Kenyon College Class Notes
Using alumni submissions, I compose class notes for each issue of Kenyon College's alumni magazine.
JOHN DEEVER
I'm John Deever, a writer, editor, and proofreader. I've worked in university and nonprofit communications for several decades, on jobs large and small. I enjoy the collaborative process, have leaned toward stories involving science and service whenever possible, and offer intensive attention to detail and creative self-reliance.
I've covered science, business, law, and engineering for Santa Clara Magazine, research and technology for Ohio State Alumni Magazine, and innovation and business for UC Berkeley-Haas magazine. For over a decade I've been a behind-the-scenes freelance editor for the Berkeley-Haas, Santa Clara, and Kenyon College alumni magazines, editing and proofreading. Meanwhile, I've tackled lots of projects from book-length editing to shaping and improving reports for nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy. For several years I was the managing editor in Washington, DC, of Give & Take: A Journal on Civil Society in Eurasia, a quarterly nonprofit publication highlighting environmental NGOs and international partnerships in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
I'm continuing my freelance writing, editing, and proofreading career part-time while I work full time for OCALI (ocali.org) as an Accessibility Support Specialist, advancing the cause of digital accessibility.
UC Berkeley-Haas Accreditation Report 2022
The University of California business school, Berkeley-Haas, undergoes an accreditation review by the AACSB every five years. As an instrumental part of the team producing that report for the last fifteen years, I've edited all its sections, written executive summary drafts, and participated with the project leader in composing and assembling all the pieces of this crucial document for its reviewers. Information in the report is not public, so this five-page excerpt (of its 47 pages) is a sample displaying the scope of the full document.
Research: New Questions about Ancient Galaxy Formation - Washington Square: The Stories of San Jose State University
Scientists worldwide are rethinking theories about how galaxies form, thanks to new research by a San José State professor and his international team.
Department of Physics and Astronomy Professor Aaron Romanowsky and his coauthors announced in Science magazine that when they examined a globular cluster of stars orbiting the Andromeda galaxy, they found a surprising result. Astronomers expect stars in globular clusters to contain heavy elements like iron and magnesium. Yet the cluster Romanowsk
In Good Hands: Faculty Ingenuity and Remote Learning - Washington Square: The Stories of San Jose State University
All over San José State this fall, university educators were dreaming up innovations. To teach hands-on skills remotely, in addition to deploying technology tools they marshaled an eclectic collection of teaching aids: cat toys, puppy pads, umbrellas, a pool table, a parmesan cheese container lid—and, when demonstrating medical procedures, even a grandchild’s beloved teddy bear.
Since spring, SJSU has had to plan for the majority of classes to be held online. Yet some departments making the dra
Learning Together: Online Learning and Beyond - Washington Square: The Stories of San Jose State University
San José State University graduate student Janeth Canseco and her two apartment roommates decided they better spend a little extra money for the better quality Wifi.
In the Connie L. Lurie College of Education, Canseco takes five classes and performs two internships, one where she counsels 45 high school students from Del Mar High School and the other where she assists in presentations and observes counselors at Hoover Middle School—meeting with them over the Internet. To pay the bills, she’s a
Research Shows Lockdowns Did Not Decrease Park Visits | SJSU Newsroom
Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning Ahoura Zandiatashbar scoured publicly available data and found that although we have limited our visits to stores, Americans are still visiting parks and beaches at near pre-pandemic rates.
In the journal Landscape and Urban Planning, Zandiatashbar—a newly hired faculty member in SJSU’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the College of Social Sciences—published a study he co-authored with Shima Hamidi, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg S
Happy 120th Birthday, Berkeley Haas!
It’s been 120 years since Cora Jane Flood made her bequest of securities and real estate that founded business education at the University of California in 1898. At the time it was the largest private gift to the university ever. “Jennie” Flood’s establishment of the “College of Commerce” endowed professorships in economics, accounting, and insurance. That donation made our school the second oldest business school in the United States—and the only one founded by a woman.
In the case of Berkeley
Change the World
So what was it like? In the human-sized parcel of 50 years of Peace Corps service, it was hope and making history, and it was, sometimes at least, an exercise in futility. These volunteers set out to change the world and, more often than not, found themselves transformed: learning so much more than they could ever teach, receiving so much more than they could possibly give—which is not to diminish the teaching, the giving.
Since the creation of the Peace Corps in 1961, more than 340 Santa Clara
Steve Scott: “It’s Never Too Late” - Washington Square: The Stories of San Jose State University
Steve Scott interviewed Fidel Castro in Havana. He reported on world-shaking events like the aftermath of 9/11. Over his four decades in radio broadcasting, he interviewed countless powerful people. Now, he is the morning anchor for WCBS Newsradio 880 in New York City.
What he hadn’t done was complete college.
“It didn’t slow me down, but it gnawed at me a little,” says Scott, ’20 Broadcast Journalism. While still a San José State senior, a few credits shy of graduating, he got the full-time r
Urban and Regional Planning Department Chair to Lead a National Professional Organization | SJSU Newsroom
Professor Laxmi Ramasubramanian, chair of the SJSU Department of Urban and Regional Planning, was elected vice president and president-elect of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP).
