News & Announcements
When filmmakers want access to historical footage of the Bay Area’s past, they turn to SF State, home to a massive and unique archive of local television news-film and documentaries from the 20th century. While Academy Award-winning films such as “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Milk” and “O.J.: Made in America” paid market rate to license the footage, SF State students may do so for their own work at no cost.
Based in the J. Paul Leonard Library, the Bay Area Television Archive features more than 135,000 videos from Bay Area television stations. A visit to the new Bay Area Television Archive website is a YouTube-like rabbit hole of a time machine dedicated to the issues and events that gripped the region decades ago.
The original daily news coverage allows one to learn how major events unfolded and how communities responded when the word was spread. Curated collections feature the civil rights movement (including the Third World Liberation Front student strike at SF State), the Zodiac Killer, 1970s adult entertainment, old-school hip hop and much more. One can watch speeches by Martin Luther King and Maya Angelou’s entire KQED-TV series “Blacks, Blues, Black” from 1968 — rediscovered and restored by Alex Cherian, the Bay Area television archivist on staff, after not having been seen for decades.
Footage from the archive has been used in more than 1,000 documentary, television and community projects in the last 15 years, with dozens more coming out every year.
“Back in the 1980s when these film assets were being disposed of by the local TV stations, SF State and the head of collections then, Helene Whitson, were the only people who were in the position to step up and say, ‘Don’t throw it away, give it to us. We’ll give it a home,’” said Cherian.
Cherian comprises a one-person shop, so far having preserved 6,000 hours of footage at the archive and digitized 350 hours (approximately 6% of the total collection) since he moved from his native England in 2007 to join SF State.
“San Francisco State is a natural home for this [archive] because we work closely with the community, and there’s so much social justice history preserved in these TV collections,” Cherian said.
Student Matthew Cardoza discovered the Bay Area Television Archive when researching a story for a Journalism class about the student strike. He soon found himself watching video after video, offering him new insight into the history, geography and people that define the region where he has lived his entire life.
In an SF State “Audio Journalism” class during the fall semester, Cardoza and fellow student Sarah Bowen pursued a story comparing pollution in the Bayview-Hunters Point area of San Francisco in the past to today. A 1969 interview with a community activist from KPIX-TV helped them build a comparison between environmental conditions of the past and the present, as they also conducted their own interview with a community activist of today. Their piece aired on KQED-FM public radio on Feb. 22.
“It’s a great use of resources to have for SF State students,” Cardoza said. “I think it’s a perfect way for students to incorporate historical footage of neighborhoods and about different events that occurred back in earlier decades.”
To inquire about licensing footage from the Bay Area Television Archive, visit the Using the Collections page or contact archivist Alex Cherian.
This is the final call for campus members — students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni and friends of SF State — to share their experiences, comments and feedback on the J. Paul Leonard Library. Please take the anonymous 10-minute survey with specific and open-ended questions. Please share with your colleagues, students and friends, as it could help determine future offerings and services.
For questions or concerns, please email albiniak@sfsu.edu.
This year’s Innovation Pitch Competition will take place at the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Symposium Friday, April 28, virtually. Any students who have a game-changing idea that can make a difference can apply for the competition. This is a great opportunity to present their innovative business idea to a panel of judges, receive feedback and network with likeminded people. The application deadline is 5 p.m. Monday, April 17. To apply or for more information, please visit the Lam-Larsen Initiative Centers website.
SF State’s Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CEETL) seeks applicants for a senior director of teaching & learning programs & services beginning August 2023. The mission of SF State is to create an environment for learning that promotes appreciation of scholarship, freedom, human diversity and the cultural mosaic of the City of San Francisco and the Bay Area; to promote excellence in instruction and intellectual accomplishment; and to provide broadly accessible higher education for residents of the region, state, the nation and the world. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications. Review of applications begins March 10 and continues until the position is filled. To apply, go to the page for the position on the Human Resources website and have a current CV; a statement on how your teaching, research and managerial experience align with the commitment of CEETL to foster an inclusive and diverse academic community; and contact information for three references. Letters of recommendation should be made available upon request at a later date.
