Jacqueline Whitham, who graduated from Santa Clara University in 2021, has donated $3.8 million to the university to promote cross-disciplinary projects. (Jim Gensheimer/Santa Clara University)
The road to a university degree may not always be a straight path. Physicists may dabble in painting, engineers may have a serious thing for English lit and drama students might be drawn to software coding. That’s what it was like for Jacqueline Whitham at Santa Clara University. So the 2021 graduate made a $3.8 million donation to SCU to provide a smoother path for others on similar academic journeys.
Whitham, who made the donation with her Denver family’s foundation, had interests in chemistry, mechanical engineering and art. She eventually figured out a way to incorporate all of her interests into her degree trajectory — adding minors in mechanical engineering and sculpture to her chemistry major — but it took her five years to finish and said she often felt alone in the effort.
Her donation will fund three or four grants each year for cross-disciplinary collaborations involving faculty members and student research, with preference for projects that include at least one person from the arts. Whitham says she hopes it encourages students to pursue cross-disciplinary work and discover — as she did — how it can help in unexpected ways.
“Art was a creative outlet, which connected me to people and my other studies in the craziest ways,” said Whitham, who is now working for a startup in Campbell. “Creativity really fed into helping me understand so many concepts. I want to help people who want to walk similar paths.”
POETIC PLEASURES: After two years of being confined to online events, the San Jose Poetry Festival is back this year, kicking off Wednesday with a 7 p.m. event at Mama Kin in downtown San Jose and continuing all week. The rest of the lineup includes both online events and in-person readings at Nirvana Soul, the First Unitarian Church and Anno Domini gallery. Among the poets participating will be Santa Clara County Poet Laureate Tshaka Campbell, former county laureate David C. Perez, Chris Locsin, Kristina Robertson, Kim Johnson and the Santa Clara County Youth Poets Laureate, .
It culminates with the San Jose Poetry Slam on Sunday night at downtown’s Tabard Theatre, which has entered a partnership with Poetry Center San Jose to provide the festival with a new home. The 7 p.m. Poetry Slam will feature San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen Martin, whose 2017 book “Heaven Is All Goodbyes” received an American Book Award and California Book Award the following year and was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. You can see the full lineup for the week and buy tickets at bit.ly/pcsjtix.
And Tabard plans to keep the poetry going by hosting slams every other Sunday, starting with the festival event on Sept. 11. Interested poets can sign up at 6:30 p.m. before the event, and judges will be picked from the audience.
CAR HEAVEN: The 16th annual Santos Family Car Show in Alviso had a great turnout on Saturday, with hundreds of cars on display and certainly thousands of people checking out some classic rides. The show, which supports the Alviso Santa scholarship program, also got its fair share of big political names, with San Jose City Councilman David Cohen, Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, Assemblyman Alex Lee and state Sen. Bob Wieckowski braving the heat to shake some hands and hand out commendations.
Originally published at Sal Pizarro