Patterson made it her mission to work on issues around intersectionality to improve the quality of life for young people.

Another dream she has is to continue advocating for prison abolition and liberation, specifically for trans and gender nonconforming people in the school-to-prison pipeline. Patterson says the scholarship will help bring these dreams to life.

​​​​​​​Every year, the CSU honors 23 students, one from each CSU campus, with the Trustees’ Awards. Awardees have all demonstrated inspirational resolve along the path to college success, and many are the first in their families to attend college — just like Patterson.

“These 23 scholars wonderfully exemplify the ideals of the California State University,” CSU Chancellor Joseph I. Castro said. “Every year, and especially this year, our Trustees’ Award honorees demonstrate resilience, tenacity and resolve — together with a keen intellect — while making an indelible, positive impact on their families and their communities. They are truly an inspiration.”

San Francisco State University’s motto is “Experientia docet” — “Experience teaches.” But when it’s nurses-in-training getting the experience, it can do more than teach. It can help. That was the case this spring when San Francisco State Nursing students used their newfound skills to help the San Francisco Department of Public Health administered COVID-19 vaccinations and sites throughout the city.

The newly released Spring/Summer 2021 issue of SF State Magazine tells these students’ story — and much more. Other feature articles spotlight a faculty member’s new documentary about a heartbreaking crime and a professor’s efforts to support young female biologists. The online issue also features a story about a pair of can-do students who’ve won seats on local school boards and research that could make the skyscrapers of tomorrow even taller. And as usual the issue is packed with updates and insights from the University’s amazing alumni.

Read those stories and more on the SF State Magazine website; this specific edition is under "Past Editions" and is the Spring/Summer 2021 issue. You can also learn more about the awards the magazine was recently given by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), including being named the Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year, CASE’s highest honor for an alumni magazine.

Have any SF State Magazine feedback or suggestions for future stories? Send an email to sfsumag@sfsu.edu.

Sociology major eyes career as mental health social worker

Allison Phuong, a junior majoring in sociology, applied to and was accepted by eight universities, but chose SF State after considering family and financial concerns. “Looking back now [that decision] was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life,” Phuong wrote in her scholarship application. “In my three years at SF State, I have found some of the most amazing professors, advisors and classmates who have helped me to see my strengths that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to find on my own.”

After graduating, Phuong, who has worked full time to support her family throughout her undergraduate years, wants to continue her education and attain a master’s degree in social work. She especially wants to help people cope with mental health issues —her father suffers from bipolar disease, and she grew up experiencing the challenges associated with it.

“Through helping my father I saw how much I wanted to pursue a career in helping those who need help and the many who want it. I have a passion for helping with mental health, whether for young adults or parents of any age or older people suffering with mental illness or families with someone who’s mentally ill. I know that can be kind of broad but my passion for mental health will allow me to work with different demographics,” she says.

The Lewenstein Scholarship, Phuong says, will help make the grad school application process less stressful. “I can go into applying for grad school with a wider lens and wider scope in terms of which schools and programs I apply to. It’s provided a cushion for me so I don’t have to be as stressed about planning ahead. It helps me keep one foot in the present and one in the future.”

Phuong has sometimes worked two or three jobs while attending SF State. “There has yet to be a semester where I haven’t taken on a full-time course load of work, part-time work, and volunteering,” she says. “Additionally, I have a full-time commitment to my family. When my father lapses into manic episodes, I have to step up to help them financially and emotionally.”

She says her advisor Taryn Wong has had a strong stabilizing influence on her. “She was such a concrete, supportive figure for me. I could always come back to her consistently every semester. I never had that person before.” Phuong hasn’t ruled out the possibility of becoming a college counselor herself, once she is finished with grad school. But her ultimate goal is to find balance. “I want to support my family but also support my own independent dreams, and to be happy while giving back to the community.”

