California State University, Northridge sociology professor Moshoula Capous-Desyllas and sociology graduate students Aleksey Reshetnikov, Patricia Lara and Elizabeth Bogumil are researching people’s pathways to nonprofit services in an unconventional way — through the creative arts and visual mapping methodologies.

Funded by CSUN’s Isabelle Walker Endowment for Nonprofit Organizations Studies, the project highlights the pathways that clients take to get services from various nonprofit organizations. The project was inspired by an experience that Bogumil had with a homeless CSUN student who was looking for help.

From left: Sociology professor Moshoula Capous-Desyllas, and sociology graduate students Elizabeth Bogumil, Patricia Lara and Aleksey Reshetnikov. Photo by Luis Garcia.

“As a person or organization wanting to link individuals to services they need and that can make a difference in their life, it is sometimes difficult to know whether you are providing a reference to a service that is pertinent for and appropriate to the situation — or if these services are even made available and accessible to those in need of them,” Bogumil said.

The sociology project was a collaborative endeavor. Undergraduate students interviewed clients at their internship sites and used this information to create art illustrating their clients’ experiences. Students interned with a variety of nonprofit organizations serving a wide range of people: the homeless, domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, public school students, older adults, sex workers, single mothers and children in foster care.

Students produced posters, videos and photos, which the research team will analyze to create one cohesive, complex and multi-layered visual map representing client pathways to services. Each person on the team brings an artistic sensibility to the table — Lara is an illustrator, Reshetnikov does multimedia work, Bogumil is a blogger and Capous-Desyllas is an arts-based researcher.

Sociology student Aleksey Reshetnikov and sociology undergraduate, Denice Castillon. Photo by Luis Garcia.

Reshetnikov said visualizing their research — in addition to writing an academic paper — can produce more benefits to the public, as the chances of the average person learning about their findings would be lower if only a paper was available.

“This is really exciting for the nonprofits to get to visually see where the issues are, so they can address them,” he said. “Our paper only allows us to connect with other academics, while the visualization lets us reach a much broader audience.”

Capous-Desyllas, who has worked in the social services field for more than a decade, said accessing services initially can be challenging. The nonprofits involved in the project could benefit from understanding barriers and seeing how they can better reach out to the public and assist their clients, the professor said.

“Some of us in social work and social services get so used to the same resources and don’t get updated information on what type of funding an organization gets, or if their services have changed or discontinued,” Capous-Desyllas said. “Not everybody is up to date on the changing face of the nonprofit world, and hopefully this project will inform the community about new developments.”

Lara said the project helps the nonprofits, as well as providing a great learning experience and resume-builder for undergraduate students who created the maps.

“The undergraduate students’ involvement in this project allows them the opportunity to further immerse themselves into the nonprofit organization, by not only having a clearer understanding of the agency’s structure, but also being privy to how clients perceive the service,” Lara said. “As budding sociologists, this knowledge is an asset they can utilize in their future professions or academic ventures to better address those who are in need of assistance.”

The undergraduates showed their artistic pieces at their class presentation on Dec. 1. Capous-Desyllas said they provided great material to analyze.

“The students’ projects were creative, impactful and powerful representations of their clients’ lives and journeys to accessing social services,” Capous-Desyllas said. “The visualization of these pathways makes the task of comprehensive analysis significantly easier for our research team.”

Sociology undergraduate Brigitte Barajas. Photo by Luis Garcia.

Sociology major Brigitte Barajas, one of the students who participated in the project and an intern at the Antelope Valley Partners for Health, created a poster showing the pathway to services for a client trying to get custody of his son, who is currently in the foster care system. She said the number of roadblocks the client faced shows how difficult navigating the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) can be without nonprofit help.

“[The client] got help from Parents in Partnership (PIP), an organization that supports parents separated from their children by DCFS,” Barajas said. “PIP basically did everything. If someone from PIP had not come to talk to him, he would not have known what he had to do (such as taking parenting classes or DNA testing).”

For her artistic project, Barajas built a miniature version of a house the Antelope Valley mayor provides for parents to visit with their kids. She serves as a coach for families, guiding them in areas they may need help, to be able to reunite with their children. Using art provided a chance to show what is valuable to a client’s pathway to services, Barajas said.

