alumni

Bonta addressed thousands of Gator grads and their families at Oracle Park May 23

San Francisco State University celebrated the Class of 2025 at its 124th Commencement ceremony Friday, May 23, at Oracle Park. California Attorney General Rob Bonta provided the keynote address, telling graduates to use their skills and energy to “demand and create a better world, now.”

“Across the nation, our rights, freedoms and safety are under attack,” Bonta told the more than 3,500 graduates in attendance. “Now is not the time for silence or blind compliance. The stakes are too high. Everyone has a role to play in shaping the world we all deserve to live in.”

As part of the ceremony, SFSU commemorated honorary doctoral degree recipients Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Tommy Orange and activist, physician and minister Ramona Tascoe (B.A., ’70). In her remarks, Tascoe echoed Bonta’s encouragement to take action.

“We must be vigilant in making certain that progress is not lost, that growth continues and that all of these wonderful students have opportunities to see the same success in their children and their grandchildren,” said Tascoe. “The world will continue to be a better place because of the rainbow of brilliance that emerges from this campus.”

The University also honored the late author and beloved SFSU Professor of History Dawn Mabalon with a posthumous honorary doctoral degree. California State University Trustee and SFSU alumnus Jose Antonio Vargas (B.A., ’04), a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was on hand to introduce Mabalon’s sister Darleen Bohulano Mabalon, who accepted the honorary degree. 

“To receive this honor in one of her favorite places, Oracle Park — home to the beloved San Francisco Giants — and from San Francisco State, the university where she poured her heart into her work, is indescribable,” Mabalon said. 

Other Commencement speakers included SFSU President Lynn Mahoney, Associated Students President Brandon Foley, graduate speaker Patra Holmes and undergraduate speaker Belayneh Salilew. Cal State Student Association President Iese Esera, a first-generation college graduate, used his time at the podium to speak to his childhood self — a self who was bullied for being different.

Alumni publication puts spotlight on our student services and alumni who are giving back 

The new issue of SF State Magazine demonstrates how the San Francisco State University community puts students first with generosity of spirit, creating hope for a better tomorrow. The magazine, an official Gator alumni publication, is now available online and in print.   

Issue highlights: 

• Lifting Up, Taking Off: three alumni whose help from SFSU gave them the boost to succeed 
• Wellness 101: Nourishing our students to a healthy life 
• Striking a Chord: an exclusive alumni Q&A with Ben Fong-Torres and globe-traveling musician-educator Mike Blankenship 
• Class Notes: updates on your old SFSU classmates and other alumni 
• And much more 

Pick up your copy of SF State Magazine at the Cesar Chavez Student Center information desk later this week. Issues are also mailed to alumni worldwide. 

Read the spring/summer 2025 issue of SF State Magazine. 

Photos by Juan Montes

Pocket Opera collaboration brings Animation students into new film adaptation of Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ 

The COVID-19 quarantines of 2020 forced educators and artists alike to work in new and creative ways. One such collaboration involving San Francisco State University’s School of Cinema just recently enjoyed its debut. “A Pocket Magic Flute” is an animated film adaptation of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” produced by the Pocket Opera company of San Francisco. It is a finalist for the Digital Excellence in Opera Award from Opera America. 

Nicolas A. Garcia, artistic director of the San Francisco Pocket Opera, conceived the film project and garnered funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and Opera America. He contacted SFSU Cinema Professor Martha Gorzycki to get students involved. Gorzycki (MFA, ’02), the director of the University’s Animation Program, mentored five student interns who worked on pre-production and production: Estrella Torres, Jacqueline “Rosie” Nares, Alex Wood, Madeline Ko and Jessie Plascencia. 

“It really helped me understand how the pipeline of production works in animation,” said Nares (B.A., ’22), now a library media assistant at an elementary school in Stockton. “I already had a bit of an idea just because I’m a huge animation fan. But being firsthand, I got to try a little bit of everything. Working in background, character and prop design, I was able to figure out where I fit in the pipeline, too, because it is my dream is to work in the industry.” 

Torres (B.A., ’21) helped create storyboards and design characters and props. She says working on “A Pocket Magic Flute” was a pivotal moment for her. 

“It gave me my first real opportunity to step into the animation world and feel confident in my skills,” Torres said. “When Martha reached out to me specifically because of my talents, it was such an honor. It gave me the encouragement I needed to believe in myself and my abilities as an artist. The class she created was small, with only five students, and I felt so fortunate to be one of them. 

“The experience not only helped me grow as an artist, but also reinforced my love for animation as a medium for storytelling,” added Torres, now an instructional aide for middle-school students with disabilities in Brentwood. “I’m truly excited to see how it resonates with audiences and how it might inspire others.” 

