UA SBS Developments Newsletter | Winter 2022

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA COLLEGE OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES “THE PEOPLE COLLEGE”

DE VE LO P M E N TS Winter 2022

WELCOME FROM THE DEAN Welcome to the winter Developments newsletter.

This issue features a $2.5 million grant from Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute, whose 20-year history of giving to Persian and Iranian studies at the University of Arizona has been transformative, supporting both students and research on this critical world region. Jessica Smith has funded a scholarship endowment in memory of her daughter, Maya, a creative writing student who passed away in 2019 as she was about to start her junior year. I am humbled and inspired by Jessica’s generosity after such a heartbreaking tragedy. This issue also shares insights on planned giving and provides a small sample of how our faculty have contributed to the public understand-

Lori Poloni-Staudinger

ing of the year’s most pressing issues.

My sincerest thanks to the featured donors and to all of you who contribute to our SBS community and mission.

Have a healthy, happy, and peaceful holiday season! ~ Lori Poloni-Staudinger, Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences

A Legacy of Generosity

David Williams (right) with Chris Segrin at his 2004 retirement luncheon

The David A. Williams Scholarship has been providing communication majors with financial support since 2004 when Williams retired from the Department of Communication after a 33-year career at the university.

Recent recipient Brook Couture said the funds will support her goal of obtaining a master’s degree in speech language pathology.

“All schooling is expensive, and I am so thankful for the David Williams Scholarship for helping make it possible for me to achieve my academic goals!” Brook said.

Williams passed away on Aug. 11, 2022, just days after his 83rd birthday, and the scholarship remains part of his enduring legacy.

A popular and accomplished instructor, Williams taught courses in communication and poetry, communication and fiction, and literature. He taught a poetry course at the state prison and communication skills to paramedics. Outside the classroom, Williams acted in plays and narrated films and radio programs.

“Professor Williams was one of the most recognizable and well-liked faculty members in the history of the Department of Communication,” said Chris Segrin, head of the department.

You can contribute to the David Williams Scholarship online at: https://bit.ly/David_Williams_Scholarship.

UNDERSTANDING

I RA NIA N L AN G UAG E S AN D P ER SIA N C ULT UR E study of Persian and Iranian languages and linguistics and would place the university’s Roshan Graduate Interdisciplinary Program as one of the largest and most prominent Persian programs in the U.S,” Mir-Djalali said. “I personally am proud to have witnessed all the great work this university has contributed over the years to promote and preserve Persian language and culture and look forward to the impact it will have on future generations of faculty and students for years to come.”

ANALYZING UNDERSTUDIED IRANIAN LANGUAGES Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali. Photo by Mar Omidyar.

Over the past 20 years, Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute has invested $6.35 million at the University of Arizona, supporting the creation of the Roshan Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Persian and Iranian Studies, as well as graduate fellowships and four endowed faculty positions.

Their most recent grant of $2.5 million – which comes from the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute Fund, a donor-advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation – establishes the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Professorship in Iranian Linguistics and funds Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Graduate Fellowships in Persian and Iranian Studies.

The professorship and fellowships are named for Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali, the founder and chair of Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute, a foundation focused on preservation, transmission, and instruction of Persian language and culture. Mir-Djalali, who was born in Iran, is a renowned linguist and expert in language education, cross-cultural communication, and Persian studies. Mir-Djalali received a doctorate in linguistics from Paris-Sorbonne University.

“This endowment will foster and fortify the graduate

The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Professorship in Iranian Linguistics, which is housed in the Department of Linguistics, is currently held by Linguistics Professor Simin Karimi.

Karimi first became interested in linguistics when she was six years old, and her parents hired a tutor to teach her French.

“The Persian language doesn’t have any gender systems,” Karimi said. “So, when I started French, I had to learn that the word for book was masculine and the word for table was feminine. I remember one night I couldn’t go to sleep because I was thinking, ‘Why should a table be masculine or feminine?’ The linguist was born in me then.”