Master of Public Administration student seeks to contribute through nonprofit work

Giving back to the community is also a goal for Michael Brodheim. After being incarcerated for 35 years and then released in 2015, Brodheim found a welcoming place at SF State through Project Rebound. Prior to being incarcerated, he had received an undergrad degree from MIT; he then continued his education while in prison, obtaining a master’s degree from Antioch University and working as a paralegal helping other prisoners.

Upon his release, however, he discovered that finding a job was much harder than he’d anticipated. “Even in workplaces that hired formerly incarcerated people, I would lose out to someone who had just gotten a degree.” He says he realized he needed to rectify that gap and rebrand himself as not just someone who recently came out of prison but someone with a master’s degree in public administration.

His interest in public administration came from the advocacy and paralegal work he did while in prison for others who were incarcerated. “While incarcerated I learned firsthand that the criminal justice system — a system I formerly believed operated fairly — operates instead in a manner which disproportionately impacts people of color and poor people, helping to ensure that they remain effectively stymied from ever reentering mainstream society,” he wrote in his application for the scholarship. Brodheim’s name appears on two published federal cases: One upheld the rights of a prisoner to engage in protected activities under the First Amendment without being subjected to retaliation by prison officials.

Brodheim hopes to finish his master’s degree in the fall of 2021; he works full time and takes two courses each semester. Despite the challenges, he is grateful and appreciative for the second chance he’s been given in returning to society and the opportunities he’s found at SF State. “I feel extraordinarily lucky to have this second chance to breathe fresh air. The air outside has a different quality to it than the air on the inside.” He describes his experience at SF State similarly. “I am grateful for the welcoming culture at SF State, where I am treated as a human being. Such a breath of fresh air!”

While he works toward his master’s degree, he’s working full time at the Prison Law Office in Berkeley as a litigation assistant. He monitors prison conditions to make sure that prisoners receive appropriate medical and mental health care, among other concerns. “We want to ensure that the prison system does a better job than it would if we were not looking over their shoulders,” he says.

Having witnessed firsthand the effects of structural discrimination, Brodheim hopes he can work to change the wrongs he’s seen. He says, “I made an unforgiveable mistake, and I want to give back to the community I grievously harmed. I don’t know that I can balance the scale but I’ll make an effort to do the right thing as much as I can every day and hopefully make some contribution.” He believes a master’s degree in public administration will help him do that. “It will give me an avenue through which I can hopefully give back to the community in some capacity while working in a nonprofit.” 

Kristal Osorio and Aya Francisco-Menchavez table to collect surveys at Kasayahan Filipino American History Month celebration in Daly City in 2019.

“Under COVID-19, we have a new angle,” says Francisco-Menchavez. “So many Filipinos are on the front lines right now — as caregivers in home health care and nursing homes.”

The team had completed 102 surveys and eight interviews, and drafted a manuscript for publication. Now, while they wrap up the manuscript on their initial study, they are conducting new research on how the global pandemic has affected front line Filipino caregivers, especially since Filipino Americans make up a large percent of California’s health care workforce. While many work as nurses in hospitals, where they are unionized and receive benefits, others work in nursing homes and extended care facilities, or for home health agencies, where they have less protection and can experience different types of stress. For example, Francisco-Menchavez and her research team found that while many caregivers reported in written surveys that they were not experiencing stress or anxiety associated with their work, during oral interviews they revealed the opposite: many of them worried about their families in the Philippines, and experienced fears related to their immigration status and working conditions. “We need to give more attention to the precariousness of these caregivers,” says Francisco-Menchavez.

Thought partners and collaborators

As her group moves forward despite the new challenges they face, the relationship between Francisco-Menchavez and her assistants continues to strengthen and grow, even as their in-person meetings have switched to Zoom and email. “I view the students more as collaborators than research assistants,” Francisco-Menchavez explains. “They really have been thought partners and collaborators in terms of how we analyze the data we have collected. We are all working with a community we know very intimately — we all have relatives who are caregivers. So I think knowing that puts so much of my trust into them.”