Career & Leadership Development (CLD) in the Division of Graduate Studies & Career Development (GSCD) is offering a professional development opportunity for faculty who want to partner with it on career development advising practices to ensure that students are better positioned for the transition from college to career. Faculty advisors will receive a $200 stipend. This one-day training will be held Thursday, March 9, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. It will be led by SF State’s Career Counseling Faculty: Rebecca Toporek, Elif Balin and Derrick Bines.
Registration is open via Qualtrics. It will be on a first-come, first-served basis. There are 25 seats available for faculty advisors. Email Cori Miller (comiller@sfsu.edu) or Noah Price (nprice@sfsu.edu) with your questions.
CLD welcomes people with disabilities and will provide reasonable accommodations upon request. If you would like reasonable accommodations for this event, please call (415) 338-1764 or email career@sfsu.edu as soon as possible so arrangements can be made.
Please remind students to submit their application for the 2023 Panetta Congressional Internship by 11:59 pm PST Monday, March 13. To learn more or apply online, visit icce.sfsu.edu/panetta.
The Academic Senate will meet Tuesday, Feb. 28, from 2 to 4:30 p.m. virtually via Zoom and in person at the Seven Hills Conference Center for its tenth meeting of the academic year. Visitors who wish to attend please contact the senate office at senate@sfsu.edu for a Zoom link. The agenda includes:
- Recommendation from the Strategic Issues Committee: Revision to S19-180 Search Committees for San Francisco State University Administrators Policy, in first reading.
- Recommendation from the Strategic Issues Committee: Revision to S01-087 Administrative Review Committee, in first reading.
- Recommendation from Academic Policies Committee: Credit for Prior Learning Policy (new), in first reading.
- Recommendation from the Academic Policies Committee: Revision to the Syllabus Policy #S15-257, in first reading.
- Recommendations from the Campus Curriculum Committee, in second reading:
- Certificate in Paralegal Studies (Distance Education Authorization)
- B.A. in Anthropology (Distance Education Authorization)
- B.A. in Liberal Studies (Distance Education Authorization)
- Recommendations from the Campus Curriculum Committee in first reading:
- B.A. in Psychology, Degree Completion
- B.A. in Classics, Distance Education Authorization
- M.A. in Classics, Distance Education Authorization
- B.A. in Communications, Distance Education Authorization
- M.A. in Communications, Distance Education Authorization
- Certificate in Conflict Resolution, Distance Education Authorization
- Minor in Criminal Justice Studies, reducing 20%
- Minor in Recreation, Parks and Tourism, reducing 20%
- B.S. to B.A. in Recreation, Parks and Tourism, reducing 20%
- Minor in Queer and Trans Ethnic Studies, Name Change
- Formal presentations from:
- Jason Porth, Vice President, University Enterprises, “Neighborhood and Campus Planning Update.”
- Jane DeWitt, Associate Dean of Academic Planning, “Core Competencies Assessment.”
The full agenda, meeting materials and minutes can be found on the senate website.
The Office of Faculty Affairs and Professional Development invites tenure-track faculty and associate professors preparing for promotion to participate in one of the following workshops this semester to help prepare for retention, tenure and promotion. Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs and Professional Development Todd Roehrman will lead the retention workshops. Associate Dean Roehrman and Chair of the University, Tenure and Promotion and Committee (UTPC) Professor Larry Hanley will co-lead the tenure and promotion workshops.
Faculty who will be reviewed in the next few years are encouraged to attend. The workshops have been organized according to different phases of faculty and professional development, but topics covered in each of the workshops will be similar, so feel free to attend the workshop that best fits your schedule. Please RSVP to receive a link for the workshop of your choice. An invitation link will be sent to your SFSU e-mail address the day before the workshop.
The workshops will be held:
- Wednesday, March 15, 2 – 3:30 p.m.: faculty preparing for second-year retention review
- Monday, April 10, 10 – 11:30 a.m.: faculty preparing for tenure and promotion
- Wednesday, April 12, 3 – 4:30 p.m.: faculty preparing for any retention review
- Thursday, April 13, 10 – 11:30 a.m.: faculty preparing for promotion to professor
- Friday, April 14, 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m.: faculty preparing for any retention review
Should you have questions or require additional information, please contact Todd Roehrman at roehrman@sfsu.edu.