Karimi now leads the National Science Foundation-supported Iranian Linguistics Research Group, consisting of faculty members and students at UArizona studying linguistic properties of Iranian languages, including Balochi, Ossetian, Pashto, Persian, and Sorani-Kurdish.

Karimi said that among those languages, Persian is the most studied, “but there has been very little examination of the other four. Even though they have a lot in common, there are interesting differences between them, which teaches us a lot about human languages.”

Karimi added, “Modern linguistics is discovering the

structure of human language in the mind. So, the more languages you look at, the more information you get.”

Members of the Iranian Linguistics Research Group have been engaging in comparative and theoretical analysis of the structures of the five Iranian languages, gathering spoken language samples to describe the sentence structure (syntax), word structure (morphology), and sound system (phonology) of each language. The researchers are also looking at changes in the languages over time, likely due to speakers’ contact with other languages.

Simin Karimi

Karimi is using funds from the professorship to hire a postdoctoral researcher for two years to collaborate with on research projects involving Iranian linguistics and to help with a two-volume book based on the results of the research.

“It’s a huge, huge project,” Karimi said. “So, what I need is a brilliant, energetic linguist to help me with it.”

Karimi said receiving large charitable grants is unusual for linguistics programs. “This Roshan grant is a gift from heaven. I still can’t believe we got this grant, which is extremely generous. I cannot be more grateful to be the recipient of this professorship.”

Karimi is happy that the professorship is endowed, ensuring that there will always be a specialist in Iranian linguistics in the department. “The strong research team that has been created over many years will continue to work under the supervision of a linguist specialized in Iranian linguistics even after my retirement,” Karimi said.

RECRUITING AND TRAINING TOP STUDENTS

The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Graduate Fellowships in Persian and Iranian Studies are intended to help UArizona recruit and retain the best doctoral students focusing on Persian and Iranian studies.

The endowment is housed in the Roshan Graduate

Interdisciplinary Program in Persian and Iranian Studies, or Roshan GIDP, which offers graduate degrees focusing on modern or classical Persian literature and culture as well as the history, religion, social organization, and politics of Iran and other Persian-speaking societies. The program benefits from the long tradition of Persian and Iranian studies in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies.

“Graduate training in this field is important because the Persian world is one of the oldest world civilizations with a rich history of arts, literature, philosophy, and science. And today, whether the current rulers in Iran open the country to the free world or not, that country remains a significant player in the region, with global ramifications,” said Kamran Talattof, the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Chair in Persian and Iranian Studies, professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, and the founding chair of the Roshan GIDP. Mojtaba Ebrahimian, who graduated in 2020 with a Ph.D. from the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, received graduate funding from Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute when he was at the University of Arizona.

Ebrahimian, who was born and raised in Iran, is now a preceptor at Harvard University, teaching Persian language and literature.

Ebrahimian’s dissertation explored 19th-century Persian travelogues of Europe and their reflection of a new historical consciousness of Iranian and global history in Iran.

“I believe in order to better understand why the Iranian rulers even today harbor a negative view of the West, we need to examine how early-19th-century Iranian rulers viewed European civilization, as there are many similarities in their respective approach to and comprehension of the West,” Ebrahimian said.

Ebrahimian said that funding from Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute was crucial since as an international student, he could not apply for federal student aid and was not authorized to work anywhere except on campus.

“Words cannot even begin to express how grateful I am for the support from Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute,” Ebrahimian said. “Without the fellowship, I would not have been able to finish my program. Moreover, being an Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Fellow afforded me the time and financial resources to prepare for the job market and apply for academic positions, endeavors that resulted in my current position at Harvard.”

Helping students write their futures When Maya Smith-Dolana was four years old, she wrote her first book, titled The Detective Work, Volume 1.

Maya would continue to be an avid writer and reader throughout her youth. She wanted to be a novelist and so decided to major in creative writing at the University of Arizona. In 2019, Maya was about to begin her junior year when she died tragically at the age of 19 in a car crash after returning from babysitting.