Osorio, a senior who is also a community organizer, says she appreciates Francisco-Menchavez’s community organizing background and the fact that she doesn’t focus on mistakes, but constantly pushes her assistants to become better researchers. “She’s very straightforward in what she wants and asks really intentional questions,” says Osorio. “She’s very intentional in how she gets you to think about things you don’t normally think about, in expanding how you think about things.”

Celemen, who first met Francisco-Menchavez at the University of Portland while she was a student there, says she appreciates how the professor followed up with her, kept in touch when Celemen moved back home to the Bay Area, and offered to include her in her research project this summer. Like Osorio, Celemen says Francisco-Menchavez’s organizational skills and attention to detail have helped her understand how to take on large, seemingly overwhelming projects.

“She has such a clear idea of what we are doing; it’s all about organizing lists and agendas. Even at the beginning of our project in the early stages she set forth a whole five-month plan,” Celemen says. “She shows us how to break things down into smaller goals, in order to get to the larger goal. Seeing it piece by piece really helps when there are so many things to do, and you’re thinking, ‘what do I even start with?’”

Both students see Francisco-Menchavez as a mentor and an inspiration. “Working with her made me realize how much work goes into becoming a professor, especially for a Filipina professor in sociology, and how much work it takes to get our stories out there,” says Osorio. Celemen says she is in awe of Francisco-Menchavez but also realizes that she is a genuine person who cares about her students as people first. “I really like how before we meet — at the beginning of every meeting — she asks how we’re doing. She cares about our well-being first.” Celemen says she was inspired by Francisco-Menchavez’s personal story, which she first learned about during the professor’s Labor of Care book tour in 2018. “I really identify with her experiences growing up as Filipino-American. She’s someone I look up to, and she’s given me opportunities to work in academia and helped me step into the real world.”

With Francisco-Menchavez’s guidance, Celemen recently began working for CREGS as a research assistant on the Together Study; she is balancing the two research projects while she takes a gap year before possibly going to grad school in public health.

Supporting and learning from each other

Francisco-Menchavez sees herself less as a mentor and more as helping two Filipinas navigate the academic world and gain skills they will need. “I’m just transferring my skills to them. I see it more as democratizing the research process. They’ve always been part of a community that looks for information systemically, that tries to answer questions in a deep and profound way. Our community has always done that and always will. We all come to the research table with strengths; I’m not the only person with skills and expertise. When I ask Kristal and Elaika, ‘What are your thoughts on this?,’ they are both empowered enough to say, ‘I think this is happening,’ or to question whether our approach is right or wrong.” She says both women are brilliant. “I really believe in them and I appreciate working with and learning from them. The experience they bring as Filipina American immigrants helps me be a better scholar, teacher, mother, parent, friend.”

Francisco-Menchavez emphasizes that her philosophy is to make sure that everyone understands that they all come to the table with unique strengths — and that together they will make the research project better. “I have skills I can train them in as a professor — academic writing and the research process, for example—but in our research group I try to break those vertical power lines and redistribute them horizontally a little more.” She says she constantly learns from her students and that their collaboration makes her work sharper and more dynamic. “I think the biggest impact is that it helps the research I do have more relevance than just being in an academic journal. Research should really belong to communities and organizations and young people and teachers; everyone should be able to access knowledge and participate.”

All three team members feel very strongly that their research not wither in academia. Some of the research Francisco-Menchavez and her students have done helped inform a report that led to state Senate Bill 1257, which gives domestic workers increased health and safety protections. Says Osorio, “Our objective is to help our community have this data and to have a better picture of how we can serve our community better or advocate for them better in terms of policy and services.”

Environmental Studies student Jin Zhu and Assistant Professor Autumn Thoyre with one of the solar suitcases (Photo by Jim Block)

“I hadn’t realized that the project was reaching into the classroom but also reaching beyond the classroom,” he says — teaching the kids about energy but also actually bringing power to developing countries.

