Screwed
pooch
Cinema Professor Jan Millsapps was featured in a Nov. 3 KRON-4 News Weekend
interview about her new novel, "Screwed Pooch," which tells
the story of Laika, the Soviet canine who became the first living creature
to orbit Earth on Sputnik 2. "I found out everything I could historically;
I wanted to write a historically accurate novel," Millsapps said. "Honestly,
there's so much we don't know about what was going on 50 years ago,
in part because the Soviets didn't want us to know, in part because
everything was just moving so fast that nobody took time to document
it." Although the space mission ended Laika's life, Millsapps
assures, "She's having the time of her after-life!"
On a side note, KRON
censored the name of the book during the interview, referring to it
as "…crewed Pooch" and requiring the
show's host to put his finger over the first letter of the book's title.
Experience
counts
In a Nov. 4 New York Times article about the national need for more qualified
school teachers, Terry Jones, secondary education lecturer, discussed
the benefits of providing student teachers with more hands-on classroom
teaching experience. "Universities do not do a good job, if they
do anything at all, teaching students how to manage a classroom," Jones
said. He discussed the approach taken by the Reach Institute for School
Leadership, where he serves as an unpaid adviser. The program provides
student teachers with extensive classroom teaching experience rather
than relying on courses and seminars. "With Reach, young teachers
go into the classroom, have experiences, then come to a seminar where
their coach can add theory to what they're learning first hand. It's
exactly the opposite of the way it's done now."
Show
me the green
College of Business
Dean Nancy Hayes commented on SF State's M.B.A. enrollment jumping
up 25.8 percent this fall in the Nov. 2 edition of the San Francisco Business
Times. Hayes noted that the program's new emphasis on socially responsible
business practices
reflects "where
business is going and where new fields of study are in business research." The
Downtown Campus, home to the M.B.A. program, offers courses
on sustainability, and Hayes affirmed, "We believe that San Francisco
is a leader in this and we want to represent and reflect that emphasis." Murray
Silverman, a professor of management and founder of the sustainability
emphasis, agreed. "On the front end, we have students coming in
with strong social and environmental values. .... More and more, they
are seeing they can change the world through business."
Family as system
Wade Nobles, professor of Africana studies and executive director of
the Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family Life and Culture,
was a scholarly expert on a Nov. 2 segment of National Public Radio, "What
Makes a Healthy Family?" Interviewed with Dorothy Height, chair
and president of the National Council of Negro Women, Nobles said, "The
family is a structure that is primarily designed to be child-centered. ….
The key and most important element here is the love and nurturing of
children." When asked about the different factors that shape a
family unit, Nobles responded, "No family in this country exists
on its own in an isolated bubble. Its success is determined not by
what it does alone; it is an interaction with the larger society of
those forces that either retard people's advancement or advance them."
Warming waters
On "Climate Watch" on NBC11 News, Jonathon
Stillman, assistant professor of biology and researcher at Romberg Tiburon
Center, stressed that an increase of just one degree above peak temperature
for such animals as porcelain crabs could damage the fragile marine ecosystem. In
the Nov. 6 televised interview, Stillman said, "There
could be an impact on the food web, because [the crabs] are important
prey items."
Popular for now
In a Nov. 5 USA Today article about Mayor Gavin Newsom's popularity despite
personal and political controversy, Professor Emeritus Richard DeLeon
says to look for Newsom to start positioning himself to run for governor
in 2010. "I predict in his second term he'll move even more to
the center and soft-pedal, or even mute, his initiatives in cultural
policy, gay rights …. There are people who say his popularity
is wide but not deep."
For more media coverage of faculty, staff, students, alumni and programs,
see SF State in the News.
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