ACSP, a consortium of more than 100 university departments and programs offering planning degrees, is a scholarly association dedicated “to promoting the field of planning as a diverse global community that works collectively toward healthy, equitable and sustainable neighborhoods, cities and reg
SJSU Recognized as Adobe Creative Campus | SJSU Newsroom
San José State University has been named an Adobe Creative Campus for its commitment to using technology to provide students with a transformative path to success.
SJSU is among a select group of colleges and universities Adobe identified as higher education innovators actively advancing digital literacy skills across the curriculum. By making Adobe Creative Cloud available to its students, SJSU provides creative and persuasive digital communication tools that will give them an edge in the comp
Recalled
In a remote village in Zambia, Amber Cohen, CAS/BA ’15, assembled a meeting of farmers. Together, they’d built 27 fishponds during her Peace Corps tenure. “It didn’t really hit me that this was the last meeting I’d be having.”
Brianna Hawk, SIS/BA ’17, had been teaching English high in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. “At school, it was my director’s birthday. The teachers were celebrating,” she says. “I walked in, and they asked me to give a toast. I was so upset I just started sobbing.”
In Madag
Learning Together: Faculty Mentoring - Washington Square: The Stories of San Jose State University
Associate Professor Delacruz’s senior capstone course, where students create awareness campaigns for a local business or nonprofit, takes remote teaching to another level. “They produce videos and coach their clients in real time through Zoom, using all of these tools as extensively as they could do,” Delacruz says. Senior projects are real-world practice for their future advertising jobs.
Christian, the student, shares his screen, displaying a slide about how to use Adobe Spark. Next to the vi
Santa Clara Magazine: Until Proven Innocent
For 20 years, Maurice Caldwell fought to prove his innocence while serving a 27-years-to-life sentence for a 1990 murder he did not commit.Last December, with the help of the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) at SCU’s School of Law, the courts concurred that Caldwell was right. Judge Charles Haines found that, had Caldwell’s trial attorney adequately investigated the case, he would have disclosed a confession by the actual murderer. So on Monday, March 28, 43-year-old Caldwell walked
Fourth Street Pizza Co-Owner Josh McGhie: The Stories of San Jose State University
Co-owner of 4th Street Pizza Co. Josh McGhie, ’99 Marketing, started at San José State as a toddler.
“I’ve been going to San José State football games since I was three years old,” he says, laughing. “My grandpa’s best friend was Jack Elway.” (SJSU football head coach from 1979 to 1983, father of legendary quarterback John Elway.) “So, I grew up on San José State football. And then I graduated from there.”
This month, McGhie and business partner Rich Daly marked 14 years since they opened the
SJSU Clinical Lab Scientist Training Program Expands in a Crisis | SJSU Newsroom
Waiting on medical test results can be unpleasant, and the expansion of San José State’s Clinical Laboratory Scientist Training program could reduce those painful wait times. By building new hospital partnerships, the program serves as a crucial component in California’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
From Bakersfield to Chico, from Oroville to Newport Beach—across the state, 38 hospitals, laboratories and medical centers are now state-approved SJSU affiliates, partnering with the universit
Spartan Recreation and Aquatic Center Achieves LEED Gold Certification | SJSU Newsroom
For its energy efficiency and green building sustainability achievements, the Student Union at SJSU Spartan Recreation and Aquatic Center (SRAC) received confirmation of its LEED Gold Certification on October 8.
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)—the world standard for green buildings—is a certified rating system offered through the US Green Building Council. SRAC’s LEED Gold certification marks its superior achievement of numerous sustainable and environmental stewardship mea
Mary Poffenroth, on Equity, Fear and Remote Learning - Washington Square: The Stories of San Jose State University
Biological Sciences Lecturer Mary Poffenroth, ’02 BA, ’06 MS, Biological Sciences, has taught remotely since 2008. “It’s like any art form,” she says. “No one’s going to be an amazing dancer by taking a two-hour dance class!” Faculty members who lean toward perfectionism, she says, mustn’t “expect to be a New York Ballet dancer after a two-hour workshop.” This year as the campus shifted to remote learning, Poffenroth drew from her experience to mentor her colleagues.
Interview with John Deever, SJSU
Diversity in STEM Master’s Degrees Recognized | SJSU Newsroom
The July 23 issue of Diverse Issues in Higher Education highlighted a list of institutions that best produce minority post-baccalaureate graduates in STEM fields. San José State took multiple honors.
In addition to its regular annual top 100 rankings, Diverse published an expanded list highlighting master’s degrees in the STEM fields of engineering, math and statistics, and physical science. SJSU was included on all three lists.
In granting a master’s in engineering, SJSU ranked #5 in diversit
Learn Anywhere Website Launched to Aid Student Success | SJSU Newsroom
On August 6, San José State University launched Learn Anywhere—a website to help students better adapt to the hybrid teaching and learning model for the upcoming fall 2020 semester that consists of mostly online learning.
The Learn Anywhere site—the third in a trio of help and instruction websites—joins Work Anywhere and Teach Anywhere, which were created last spring to assist staff and faculty members transitioning to sheltering in place.
Learn Anywhere offers students a readiness questionnai
Load More Articles
