Election Course Tackles Presidential Race

GOLDEN GATE XPRESS -- “This class helps students to better process all the information given, making it less confusing,” said Professor Joel Kassiola, who created the course in 2004 to help inform the community. “There’s too much information to make sense of.” Kassiola said he relates the class to the Chinese philosopher Confucius’ teachings of the importance of self-cultivation and making sense of the world. He said the course also provides information on the different problems that contemporary population faces. Political Science Assistant Professor Marcela Garcia-Castañon, who is joining Kassiola to teach the course for the first time, said the diversity of SF State’s faculty helps elevate the political conversation. She said the cultural diversity of the Bay Area was represented by faculty members themselves and by what they bring to the discussion. “My push has been toward incorporating it (the course) as a pathway for students to become community-oriented,” she said.