Unfortunately, back at Thomas R. Pollicita Middle School, the logistics weren’t adding up. Oshins had 11 of the blue teaching suitcases and 180 students — five sixth-grade classes and one seventh grade. He felt deflated. “I’m not going to be able to teach all of my kids all these complicated instructions,” he remembers thinking. Unable to find support, he was ready to give up.

But during a last-ditch call to We Share Solar, his liaison told him that a professor at San Francisco State had just gotten involved in the program — maybe she’d have an idea. He shot her an email, and indeed, Autumn Thoyre, an environmental studies faculty member in the School of Public Affairs & Civic Engagement, confirmed that she’d be training her students to lead the classroom project. Could she send them over to help him out?

“I was like, ‘Yes, please!’” recounts Oshins, who is currently earning his regular teaching credential at SF State while teaching full-time as an intern at Pollicita. After that, he says, all the pieces came together. “It just felt like kismet.”

The partnership crystalized the solar suitcase project’s expansion to SF State. Launched in 2015 as a pilot at Cal State East Bay, the service-learning program gives CSU students training in solar suitcase assembly, then dispatches them to local middle and high schools to provide hands-on classroom guidance. The outcomes are richly layered: undergraduates get both service-learning and science-teaching experience; community schools get a meaningful, hands-on science project; and University faculty get an exciting, well-supported project around which they can develop their own curricula.

New course, new direction

“It’s the kind of project that as an environmental studies professor, it’s really hard to pass up,” says Thoyre, who joined the College of Health & Social Sciences’ faculty in Fall 2016. After completing her first year, she was prepping a new Fall ’17 course when Karina Garbesi, the director of Cal State East Bay’s successful solar suitcase pilot, contacted her about including SF State in an expansion of the project. Thoyre had already organized her newly approved Energy Justice and Sustainability (ENVS 460) course around a different project, but she started rejiggering almost immediately. “Within a week I’d said, ‘I’m on board,’” she remembers.

“I wanted a course that would think about energy systems in the context of environmental justice,” says Thoyre, whose research is on energy policy and climate-change activist groups. She adjusted her curriculum to unify the suitcase initiative with her project “People’s Guide to Energy,” in which her students’ research on energy injustice sites is organized geographically on an interactive map. The connection was natural — one activity analyzes a problem and one develops a solution, she says.

Each training suitcase contains a booklet with step-by step instructions designed for middle school-level and up. There are interactive “Check for understanding” interludes to teach students about electricity while they assemble the apparatus and connect it to a solar cell that lives outside the case. The kit even comes with an LED bulb for testing the assembled power source.

The program, which partners with PG&E, added four additional CSUs this academic year. But the others are all based in physics classes. One of the benefits of the social science lens, Thoyre says, is that she can push her students to analyze renewable energy from a societal perspective — what problems does it solve, and what does it perpetuate? They explore gray areas like who has control over resources and what that means.

“Sometimes so-called ‘clean’ energy has problems,” she says. “If a project isn’t perfect, how do they make it better?”

Lighting up the classroom

In implementation mode at Pollicita, Oshins splits up his classes into small groups, posting one of Thoyre’s students at each one. By the end of two weeks, all 180 kids had built the suitcases from start to finish. Some kids even got an extra turn.

“They got really good with it. They could put this thing together in under an hour,” Oshins says.

He was especially gratified to see that hands-on building was a way for students who were not as strong at more traditional classroom activities to excel. One of his seventh-graders, Rafat, had trouble focusing and often acted out in class. “He gets yelled at a lot,” Oshins confesses. But Rafat quickly connected with his SF State mentor, Nathan Wong, and with the project itself.

“Rafat just nailed it. He worked his way through the build in no time at all, and was just so excited,” Oshins says. “I wish I could have taken a picture of his face — you could see how ecstatic he was to build something with his own hands, to really figure it out. He wanted to build it again — he was upset when the period ended.”