“It’s so nice for families to have a place to meet other than McDonald’s, to start transitioning back into a home environment,” Barajas said. “There are pictures of the living room and kitchen of the actual home inside the little replica. Using art in this way can help nonprofits to see what is important to the families and clients they serve.

Majesca Wong presents “Music Therapy Research 2025: A Student’s Perspective” at the American Music Therapy Association’s National Conference in Kansas City, Missouri.

A nervous freshman who just graduated from Loara High School in Anaheim, Majesca Wong attended her very first class at California State University, Northridge in fall 2014.

At the end of the class, she felt overwhelmed by the extensive coursework outlined in the requirements for her major, music therapy.

Wong recently discovered her interest in music therapy in 2014 and wondered if she chose the right path. In addition to the rigorous curriculum, CSUN’s music therapy students are required to sing, play piano and strum a guitar.

“I didn’t do any of that when I came in,” Wong said. “I just played the French horn, so I had to learn how to play the piano and the guitar and how to use my voice well. I just remember thinking, ‘I can’t do this. This is too much and it seems so hard.’”

Just one year later, the passionate musician has become a role model in her field, recognized by her professors for her outstanding work. Wong is serving as president of the Student Music Therapy Club, she works at Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach and volunteers at Parthenia Elementary School in North Hills. She also has carved out time to play the French horn in CSUN’s Wind Ensemble.

“Majesca is always doing all the little extra things that add up to an excellent student, role model, future musician and therapist,” said Ric Alviso, chair of the music department. “The quality of her work and involvement in the program is very high.”

A lifelong music lover, Wong has been playing  the French horn since high school. She didn’t want to pursue performance as a career, she said, leaning toward special education because of her love for children. It was her band director in high school who recognized her musical talent and introduced her to music therapy as a way to combine music with working with disabled children.

“I feel like I relate to kids really well,” Wong said. “They are the epitome of innocence, and I want to help them reach their full potential.”

To fulfill her first field work requirement for her major, Wong worked with a choir for people with developmental disabilities. She said the experience boosted her motivation to become a music therapist and eliminated her doubts.

“It was my favorite part of the week,” Wong said. “It was the best thing ever, and I realized this is where I needed to be.”

In July, Wong participated in the American Music Therapy Association’s national conference, “Music Therapy Research 2025: A Student’s Perspective,” in Kansas City, Missouri. Barbara Else, one of the conference organizers, previously presented a guest lecture on the psychology of music in Wong’s class at CSUN. Wong said she was instantly inspired by Else’s work.

“I emailed her and said I am interested in research and asked, ‘How can I be involved and help?’” Wong said. “She suggested that we make a poster about where students see music therapy research in the year 2025. So, my whole class got together, and we all contributed to this poster.”

Wong presented the poster in front of more than 40 professional music therapists, researchers, students and interns at the conference.

“I was so nervous, but it was a lot of fun and definitely a good experience,” she said. “If I have one goal for myself, it would be to keep learning. I always want to keep learning, for the rest of my life.”

Music professor and CSUN Music Therapy Wellness Clinic director Ronald Borczon said Wong has been very engaged in connecting the classroom with real-life professionals.

“[Wong] has shown wonderful leadership skills, working closely with myself in bringing music therapists to CSUN for workshops,” he said.

Wong is slated to graduate from the two-year music therapy program in spring 2016. After graduation, she plans to work in a six-month music therapy internship, helping people in the process of discovering and reaching their full potential through music therapy.

“Her desire to help people with their various issues in life is a gift to all those she serves,” Borczon said.

Alviso echoed those sentiments.

“We need people like Majesca going into the field of music therapy,” he said. “She has that wonderful mix of being an excellent musician, as well as having her heart in the right place.”

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) has awarded California State University, Northridge $2 million to support students and enhance technology in the school’s acclaimed Department of Cinema and Television Arts.

A portion of the grant will go toward creating endowed scholarships to support underrepresented film and television students in the industry. Scholarship recipients will be declared Hollywood Foreign Press Association Scholars and be mentored by department faculty and industry professionals.

