Equality through sociology

MARIEY STOBER Reporter @StoberMariey

Hushed whispers generate a static hum as Professor Shigueru Julio Tsuha, 34, prepares for class. Written on the whiteboard are the top five shows his students want him to binge-watch. As Tsuha begins taking roll the students voice their vote rather than the standard “here.”

“Dang, so far you guys want me to watch ‘House.’

I don’t want to watch ‘House.’” Tsuha laughed.

Tsuha is an instructor with the philosophy and sociology department. He was formerly a professor at the University of California, Riverside. Tsuha now teaches full-time at Pierce College.

Tsuha connects with his students by meeting them on their level. His primary source of inspiration are his roots that reach back to Peru.

“I was 11 years old when I came to Alhambra from Peru.” Tsuha said. “We were immigrants we were starting from nowhere.”

As students take out their pencils, notepads, and calculators, the professor prepares to start his lecture. But before the class begins, he picks up an important tool for science: his guitar.

Raymond Bergstrom uses his guitar in Physics 15, a class offered at Pierce College that teaches how principles of physics affect the production and quality of music.

Physics 15 combines Bergstrom’s two main interests, physics and music, into one course.

“I have a masters degree in physics. At the same time in college, I took a lot of music classes,” Bergstrom said. “I went to music school for a year at what was then called the Los Angeles Music Academy, now called the Los Angeles College of Music.”

Bergstrom stated that the class is unique in that it combines elements of both the music and science worlds together. According to Bergstrom, by the end of the course students should be able to understand every step of the process when creating music.

“As music is played by an instrument, the sound propagates through the air, it’s recorded on a microphone, encoded digitally in the computer, played back through an amplifier and a loudspeaker, and heard by ears of a listener,” Bergstrom said.

The curriculum covered in the course includes wave motion and simple harmonic motion. By taking this class students will learn about general properties of sound waves. “This class is more of a science class than a music class. I try and do as much music stuff as I can,” Bergstrom said. “We get into how different instruments work. We spend a lot of time talking about all different kinds of instruments, strings, wind instruments, keyboard, percussion, speech and singing.”

Although Physics 15 is mostly a lecture course, Bergstrom said that they do have in-class labs that include different instruments. Bergstrom’s in-class labs include string, wind and keyboard instruments, however, he does not have a lab for percussion. Bergstrom emphasized that he would like to eventually include a percussion lab.

Though Bergstrom incorporates as much music as he

The Pierce College website describes Physics as “the study and mathematical description of the universe and everything in it.” Nearly all physics courses offered combine lecture, lab and group work into a semester of exploring and understanding the way our world works.

“If you want to learn about engineering or recording this is the backbone of all of that,” Bergstrom said.

According to Bergstrom, the topics that are studied in the class are used by most, if not all, music engineers, record labels and music studios to produce the best quality music.

[For the full story visit theroundupnews.com]

Throughout his youth Tsuha lived with his family and close relatives. At times, the living space grew cramped as the group of 10 moved from a three bedroom apartment to a two bedroom apartment. Though privacy was a luxury, Tsuha recalls that he was “never miserable. Not by a longshot.”

“I had always dreamed of living together with my cousins.” Tsuha said. “It was something we always hoped to do when I lived in Peru. When we moved here [Alhambra, Ca] I got that chance.”

Arriving in the United States in March 1992, Tsuha’s first impression of his new home was one of violence. The outbreak of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots fueled an outcry for social change.

“My conception of the U.S. was that it was filled with criminals and gang members because that was the media at the time.” Tsuha said.

It was an experience he would never forget.

In October 1994 Tsuha joined protesters marching down the streets of Los Angeles in opposition against Proposition 187. The ballot initiative was designed to establish a screening system that would allow the state to deny illegal aliens access to public services such as education and health care. Although Tsuha himself was a legal citizen of the U.S. many people he knew were not.

“I was fortunate enough to come [to the United States] with papers but a lot of my friends didn’t.” Tsuvha said. “Luckily it didn’t pass because the court said it was unconstitutional.”

After completing high school Tsuha pursued a degree in anthropology at UC Riverside. The direction of his education was set until he took a course called Inequality in America. The connection was immediate and forced Tsuha to change his major.

“I did no research regarding what kind of a job you could get with a sociology major.” Tsuha smiled. “I had no plans for the future. I was only concerned with learning more about inequality.”

The one class was all it took to change Tsuha’s perspective. Since then he has never looked back.

During the years leading up to his residency at Pierce College Tsuha acted as the executive director of the Dolores Huerta Labor Institute. He has also organized peaceful demonstrations as part of the Fight for 15-an organization that aims to raise the living wages for minimum wage workers.

As an undergraduate at UC Riverside Tsuha met a fellow sociology major who would later become his colleague and good friend.

James McKeever is the chair of the history, philosophy, and sociology departments. Though he was a student at the University of Southern California, McKeever met Tsuha through a mutual friend in the Minority Fellowship Program or MFP.

In the 15 years that they have known each other, McKeever is keen to Tsuha’s unique teaching style and his ability to engage with his students. One such aspect is allowing the class to select the shows he watches.

“It lets students know that their input is valuable to you [the teacher].” McKeever said.

The ritual that Tsuha performs during roll call would seem trivial to students looking into the class. For Tsuha, the top five shows list has many purposes. Primarily, it breaks the ice and helps him “learn the pop culture of today’s students.”

This sense of awareness is one of Tsuha’s best traits.

“I’ve always known him to be a bright conscientious person.” McKeever said. “So I was really happy to hear that he was one of the people who applied [for the position].”

With this summer acting as his introduction to Pierce College, Tsuha’s first full schedule began with the fall 2015 semester.