Thoyre’s students created a lot of moments like that, Oshins says. “In a relatively short amount of time, maybe 40 minutes, they were able to accomplish something really big for these kids.”

The project’s social dimensions go deeper than just different learning styles. We Share Solar originally designed the project to engage students from underrepresented groups — students of color, from low-income or immigrant families, and females — in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. Students who get involved in science projects with a social justice component are more likely to get interested and stay interested, Thoyre says, citing a growing body of research.

And the culturally diverse middle-schoolers, many of them from working class, low-income or immigrant homes, saw role models in the SF State students. “There’s power in having college students from the same socioeconomic background as the classroom kids share their passion and show what it’s possible to achieve,” she says.

SF State students Katya Amezcua (left) and LisaMarie Betancourt use a digital multimeter to test the circuit on the solar suitcase they have just built. (Photo by Ernita Joaquin)

Reaching further into the community

Jin Zhu worked late the night before his scheduled visit to Oshins’ classroom, slept through his alarm, and missed the session. He was crushed. The environmental studies major, a newly transferred junior from Skyline Community College, has a passion for the suitcase project, including working with kids.

As a San Francisco native whose parents emigrated from Hunan Province to work in his grandfather’s Chinese restaurant chain, Zhu understands the value of his presence for some of the school kids. He was the first in his family to go to college, and hadn’t had a lot of role models or parental coaching to suggest careers outside the restaurant arena.

“Basically my parents just said, ‘Anything but restaurant work. Find a good civil service job so you can make a living,’” Zhu says. But college and the enthusiasm of his professors, including Thoyre, were opening his eyes more rewarding possibilities.

Determined to make up the fieldwork, Zhu used his own connections, did his own outreach, and brought the project to third graders at Boys and Girls Clubs in both Millbrae and San Bruno. His ingenuity also rescued a few of his classmates who’d missed their teaching day, and together with this SF State posse, he delivered a customized training, devising age-appropriate examples to teach electricity basics. His piece de resistance was a fart-based explanation on how electrons flow. He also included the social justice component.

“I wanted them to see their own privilege compared to kids in developing countries,” he says. He gave them examples of what energy is used for that they could easily understand — like seeing in the dark to remove a painful splinter or finish homework — “And then I emphasized: People don’t all have the same stuff you guys do.”

The kids loved it. “When they plugged in the light bulb, they were like, ‘Oh my god, we did it! That’s so cool!’” Zhu recounts. He especially loved how they took basic concepts and ran with them, asking questions like “Can moonlight charge it?” They wanted to show their families, and one girl asked to bring the suitcase overseas herself, “so that she could ‘see the people over there using it,” Zhu says. “It was really heartwarming.”

Like Oshins, Zhu observed that some of the kids who’d been labeled troublemakers were exceling in the hands-on activity. “So I told them, ‘If you want to do this in the future, there are jobs like this, where you put things together, and it’s an awesome job.’”

Switching on new ideas

Zhu is hooked. He plans to do more solar suitcase visits with the Boys and Girls Club. Encouraged by Thoyre’s support, he’s considering customizing an internship around his efforts, and is even eying a teaching career.

The project has also altered Thoyre’s academic trajectory, accelerating her timeline for incorporating service learning into her classes. She’s considering turning ENVS 460 into a service-learning class, and that idea is percolating up other possibilities, like training students to do simple energy audits, then sending them into the field to help low-income households find savings. “They’d learn some practical skills but also make a difference,” she says.

For now, Thoyre looks forward to hearing from We Share Solar about where last semester’s suitcases landed, to cement the value of the class.

Going even broader, Thoyre points to the powerful symbolism that even a middle-schooler can build a solar suitcase. A lot of her students arrive with a preconception that renewable energy isn’t used more because the technology isn’t far enough along, she says. “Once you demystify the engineering aspect of solar energy, it puts the focus back on policies and economics and social norms and those larger question of what kind of energy systems we’re using.”