HFPA President Lorenzo Soria expressed his enthusiasm and hopes for what the grant bestowed upon CSUN will bring.

“The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is thrilled to continue its relationship with CSUN, which now spans nearly two decades and has provided invaluable opportunities for deserving students to hone their craft,” Soria said. “We believe that by empowering the filmmakers of tomorrow, we can ensure that our industry is left in good hands. We hope that these gifts will open doors that otherwise wouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

“Southern California’s entertainment industry is known worldwide for creative storytelling with universal appeal,” CSUN President Dianne F. Harrison said. “The Hollywood Foreign Press Association exposes global audiences to new voices and their generous gift to CSUN greatly expands opportunities for even more talented filmmakers to find their voice.”

Nate Thomas, head of CSUN’s film production program. Photo by Lee Choo.

Cinema and television arts professor Nate Thomas, who heads CSUN’s film production program, hailed HFPA’s generosity.

“The new $2 million from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will allow a diverse group of underrepresented students to study with us and transition into the tough industries that make up the cinematic arts,” Thomas said. “The students selected to become HFPA Scholars will come from mostly working-class backgrounds. This gift will literally make the difference between mere artistic aspiration and actual fulfillment of dreams. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is at the forefront of helping to attain needed positive change in the entertainment industry, and ensuring that tomorrow’s filmmakers reflect the wide diversity that their audiences consist of.”

Noting that the HFPA’s gift includes money for purchase and maintenance of new film and television equipment, Thomas said the gift “will ensure that the many students that we serve will cultivate their art and craft on state-of-the-art equipment, since no tools change as quickly as the tools of the film arts.”

To date, the HFPA has committed more than $23.9 million in grants, handed out over 1,000 scholarships and helped restore 90 films. Last summer, the HFPA continued their long-time tradition by awarding more than $2 million in grants at their annual Grants Banquet. The donations benefit a wide range of projects, including higher education, training and mentoring, and the promotion of cultural exchange through film.

CSUN’s relationship with the association dates back to 1996, with an initial gift of $500. Prior to this announcement, the association over the years has nearly given CSUN a total of $1 million to support student film projects and keep CSUN’s film program current with the latest technology. Students edit in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Senior Film Edit Suite on campus, and work on sound design in a state-of-the-art sound mix facility made possible by a grant from the association.

“Everybody in this industry talks about diversity, but it remains mostly talk,” Thomas said. “The HFPA is willing to use its money to make change, and to train the next generation of filmmakers and industry practitioners who come from and reflect the lives of their audiences.”

Jon Stahl, chair of CSUN’s Department of Cinema and Television Arts, thanked the HFPA for its “remarkable level of generosity and support, and for the faith in us and our mission that this grant represents.”

“The HFPA grant will allow us to enhance and upgrade our production and post-production facilities, bringing them to a level commensurate with the excellence of our program,” he continued. “Additionally, this wonderful grant will allow us to provide direct scholarship support to several of our most deserving students, many of whom are the first in their families to attend a university.”

Dan Hosken, interim dean of CSUN’s Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication, which houses the Department of Cinema and Television Arts, agreed.

“We are grateful to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for their generous support of our students and our programs,” he said. “This gift will provide much-needed scholarship support for our students and provide them with state-of-the-art facilities to go along with our exceptional faculty. Combined with our close proximity to the heart of the entertainment industry, this gift will allow us to offer an unparalleled educational experience in the cinema and television arts.”

CSUN’s Department of Cinema and Television Arts has an international reputation for producing dedicated and talented entertainment industry professionals who recognize the value of hard work as they learn and continue to perfect their crafts. The department currently enrolls nearly 1,700 undergraduate students and 30 students in its graduate screenwriting program. Its alumni work in all aspects of entertainment media, from writing, producing and directing to manning cameras and having the final say in what project is made. In 2014, The Hollywood Reporter listed CSUN as one of the top film schools in the U.S., and this year, Variety listed CSUN as one of the top 30 film programs in the U.S. and one of the top 40 film programs internationally.