Shawneé Gibbs (B.A., ’02) and Shawnelle Gibbs (B.A., ’02) are the lead producers, screenwriters and animation directors on “A Pocket Magic Flute.” The siblings comprise a powerhouse team, writing scripts for cartoons for many of the major studios and networks. Miriam Lewis (MFA, ’12) is the lead costumer. They all attended the world-premiere screening, held in the August Coppola Theatre at SFSU on Sept. 25. 

“A Pocket Magic Flute” has brought together numerous arts organizations, including the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Oakland Youth Symphony, Sacramento Youth Symphony and Sirnare Animation Studio in Kenya. 

“A Pocket Magic Flute” is now traveling to classrooms of fourth to eighth graders, accompanied by a curriculum and appearances by the artists in person. 

“This was a local and international collaboration of diverse teams of scholars and artists coming together remotely to produce a 20-minute animated film,” Gorzycki said. “One of the primary goals of this project is to educate youth and especially BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and People of Color] youth on collaborative and creative career possibilities in the performing arts, fine arts and media arts.”  

Learn more about the SFSU School of Cinema. 

Fine Arts Gallery presents new artwork reflecting on Ruth Asawa’s Garden of Remembrance on campus 

Eighty-two years ago, Japanese American students from San Francisco State College were forced to withdraw from classes, some taken to prison camps. Twenty-two years ago, San Francisco State University dedicated a garden to honor the Japanese American experience of incarceration during World War II, especially that of the 19 students, and the resilience of this community after their release, designed by acclaimed artist Ruth Asawa. This year, the garden is the subject of further artistic exploration in new works on display in the Fine Arts Gallery on campus. 

“Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” features new commissioned works by artists Mark Baugh-Sasaki, Tina Kashiwagi, Paul Kitagaki Jr., Lisa Solomon and TT Takemoto.  

The exhibition opens on Saturday, Feb. 24, with a reception from 1 to 3 p.m., and concludes on Saturday, April 6. The Fine Arts Gallery is open Tuesdays – Fridays, noon – 4 p.m. Admission is free. 

Dedicated in 2002, the Garden of Remembrance is located between Burk Hall and the Fine Arts building. A waterfall cascading from behind the Cesar Chavez Student Center signifies the return of the internees to the coastline after the war. Ten large boulders in the grassy area next to Burk Hall represent each of the camps set up during World War II. The names of the 19 former SF State students expelled and the names of the camps are listed on a bronze, scroll-shaped marker. The marker also includes reproductions of official government documents regarding the internment. 

In an essay for the exhibition’s catalog, artist and cultural producer Weston Teruya describes “Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” as a “relationship of care” to family, community and shared stories. 

“This collection of artworks is an intergenerational remembrance: a deep sensory reflection on ancestral practices and cultural traditions that are studied across veils of time and oceans, and the unearthing of elided histories and traumas from beneath stone memorials or out of the recesses of overlooked archives,” Teruya writes. 

“Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and SF State’s Instructionally Related Student Activities Fund. 

Learn more about the “Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” exhibition. 

The Montford Point Marines were 20,000 African Americans trained in the 1940s 

To commemorate Black History Month, a San Francisco State University documentary team will debut four shorts about the first Black servicemembers in the U.S. Marine Corps. Each of the short films will be available on YouTube. 

The films are oral histories with surviving members of the Montford Point Marines, 20,000 African Americans trained between 1942 and 1949 in Jacksonville, North Carolina. The first recruits began one year after U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt outlawed racial discrimination in war industries, allowing Black men and women, although only in a segregated fashion.  

San Francisco State History Professor Trevor Getz, who produced the films along with Cinema Professor Daniel L. Bernardi, emphasizes the lasting legacy of the Montford Point Marines and the lessons that can be learned from them. 

“They fought the Second World War and the war against racism together. And then they went on to serve the country and their communities for decades after,” Getz said. “They want to pass on messages that are of great value to us today. The team of filmmakers led by Bernardi managed to capture those messages authentically. The results are powerful.” 

The Veteran Documentary Corps (VDC), an institute based in SF State’s College of Liberal & Creative Arts, created the films as part of its ongoing mission to tell authentic stories of the American veteran experience. Bernardi, VDC’s director, directed three of them, with Eliciana Nascimiento helming the other. Many other Cinema alumni and students also participated, including Andrés Gallegos, Hannah Anderson, Robert Barbarino, Joshua Cardenas, Jian Giannini and Jesse Sutterley.  

