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A clear response to violence
The San Francisco Urban Institute's Community Leadership Academy and
Emergency Response project (CLAER) was the subject of a March
31 story that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. CLAER project
members
help the friends and relatives of victims of street violence by providing
therapy, helping to pay funeral costs and more. "It's an incredible
group," Sharen Hewitt, CLAER project director,
said. "They
live in Sunnydale or Bayview, and they have to deal with gunshots at
night and come work for me the next day." According to the article, "the
organization has helped 580 individuals and is currently handling 87
cases involving 273 people."
Rapping out an essay
Jamal Cooks, assistant professor of secondary education, was featured
in the March 29 edition of the Oakland Tribune. Cooks, who began his
career teaching in Oakland, serves as the track coach for Skyline High
School. He uses his experiences in the Oakland schools to inform his
research on using pop culture in teaching. "Our students are coming
into class with strategies and skills that are untapped," he said. "It
makes our job easier if we get them engaged and motivated. Why can't
you talk about similes and metaphors, plot and character analysis in
rap lyrics? You can look at the artist's purpose and audience. Look
at issues of race and class. You can use rap as a pre-writing draft
and show them how to move from that to a five-paragraph essay."
Evangelical Asians
Asian Americans are becoming an increasing part of the evangelical Christian
movement, reports the San Jose Mercury News in its March 27 edition. "They're
more evangelistic. They put more money into church planning than mainline
churches,'' said Russell Jeung, assistant professor of Asian American
studies. "They're the biggest minority in the campus Christian
groups that are spawning many of the new congregations' pastors." Jeung is the author of the new book "Faithful Generations: Race and
New Asian American Churches."
Boxed out
The March 25 edition of KQED-FM's "Forum" featured a discussion
on the recent California court ruling on big box stores such as Walmart.
The court ruled that the city of Bakersfield should have included long-term
physical decay -- such as abandoned buildings of stores driven out of
business -- as part of the environmental impact report. Philip
King,
chair of economics, said he doesn't see the ruling as unreasonable. "Planning
ahead means looking down the road 3 to 5 years," he said. "I
don't think that it is an unusual burden to ask cities to do the planning,
and as was mentioned earlier the developer has to pay for the EIR (Economic
Impact Report) ... this is an honest extension of what you normally expect
city planners to do."
Acquiring English
According to a March 14 San Francisco Chronicle article, a U.S. English
Foundation report on linguistic diversity in the United States is being
used to promote legislation to make English the country's official
language. "When they say 'English first' or 'English only,' it
seems to put out the argument that people are not learning English,
but immigrants are learning English more than ever," said Debra
Luna, assistant professor of elementary education. "People are
eager to learn because they know it's the doorway to better wages and
a better standard of living."
Honored pioneer
The news that Paul Longmore, professor of history, has received the Henry
B. Betts Award from the American Association of People with Disabilities
was reported in the March 9 editions of the San Francisco Chronicle
and San Jose Mercury News. Longmore was honored for his scholastic
contributions in the emerging field of disability studies. "When
I was growing up, I was the only visible disabled person I saw in places.
Now you see disabled people all around," he told the Chronicle. "Expectations
have changed. Not only among people with disabilities themselves, but
expectations have changed in society. People with disabilities ought
to be able to participate in society, and we did that. We changed American
values."
For
more SFSU people and programs in the news, see the SFSU
in the News page on SF State
News.
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