Serving more than 40,000 students each year, CSUN is one of the nation’s largest single-campus universities in the U.S. and is the third largest in California. CSUN ranks 10th in the country in awarding bachelor’s degrees to underrepresented minority students, fifth nationally in awarding master’s degrees to Hispanic students, and it enrolls the largest number of deaf and hard-of-hearing students of any U.S. state university.

About the Hollywood Foreign Press Association:

Founded in the 1940s during World War II, the HFPA was originally comprised of a handful of LA-based overseas journalists who sought to bridge the international community with Hollywood, and to provide distraction from the hardships of war through film. Seventy years later, members of the HFPA represent 55 countries with a combined readership of 250 million in some of the world’s most respected publications. Each year, the organization holds the third most watched awards show on television, the Golden Globe® Awards, which have enabled the organization to donate more than $23.9 million to entertainment related charities and scholarship programs. For more information, please visit www.GoldenGlobes.com and follow us on Twitter (@GoldenGlobes) and Facebook (www.Facebook.com/GoldenGlobes).

The spring 2016 semester at California State University, Northridge is set to start with Saturday classes Jan. 23. Those who don’t have Saturday classes will begin school on Monday, Jan. 25.

Other important dates throughout the semester include:

Feb. 12: Last day to drop a class and be eligible for a partial refund

March 16-17: GradFest 2016 for graduating seniors

March 21-27: Spring Break

March 31: César Chávez Day; no school

May 14-20: Final exams

May 21-23: Commencement ceremonies

May 27: Last day of 2015-16 academic year

For more information on important dates, visit the CSUN 2015-16 academic calendar.

For more information on GradFest, click here.

Special education credential student Paige Ramer uses TeachLive to practice a lesson on homophones. Photo by Lee Choo.

“Today we’re going over homophones,” Paige Ramer, a California State University, Northridge special education credential student, told a group of middle school students. “What’s the difference between there, their and they’re?”

One student had his hand up. Another student sat and looked disinterested. Yet another was distracted.

None of them were real.

Ramer was not in a classroom, but was teaching virtual students in a studio with fellow credential classmates and her professors. She was using cutting-edge software called TeachLive, a “mixed-reality” environment where educators-in-training can practice teaching before a classroom of virtual young people programmed to act like real students — boredom, distractions and all — and receive instant feedback from professors.

Adopting the tool in 2012, CSUN was the 13th university in the country to use TeachLive. Special education professor Sally Spencer said TeachLive has changed the way credential students learn how to teach, providing a needed bridge between coursework and student teaching.

“For about 100 years, we have had the same model for education,” Spencer said. “Students take classes and learn about teaching, and then we throw them in the fire. It’s a sink-or-swim model. They get tossed into teaching with real kids, and there aren’t a lot of opportunities for feedback. They definitely can’t do things over again — they have only one shot to get it right.

“But [TeachLive] helps isolate and pinpoint teaching behaviors that are effective or ineffective, giving teachers-in-training a chance to practice them until they get them right before going out into a real classroom,” Spencer continued. “Learning to teach is no longer done in the abstract.”

CSUN teacher candidates using TeachLive stand in front of an eight-foot screen, where the virtual kids appear. The children all have distinct personalities and interact with the teacher in real time, giving students like Ramer a lifelike classroom experience. Professors interject during the sessions to give the teachers pointers.

“[In the sessions], professors will stop us and tell us to do things like move around and point during lessons, not just read out loud to the students, or tell us to reword phrases,” Ramer said. “Having that kind of discussion makes us more aware of how important it is to plan. We constantly have to be aware of how we are speaking. But once we get those steps down, we improve dramatically and the [virtual] students even respond to us in a better way.”

Spencer said the software also helps her students build confidence and gain classroom management skills.

“One of the great advantages is that we get to control the behavioral levels of the [virtual] kids,” Spencer said. “If the new teacher isn’t too confident, we set the behavior levels low so they can focus on teaching. We turn up the behavior levels as they get more confident, so they get to experience teaching and managing behavior at the same time.”

In addition to professors, the sessions are done in front of other credential students. Ramer said it is a positive experience to support and learn from each other.