Maya’s mom, Jessica – with additional donations from family and friends – has established the Maya Smith Creative Writing Endowment Fund in the Department of English to help students and to honor Maya’s passion for words and stories.

Maya and her mom, Jessica Smith

EXPLORING HER PASSIONS

When Maya was four, her father moved to China, leaving her and her mom, Jessica.

“She was a resilient kid and very stoic about things and would claim it didn’t really affect her,” Jessica said. When asked about her father at school, Maya would invent something or say he was working in China.

Although Maya was strong in math – perhaps inherited from Jessica, who has a Ph.D. in bioengineering – she didn’t like it, gravitating instead to painting, reading, and writing fiction.

Her voracious reading habit started in earnest in the 4th grade, Jessica said, with Maya reading books secretly under the table at dinner or under her desk during class.

She especially loved reading and writing fantasy. One of her favorite books was Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

“She would read it over and over and over,” Jessica said.

When Maya was eight, she saved up her money so she could buy an inkwell and parchment paper.

“Maya would talk to me about ideas for books as she got older,” Jessica said. “They always had really complicated plots that involved some element of fantasy.”

Bullied after standing up for one of her teachers, Maya hated high school and was adamant that she didn’t want to attend her graduation, Jessica recalled.

“She didn’t have a lot of friends, honestly,” Jessica said.

“She never felt like she fit in. But when she made friends, she was the most loyal friend you could ever find.”

Jessica and Maya shared a close bond. “She just wanted to spend her birthdays with me,” Jessica said. “The fact that it was just me and her really shaped a lot about her.”

During chats while Maya was in college, Jessica would

sometimes describe various work issues.

“Not only did she listen, she’d give me this incredible advice. She was really wise and crystal clear about right versus wrong. She was amazing that way,” Jessica said.

FINDING HER PATH

Although they lived in Salt Lake City, Maya and Jessica had Arizona connections. Jessica grew up in Tempe, and various family members have attended the University of Arizona.

Maya picked UArizona because “there was familiarity and also warm weather,” Jessica said.

Even with a tendency to procrastinate on assignments, Maya got excellent grades in high school. However, during her first semester at the University of Arizona, Maya almost flunked out of school, Jessica recalls.

“I was completely blindsided because I never had to tell her to do anything,” Jessica said, adding that it was hard because she hadn’t realized that Maya was struggling.

Jessica thinks part of the problem was that Maya had unrealistic expectations about what she would do in some of her general elective courses: “Her initial thinking was this would be a huge opportunity to just debate and talk to people about the meaning of life. I think that contributed to her not doing well, along with some depression, a little anxiety.

She didn’t know anybody, at least on campus.”

Jessica continued, “But as she came out of it, things really changed for her. She really started blossoming and she loved being at the UA and was really looking forward to the next few years in the program doing what she loved to do.

She was just getting to the point in her life where she was getting more comfortable in her own skin.”

“I was lucky to teach Maya at the beginning of her creative writing journey here at UA, and I am very sad that none of us have the opportunity to see what would have become of her time here,” said Creative Writing Professor Susan Briante. “I remember Maya as a bright student, not just because of her intellect, but because she often beamed with interest and kindness.”

HONORING MAYA’S LIFE

After Maya died, it was her half-sister Rebecca’s idea to establish the award, which Jessica thought was a great idea.

“I believe that your footprint is the impact you have on others,” Jessica said. “And I think in her short life, Maya had an incredible impact, but I wanted to make sure that what she stood for in her life could live on. I know that she would have been so excited that this was happening in her name because she really cared about people.”

Scholarship recipient Julian Cavell, who is majoring in family studies and human development and minoring in creative writing, loves to write poetry.

Maya was also a talented painter. This is one of her self-portraits.