Join Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CEETL) in LIB 242 once a month on Wednesdays to discuss teaching through an equity lens. Grounded in the exchange of perspectives and ideas, JEDI Wednesdays is a series of in-person discussions that focus on inclusivity and belonging in our teaching practices. A $50 stipend will be awarded to faculty attendees for each session. GTAs will receive $20. Go to the CEETL website to learn more.
The next JEDI Wednesday session, “Alternative Assets and Community Cultural Wealth in Academia” with Kira Donnell, will be Wednesday, March 8, from 10 to 11 a.m. UC Riverside Professor in the Graduate School of Education Tara Yosso describes Community Cultural Wealth as “an array of knowledges, skills, abilities and contacts possessed and used by Communities of Color to survive and resist racism and other forms of oppression.” Students of color use these forms of wealth to navigate, survive and thrive in educational institutions that were not created to support their positionalities and experiences. Join CEETL for a discussion of how to recognize and support the wealth of community resources students bring to the classroom. Register via Google docs.
Join staff, faculty, student leaders and alums for an event Friday, March 10,in honor of Women’s History Month. S.H.E. L.E.A.D.S. (Sisterhood in Higher Ed — Leadership. Empathy.Allies.Diversity.Self) is a two-session event at the Seven Hills Conference Center featuring a moderated panel with President Lynn Mahoney, SAEM VP Jamillah Moore, C.O.S.E. Dean Carmen Domingo, Human Resources AVP Ingrid Williams and Professor/SF Build Lead PI Leticia Márquez-Magaña as they share their path to leadership and ways we support development and mentorship opportunities at SF State. Second session is a workshop, “Counter-narratives for Professional Success,” led by the SF Build team. All are welcome to attend, including allies. Refreshments and networking begin at 10 a.m., leadership panel begins at 10:30 a.m. RSVP online to hold your seat or attend via Zoom.
SF State’s School of Theatre & Dance will present the 2023 Fringe Festival of New Plays featuring student playwrights and directors coordinated by Jeffrey Lo and Terry Boero as part of the School of Theatre and Dance’s spring 2023 season. The shows will be presented in the black box theatre space, better known as “The Lab” in the Creative Arts Building, from Tuesday, April 4 (at 7 p.m.), to Saturday, April 8 (at 2 p.m.).
This Fringe Festival is bringing back to life live theater. It will feature six new plays by various student playwrights. The School of Theatre & Dance is proud to spotlight these student-developed productions, which shed a light on what it means to feel vulnerability in the real world, through grief, trauma and heartbreak. Through it, all these productions show what truly overcoming one’s obstacles means in order to achieve happiness. Come see the shows and dare to see the world through another’s eyes and learn what it is to feel alive again.
Tickets are free. For advance tickets visit the School of Theatre & Dance’s events webpage.
SF State Spotlight
Creative Writing Assistant Professor Tonya M. Foster recently won the 2023 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
“‘Where you from?’ and ‘Where y’at?’ are two turns of phrase that are ritually important in day-to-day encounters in my hometown of New Orleans. The two questions offer the opportunity to consider place — as location, as locale, as situation, as staging ground, as syllabic instruction, as social position, as sensibility, as state of being,” Foster wrote in her artist statement. “My work grows out of an old and daily interest in place, and an interest in the seismic displacements and migrations that are part of Black diasporic configurations of home, of where, of am.”
Foster serves as the George and Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry.
Creative Writing Associate Professor and Chair May-lee Chai’s book, “Tomorrow in Shanghai” (Blair, 2022), made the longlist for The Story Prize.
Joyland Magazine published Chai’s essay, titled “Smiling Women, Frowning Girl,” in its February issue.
Chai also participated in the Alaska Quarterly Review’s Pièces de Résistances Reading Series with short story writer Ir'ene Lara Silva on Feb. 18.
Africana Studies Professor Dorothy Tsuruta led a Q&A following a screening of the documentary “13th,” held Feb. 15 at the Rafiki Coalition for Health and Wellness in San Francisco. The Black History Month event, titled “Unapologetically Black and Caring for Ourselves,” focused on the intersections of race, justice and mass incarceration in the context of the ongoing murder of unarmed Black men, including Tyre Nichols.
The New York Times features Journalism Associate Professor Sachi Cunningham in a Q&A that positions her as a brave, pioneering photojournalist and filmmaker in the big-wave surfing world. She discusses the obstacles that remain for women in the sport.