“It was a daunting thing to begin with — we were all very nervous going up in front of everybody,” Ramer said. “But we are very supportive of each other and we always try to talk to each other before the TeachLive sessions. And afterward, we say what we liked about each other’s sessions and discuss what we might include in our own lessons. We understand each other’s feelings, and it gets a little bit easier as the semester goes on.”

On Jan. 20, California State University, Northridge debuted the inaugural student edition of CSUN Weekly. This e-newsletter is a complement to the Alumni/Community and Faculty/Staff versions of CSUN Weekly, which launched in October 2013.

CSUN Weekly provides a weekly update of the latest news and events at CSUN. The e-newsletter highlights information about CSUN’s diverse academic programs; student, faculty and staff achievements; available services; important announcements; and a calendar of events that enrich campus life.

This new edition for students is funded by Campus Quality Fees (CQF) and CSUN’s University Advancement. A team of CSUN students will curate and generate content, create dedicated social media messaging and produce unique multimedia spotlights. Students will also be informed about important deadlines, as well as upcoming CSUN Athletics, Valley Performing Arts Center, Associated Students, University Student Union and other campus events.

The student edition of CSUN Weekly will be sent to CSUN students via email each week during the academic year and will go on hiatus during the summer and winter breaks.

California State University, Northridge biology professors MariaElena Zavala and Steve Oppenheimer are well known in their department and on campus, and have been recognized by the White House for being mentors and role models for students.

Zavala, who has been teaching at CSUN since 1988, and Oppenheimer, who has been teaching here since 1971, have both been awarded the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring. Together, they have mentored hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom have gone on to become successful researchers, teachers, professors and medical doctors.

So what does being a mentor mean, and what unique things do these professors do to help students become so successful?

Oppenheimer, who received the award from President Barack Obama in 2010, said being a great mentor means being a great professor and inspiring students to develop a passion for science. He said his own professors and mentors opened the doors of science for him and showed him how to do science right.

“In many cases, the person who takes more interest in a student, actually turns the student on to science,” Oppenheimer said. “Part of loving science is loving the teachers who presented the science. You want students to love their professors because it helps the student in their own careers, in their own striving for success. In my case, they say they love my jokes. I’ve been telling the same jokes for 45 years, but students have come back to me 20 to 30 years later and they remember. It brings a warmth to [learning].”

Steve Oppenheimer points to sea urchins, used in cancer research.

Greg Zem, who earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from CSUN in 1985, is one of Oppenheimer’s former students. He currently teaches eighth-grade science at Ernest Lawrence Middle School, a highly gifted magnet school in the San Fernando Valley. Zem still works with Oppenheimer on research publications, and said the professor continues to mentor and teach him.

“Dr. Oppenheimer is probably the most influential person ever, as far as my career goes,” Zem said. “You want him to teach you science — it’s crystal clear when he explains it. A teacher like him comes along rarely. I had an initial love for science and he expanded it exponentially.”

Zem said Oppenheimer also influences the lives of his own students. He brings about 80 of his students to CSUN every year to present in a K-12 science symposium coordinated by Oppenheimer. Zem’s students also publish their work in CSUN’s New Journal of Student Research Abstracts, which Oppenheimer helped to create more than 20 years ago and still manages as editor-in-chief.

“[Oppenheimer] helps my students’ academic careers,” Zem said. “[At the symposium], he gives them a great speech and they’re so inspired after that. They just float out of that symposium.”

Zavala, who received her mentoring honor in 2000 from President Bill Clinton, said mentoring can be done in the short term or long term, and on professional or personal levels. It involves building trust with students, having cultural competency and providing opportunities for networking. Her ultimate aim as a mentor is to foster her students’ independence and support their vision for success.

“The idea is to try to help people and share knowledge, to help them achieve their goals,” Zavala said. “It’s not my job to make decisions for the students — it’s to help them think through what their choices are, to help come up with approaches that might help them achieve their goals.”

MariaElena Zavala speaks to MARC students. Photo by David Hawkins.