“In the future, I want to try and find a way to marry art and therapy, and actively encourage the people I work with to utilize creative writing as an outlet for feelings and emotions,” Julian said.

Julian added, “Growing up as a first-generation, queer, Latine student, college was never certain. I knew that if I was to ever achieve my dreams of getting a higher education, I needed to work hard in school to make sure that I was able to get scholarships. I cannot express in words how grateful I am for this scholarship.”

Arianna Velosa has always loved writing. In 2018, Arianna was featured in local ABC affiliate KGUN’s “Local Author Spotlight,” for her book The Light in The Forest, which included a half-human, half-fairy orphan and evil queen – the type of story Maya would have loved.

“It’s no secret how expensive college is, and it means the world to me that I was selected as one of the winners of the award,” Arianna said. “As someone who hopes to publish a novel one day and become a successful author, I look forward to using this scholarship to pay for school expenses so I can do well in school and improve my skills.”

Jessica loves learning about the scholarship recipients.

“With every single one of them I just think, ‘Wow, Maya would love you. I wish Maya could know you.’”

You can donate to the Maya Smith Creative Writing Endowment Fund at: https://bit.ly/Maya_Smith_Scholarship.

Planning your Legacy

Most people understand that they can leave money to a charity in their will. But did you know that a planned gift can also protect your assets, provide for your family, and guarantee you income for life? You can even make a significant impact through a gift that costs nothing in your lifetime.

Developments sat down with James Krogmeier, the associate vice president of gift planning at the University of Arizona Foundation, to learn more.

Q.

What is one of the biggest misconceptions about making a planned gift?

A.

I think people are afraid that planned giving has to be complicated, and it doesn’t. It’s just another way for them to extend their giving and support the programs that are important to them. Some of the options are ways to make gifts more tax efficiently, or to use assets or accounts that they hadn’t otherwise thought about.

Q.

What is one thing that you wish more people understood about planned giving?

A.

One thing we’ve seen more of over the past couple of years is people doing their wills themselves or using online will services. That might not be as helpful as they hoped. Using an attorney is not necessarily that scary, and probably not as expensive as people think it is. And it really is money well spent.

For a planned gift to the University of Arizona, we can give people suggested language for their attorney to use, and we can work on a gift agreement so we can make sure that we have all the instructions that they want us to have in order to carry out their gift.

Q.

Is there a type of planned gift that is not as well known that people are intrigued by?

A.

Charitable gift annuities. A donor can make a one-time lump sum gift now, and we promise to pay them income for the rest of their lives. And that promise is backed up by all the assets of the Foundation.

It is not really accurate to compare it to the type of annuity you would get from a life insurance company because there is a sizable charitable gift built into it. But at the same time, there is an attractive income that goes back to the donor. And with the volatility we’ve seen in the stock market, it is more attractive to a lot of people right now.

Q.

Are there any other planned gift options that you want potential donors to know about?

A.

Donors using their IRA as an estate gift is fantastic. It’s easy to put in place – it’s just completing a new beneficiary designation form. They could probably do it online. They might not have to revise their will or their trust. And it’s super tax efficient. If they left that money to their kids or family members, those people would have to pay income tax on it. But the UA Foundation and SBS get full value for every dollar in there.

Q.

Speaking of I RAs, how can people donate through their I RAs while they are alive?

A.

If you have an IRA and you’re at least 70 ½ years old, it is very tax efficient to make charitable gifts directly out of your IRA. Your IRA is a big reservoir of tax-deferred income. Anything you take to benefit yourself, you’re going to have to pay income tax on. But if you use it to make charitable gifts, you avoid all that tax liability, but the charity still gets full benefit of the money. So, it’s a way to get an attractive tax benefit without having to itemize your tax return.

You can learn more about planned giving and tax-free IRA distributions by visiting https://uafoundation.giftplans.org/ or contacting Ginny Healy at 520-621-3938 or ghealy@arizona.edu.