“You don’t have to know anything about competitive surfing to know that when you see a photo of a woman on a big wave for the first time, it changes what you think is humanly possible,” Cunningham said in the piece, published Feb. 17. “These women have fought for the chance to compete on the same waves, and, when they win, to get paid equal prize money to the men. I’m a female filmmaker trying to tell this story — it’s a little wild how hard that has been to do.”
On Feb. 19, The Wall Street Journal covered the California legislature’s proposal to repeal cruising bans throughout the state.
Art and Latina/Latino Studies Lecturer John Ulloa provided a historian’s perspective on lowrider culture and cruising. He said the golden age of the culture was between 1977 and 1982, with widespread exposure through the 1979 film “Boulevard Nights” and the San Jose-based Lowrider magazine. “Everybody wanted to do it,” Ulloa said.
Social Work Lecturer Ricka L. White-Soso served as a mental health panelist at the Hope Is On The Horizon Health Fair on Feb. 18 at the Calvary Hill Community Church in San Francisco. The free event was hosted by the San Francisco Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. in collaboration with sister chapters, Berkeley Bay Area Alumnae, Contra Costa Alumnae and Oakland East Bay Alumnae, in recognition of Black History Month and American Heart Month. The program is focused on “Mind, Body, Soul and Mental Wellness.”
White-Soso is a proud life member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., which she joined as a Psychology undergraduate at SF State. She is an alumnae member of Oakland East Bay Alumnae Chapter and also earned her Master of Social Work from SF State.
Miguel N. Abad, assistant professor of Child and Adolescent Development, published an article, “Stop the monster, build the marvel’: movement vulnerability, youth organizing and abolitionist praxis in late liberal San Francisco,” in the Journal of Youth Studies. This piece highlights Abad’s work with youth organizers in San Francisco related to housing justice activism.
Public Health Lecturer Jessica Wolin and colleagues working with the Center for Equitable Higher Education will present “The Evaluation of College Focused Rapid Rehousing Webinar: A Model for Addressing Homelessness for CSU and CA Community College Students” on March 9 from 11 a.m. to noon.
College Focused Rapid Rehousing, funded by the state of California, is being implemented on public colleges and universities across the state as a robust response to student homelessness. Wolin and Rashida Crutchfield of the Center for Equitable Higher Education, in collaboration with Eric Hubbard from Jovenes Inc. and Debbie Raucher of John Burton Advocates for Youth, will explore the key components of this program and present early learnings from the first year of a three-year evaluation.
On a recent episode of “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” actor Benjamin Bratt discusses a unique childhood experience: living on Alcatraz during the Indigenous occupation led by SF State students.
At age 5, Bratt joined his mother and siblings for weekend sleepovers on the site of the former federal penitentiary.
“I was born and raised in San Francisco. And briefly in 1969 a group of young Native American students from San Francisco State decided to take over Alcatraz Island as a political statement,” Bratt said. “... These young students were smart enough to cite an old treaty from the 1800s that cited any government-held land that was not being used reverts back to the sovereignty of Native people.”
On Feb. 20, Economics Professor Emeritus Ralph Anspach was featured heavily on PBS’ “American Experience” on Feb. 20. The episode, titled “Ruthless: Monopoly’s Secret History,” explored the genesis of the board game and “an untold tale of theft, obsession and corporate double-dealing.” Anspach took the case for Anti-Monopoly, a board game he created, to the courts and won.
“The whole thing became a little suspicious. But I got even angrier thinking, here’s these guys who seem to have stolen this game, and they’re attacking me when I invented my game,” the late Anspach said. “And my game was different from their game, and yet they’re coming after me.”
For Margot Serra’s Master of Arts in Anthropology at SF State, she researched the feasibility and potentials of carrying out paleopathological analyses of human remains found in looted Prehispanic communal tombs in the Cordillera Negra region of Peru.
Next fall, with the support of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, she will continue and expand this project as she starts a Ph.D. in biological anthropology at the University of Cambridge (under the supervision of Emma Pomeroy). Her Ph.D. research will focus on analyzing the biocultural effects of climate change and human-environmental interactions during the Late Prehispanic Period in the North-Central Andes of Peru. She will explore the health and disease patterns of populations living in this region and study the potential impacts of environmental variability but also of culture and technology on people’s adaptability and resiliency to climate and environmental changes.