Zavala, who was the first Mexican-American woman in the country to earn a Ph.D. in botany, also has served as the director of CSUN’s Minority Access to Research Careers Undergrad Science Training and Academic Research (MARC U-STAR) program for more than 25 years. She said developing good mentoring relationships in scientific fields is important because those fields lack first-generation, minority and women scientists.

“[Mentoring] is so important for people whose families don’t include a lot of professionals,” Zavala said. “Being a professional involves more than knowledge of and passion for your profession; you have to be given opportunities to talk about your science. The mentor can provide an entree into the profession, where students get to meet the ‘boss’ ’ friends and develop a network of scientists. You need to gain cultural capital.”

Zavala’s former MARC program student, E. Lisako Jones-McKyer, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from CSUN in 1995, is now a tenured associate professor of health promotion and community health sciences at Texas A&M University. She said Zavala helped prepare her for her doctoral program and future career.

“She prepped us for the kind of challenges we would face in grad school in a research career,” Jones-McKyer said. “At CSUN, there is a significant number of first-generation students. A lot of us have impostor syndrome — a feeling that you didn’t achieve things because you are good, but for other reasons, as if you don’t belong. She knew we would face discrimination and gave us the confidence we needed.”

Jones-McKyer said Zavala has positively influenced her and she still looks up to Zavala for advice and mentorship.

“She changes people’s lives — it’s one thing to teach someone, but it’s another thing to change the entire trajectory of someone’s life,” Jones-McKyer said. “I would not be here today if not for her. Through my graduate career, to this day, she hasn’t stopped mentoring me.”

Recognizing the “incredible” innovative work already taking place at California State University, Northridge, President Dianne F. Harrison encouraged faculty to rediscover efforts already underway on campus and develop new innovations.

“The good news is that CSUN is already doing incredibly innovative work,” said Harrison during her keynote address at CSUN’s annual Faculty Retreat on January 19. She highlighted a range of programs, including the Art of Innovation Conference, BUILD PODER, the GE Paths Program, CSUN AppJam, the Help Make CSUN Shine Bright Program, LACI@CSUN and the Institute for Sustainability.

Harrison, who titled her speech “Infusing Innovation Throughout CSUN,” said CSUN has a strong foundation of research, scholarship and expertise, “thanks to an outstanding and talented faculty and staff, a well-known commitment to student success and strong connections with the community.”

“It is just a matter of harnessing and directing this energy in productive and targeted ways — and finding creative ways to encourage more innovation and creativity among students, faculty and staff,” Harrison said. “Just as challenging, how do we scale up and permeate our entire student body and curriculum? We must offer these opportunities to every single one of our students.”

About 200 faculty attended the two-day retreat themed “Rediscovering CSUN.” The event was opened with a welcome from Faculty Senate President Adam Swenson and event co-chairs Anne Eipe and Christina Mayberry.

“People here are really committed to collaboration and working hard to make things better,” said Swenson during his remarks. “Innovation really does run deep here.”

The retreat included a variety of panels and presentations, from “Re-discovering Service Learning: Breaking Down Myths and Presenting Opportunities to Engage Students in Our Community” and “Discovering CSUN Wellness through the Institute for Community Health and Wellbeing” to “Higher Education and the Labor Market: CSUN as a Case Study.” Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Yi Li offered remarks on “My Discovery of CSUN.”

The event ended with “The Amazing CSUN eScavenger Hunt.”

Li said he has been impressed by the campus’ embrace of the president’s seven priorities and the collaborative spirit. His goals include a commitment to faculty diversity, student success and increasing research activity.

California State University, Northridge’s BUILD PODER program is offering students a unique opportunity to become immersed and gain experience in biomedical research.

BUILD PODER stands for Building Infrastructure to Diversity (BUILD) and Promoting Opportunities for Diversity in Education and Research (PODER). The undergraduate research training program received a $22 million grant over five years in fall 2014 from the National Institutes of Health, with the goal of increasing diversity in biomedical research fields. The first cohort of BUILD PODER students attended CSUN’s Summer JumpStart Program in mid-July, 2015.