SOUNDBITES Faculty in the News

Our Soundbites segment gives you a small sample of how our faculty have contributed to the public understanding of fascinating social topics as well as some of the year’s most pressing issues.

“Censoring media and then pushing out preferred stories through pro-regime media is a long-standing tactic in many authoritarian nations, including Russia. And we see that on a really high volume right now.” - Jennifer Earl, Sociology | “Russia is using ‘digital repression’ to suppress dissent” | Scientific American, 3/15/22

“Using the passive voice – for example, reporting that ‘Palestinians were killed in clashes’ rather than ‘Israeli forces killed Palestinians’ – is language that helps shield Israel from scrutiny.” - Maha Nassar, Middle Eastern and North African Studies | “How media reports of ‘clashes’ mislead Americans about Israeli-Palestinian violence” | The Conversation, 5/16/22

“The fragrant volatile organic compounds from desert plants may in many ways contribute to improving sleep patterns, stabilizing emotional hormones, enhancing digestion, heightening mental clarity and reducing depression or anxiety.” - Gary Nabhan, Southwest Center | “The smell of desert

“TikTok’s approach to misinformation needs major improvements. A search for prominent news topics in September 2022 turned up user-generated videos, 20% of which included misinformation, and videos containing misinformation were often in the first five results.” - Dam Hee Kim, Communication | “Experts grade Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube on readiness to handle midterm election misinformation” | The Conversation, 10/17/22

“Our early research suggests that African Americans and Asian Americans were targeted in particular…We’re also finding that there were covenants that excluded Jewish individuals and covenants that excluded women from owning property.”

- Jason Jurjevich, Geography, Development & Environ-

ment | “Project targets Tucson’s stubborn legacy of housing discrimination” | The Arizona Daily Star, 10/23/22

rain may be good for your health” | UANews, 6/22/22

“People who don’t have access to abortion may then experience higher rates of poverty, financial distress, things like evictions, bankruptcies, productivity, ability to progress in the workplace or in school.” - Elise Lopez, Consortium on Gender-Based

Violence | “Who’s most affected by reversal of Roe? Ruling could disproportionately impact women of color in Arizona” | The Arizona Republic, 7/12/22

“It’s taken a lot to get to this point to show that Black people and Black language aren’t grotesque, exotic, or deficient. They have a language variety that is different and should be recognized just like any other language variety.” - Sonja Lanehart, Linguistics | “A new dictionary will document the lexicon of African American English” | National Public Radio, 7/27/22

Sociologist Jennifer Carlson was awarded a prestigious 2022 MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of her work examining gun politics, culture, and trauma in the United States. MacArthur Fellowships, often called “genius grants,” include an $800,000 stipend. The announcement was picked up by around 400 media outlets. Photo courtesy of John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

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Giving Ways Supporters of the College of SBS donate in a variety of ways. Here are just a few!

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This November, Becky and Dr. Dan Lieberman hosted a welcome reception in Phoenix for new SBS Dean Lori Poloni-Staudinger. SBS and UArizona alumni and friends enjoyed hors d’oeuvres and live music.

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The Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice donated funds to honor geographers Diana Liverman and Sallie Marston with personalized benches in the Women’s Plaza of Honor.

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Annually, in honor of his parents’ birthdays, Rolf Peters supports scholarship endowments in the School of Information, the Department of History, and the SALT Center.

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The lead sponsor for the Downtown Lecture Series on Sexualities was the Stonewall Fund, a donor-advised fund housed in the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona. Thanks also to Dr. Barbara Starrett and Jo Ann Ellison for sponsoring the series since its inception 10 years ago.

Ceremony at the Women’s Plaza of Honor: “Weaving Beautiful Lives: A Tribute to Four Inspirational Women”

How to Give

Donating to the College of SBS is making an investment in the future! You can donate online at https://give.uafoundation.org/sbs.

To discuss making a planned gift or donating to the college, contact Ginny Healy at 520-621-3938 or ghealy@arizona.edu.