“The series in honor of African American contribution to the ideals of American freedom and civil rights was 95% SFSU: from faculty producers, faculty directors, faculty sound designer, alumni director of photograph, editor and animator to a crew of Cinema graduate and undergraduate students,” said Bernardi, who is a veteran of the Iraq war and a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves. 

Later this year, Oxford University Press will publish a related nonfiction comic book, “The First Black Marines,” by Getz and SF State History student Robert Willis. 

Watch the documentaries on YouTube. 

Against the odds, two San Francisco institutions have long collaborated on a grassroots level 

“You’re a stranger now in your home town / With strange faces on once familiar streets.”  

These lines from San Francisco State University Professor Emeritus Alejandro Murguía’s poem “Silicon City” evoke the feelings of many residents of San Francisco’s Mission District, where gentrification has torn apart the community for decades. The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts remains a fixture despite the changes, and it wouldn’t have happened without artists and activists like Murguía. 

“As a marginalized community and community of color, we’re always going to be held to different standards,” said Murguía, the center’s inaugural director who later would earn two degrees from San Francisco State. “And so we always have to come out on top — sobre pasar, go above them — in our talent and our skill and our ability to organize our community so that we can survive.” 

Established in 1977 as inequity and displacement had taken shape in the neighborhood, the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts (MCCLA) provides a full array of free, affordable classes and programming that cover Chicanos, Central and South America and the Caribbean. More than 10,000 people visit every month. Housed in a 37,500-square-foot building honored on the Historic Register of Historic Places, the MCCLA includes an art gallery and studios, a print shop, classrooms and a theatre. It also plays key roles in the annual Carnaval, offering music and dance courses to teach people to perform in the parade. 

“Coming out of the civil rights movement, people of color were finding their voice in this country. Activists were fighting for ethnic studies programs,” said Martina Ayala, MCCLA executive director. “Thanks to those artists and community activists, we can look back at the Mission District and find multiple anchor institutions that were established by young students, many of them at SFSU, who had a long-lasting impact.” 

Coinciding with student activism at SF State in the 1960s, organizers made a major push for the San Francisco government to establish community centers throughout the city. Murguía (B.A., ’90; MFA, ’92), fellow future SF State Latina/Latino Studies Professor Carlos Cordova (B.A., ’74; M.A., ’79) and other students were among those organizing in the Mission.  

“All these cultural celebrations we enjoy today are great, but the history behind them, they came at a cost. And they came at a cost that many college students paid,” Ayala said. “And I can’t thank them enough for their courage to fight for what they believed in.” 

Over the years many SF State faculty have selected the MCCLA as the venue to feature their creative work. Professor Emeritus Carlos Barón (M.A., ’88), once the MCCLA theatre and dance coordinator, premiered his play “Death and the Artist” there. Music Lecturer John Calloway (M.A., ’03) has been performing at the center for decades. 

Murguía says it continues to serve community needs in multiple ways despite existential challenges to the Mission. Gentrification remains the most persistent in the once working-class neighborhood, which was at its peak majority Latina/Latino but continues to decline. 

“It’s a real hotbed of community activism and culture and helps ground the Mission District community through all these phases of gentrification that it’s gone through the past 47 years the cultural center has been around,” he said. “Nationally, it’s a huge magnet for artists from other parts of the country, and even Latin America, to show up in San Francisco and have a place immediately that grounds them in their art, that supports them in their art, that allows them a foundation.” 

MCCLA and SF State faculty and students continue to share a symbiotic relationship, promoting similar grassroots and progressive values. The center frequently employs SF State students as interns, including several this year. SF State Dean of Students Miguel Ángel Hernández has been invited to join the center’s board of directors.  

“Any cultural event that we create — whether it’s a poetry reading, a gallery exhibit, a Carnaval, a music concert — it’s all part of not just our resistance to the antagonism to our community, but an affirmation that we have been here longer than the Pilgrims,” Murguía said. “And that’s super important that we realize that. Every act of culture, whether it’s a mural or a poetry reading, is in fact an act of resistance — doubly so, in our times, when not just our community is being attacked, but arts, reading, literature and books are under assault.” 

MCCLA’s city-owned building needs much maintenance, which will force it to move temporarily beginning July 1. Ayala says she and other MCCLA supporters are using their activism skills to ensure the city government provides written assurance that allows them to return to the city-owned building once retrofit and repairs are completed, honoring the rent of $1 per year.

“I always tell people that the Mission Cultural Center is the hospital of the soul,” Ayala said. “And we all know that during the pandemic, without the arts we would not have been able to survive. When we’re confined in a space, we need to find a spirit.” 

Learn more about SF State’s Latina/Latino Department.