CSUN students must apply for the second cohort, set to begin in fall 2016, by Feb. 5. If accepted to the program, students will receive 60 percent of their tuition paid, faculty mentorship and a paid research experience. The mentorship is one of the program’s highlights, as many participants are first-generation college students and may lack academic role models.

“Students get assigned a mentor so they have someone they can connect to and help them develop as a scholar and a student,” said Gabriela Chavira, the student training core director for BUILD PODER. “They will get involved in research projects that their mentors are working on. The mentor is already an expert in the field and they are teaching their students how to get grounded in research.”

Working alongside their mentors, the students receive funding to travel and present at national and regional conferences. This can open up opportunities for students to network with potential doctoral mentors and summer research mentors.

During the summer, BUILD PODER offers a four-week JumpStart Program to give students firsthand experience in research. Focusing on community support, students meet and work with other peers and their mentors. The program gives students the necessary tools to help them develop skill sets to apply for future intensive doctoral programs. The current BUILD PODER cohort includes 37 CSUN students and 16 students from local community colleges, with 75 more participants expected to join them in the fall.

“We are trying to grow as a program, we are hiring new staff to give students more support,” said Chavira. “Next year, everyone is going in together. I want them to be a whole family and I want them to be connected with one another.”

Students also have the opportunity to conduct research over the summer with their five research partner universities: UCLA, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and Claremont Graduate university. This opportunity is completely funded by BUILD PODER for the summer.

Students interested in applying to BUILD PODER can do so before the Feb. 5 deadline at http://www.csun.edu/build-poder.

Officials at California State University, Northridge are teaming up with their counterparts at the University of Pennsylvania to launch an unprecedented program to increase the number of Latino professors working in the humanities.

The program, Pathways to the Professoriate, is supported by a $5.1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the University of Pennsylvania for its Graduate School of Education’s Center for Minority Serving Institutions. Over a five-year period, the program will prepare 90 students from Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) across the United States, including CSUN, to move forward and get doctorates in humanities-related fields.

The program comes as colleges and universities across the country struggle to develop faculty that reflect the nation’s growing ethnic and cultural diversity.

“Cal State Northridge was honored to be selected to participate in the Pathways to the Professoriate initiative,” said Elizabeth Say, dean of CSUN’s College of Humanities. “We know well the quality of our students — what they sometimes lack is opportunity. This partnership with the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions and the Mellon Foundation will provide unparalleled opportunity for our students to achieve their educational goals. Together with our other institutional partners, we can begin to transform the professoriate to better reflect and serve the next generation of university students.”

Elizabeth Say, dean of the College of Humanities.

The problem of not having enough minorities in the professor pipeline cannot be fixed overnight Marybeth Gasman, director of the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions, which will oversee the project.

“We see this program as a way to begin a fundamental change,” Gasman said. “We hope this creates a strong pathway to graduate school for Latino students that will grow over time, with these students supporting one another, and one day becoming mentors themselves.”

Mariët Westermann, vice president at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, said that as the demographic profile of the United States changes, the country has a compelling interest to obtain the full participation of previously underrepresented communities.

“The past decade has seen considerable gains in doctoral attainment for Latinos, yet these gains have not kept up with the growth in the U.S. Hispanic population,” she noted.

Over the course of the five-year program, the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions will partner with CSUN, Florida International University and the University of Texas, El Paso — all Hispanic Serving Institutions — and five research institutions — New York University; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Pennsylvania; Northwestern University; and the University of California, Davis.

As part of Pathways to the Professoriate, selected CSUN undergraduates in the humanities, social sciences and related fields will take part in intensive summer research programs and cross-institutional conferences, while also receiving mentoring and support for applying to and enrolling in graduate school.

CSUN faculty mentors will work closely with each student beginning in the second semester of his or her junior year, and the relationship will continue as the student matriculates into Ph.D. programs. The summer research programs at CSUN will focus on an exploration of humanities-based methodological approaches, as well as professional skills, including academic writing, graduate school application writing and preparation for taking the GRE. The standardized admissions test is required by most graduate schools in the United States.

Say noted that in the academic year 2012-13, CSUN awarded 1,143 bachelor’s degrees in the humanities and social sciences. Thirty-three percent of those went to Latinos.

“We have the students, and now we have a way to help them go on to Ph.D. programs that they may have only dreamed about,” she said. “The fact that CSUN faculty mentors will work intensively with each student beginning in the second semester of junior yea — and they will be there as the student goes on into Ph.D. programs — is critical. This investment of time and resources is a game-changer for our students.”

The Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions brings together practitioners from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions and Asian American, Native American and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions. Based in the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, the center’s goals include elevating the educational contributions of minority-serving institutions; ensuring they are part of national conversations; bringing awareness to the vital role such institutions play in the nation’s economic development; increasing the rigorous scholarship of the institutions; connecting the institutions’ academic and administrative leadership to promote reform initiatives; and strengthening efforts to close educational achievement gaps among disadvantaged communities.

Founded in 1969, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation endeavors to strengthen, promote and, wherever necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies by supporting exemplary institutions of higher education and culture as they renew and provide access to an invaluable heritage of ambitious, path-breaking work.

Serving more than 41,000 students each year, CSUN is one of the largest universities in the United States, and it has an impact to match its size. CSUN is a national leader in awarding bachelor’s degrees to underrepresented minority students and master’s degrees to Hispanic students. It also enrolls the largest number of deaf and hard-of-hearing students of any U.S. state university. CSUN’s 171 academic programs and engaged centers enjoy international recognition for excellence. CSUN currently partners with more than 100 institutions of higher education in 22 countries around the globe and attracts the largest international student population of any U.S. master’s-level institution. Situated on a 356-acre park-like setting in the heart of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, the campus features modern educational buildings and world-class LEED Gold-certified performing arts and recreational facilities recognized as among the best in the country. CSUN is a welcoming university that champions accessibility, academic excellence and student success.

Walking across the campus of California State University, Northridge, you’d be hard pressed to find a student whose life has not been touched by Debra Hammond, executive director of the University Student Union (USU). Whether they sit under an umbrella in the USU courtyard, run on a treadmill in the Student Recreation Center or attend a lecture in the Grand Salon, hundreds of thousands of students over the years have been positively impacted by Hammond. For that, the California State University (CSU) Board of Trustees recognized her with its highest honor, the Wang Family Excellence Award, on Tuesday, Jan. 26.

So what drives Hammond to work as hard as she does? What makes her shine? Hammond reflects on her experience and offers valuable wisdom for all CSUN students.

Q. Congratulations on the award! How do you feel? 

It feels surreal.  It’s overwhelming and amazing — all of those things wrapped up into one. It’s wonderful to have your work recognized like this.  This work is what I love to do. There are a lot of people on this campus who really care about the students, so I’m just really honored and humbled to receive this.

Q. You’ve been working at this campus for 22 years, you seem to have really made CSUN your home.

“I have! I love CSUN. There are three main reasons why I have stayed here.

First, I love the students. I love the fact that we serve so many first-generation students and that we are a Hispanic serving institution.  The diversity of CSUN enriches us all.   Students want to be here and I think our students have a deeper appreciation for college because they know that by going to CSUN it’s a game changer — not just for them, but for their families. It can change future generations of families. We have the opportunity to expose students to concepts, ideas, thoughts, things they have not necessarily seen before but they want to explore. And they have a right to do that. We are not a USC, [our students] are not students who [have] legacies in their families for generations. We are starting something here. What we do is important. And that’s why I continue to do it.

The other thing is that I absolutely love the staff I work with. They are really creative, innovative, energetic, enthusiastic, never-say-no kind of people. They want to serve. Our philosophy in the student union is about servant-leadership. So our job is to serve first and then we lead and teach as we are doing that. We consider ourselves educators outside of the classroom.  We are in partnership with the academic side of the house and that’s really important to us.

The third reason why I’ve stayed here is the support from the leadership of the institution. What they have allowed us to do here is to be creative, to have an idea and say, okay, we can actually bring it to fruition, and not say no. We have some freedom and latitude.  If we can work with students and help them realize concepts or programs that are really important – then we can be deeply instrumental in connecting them with the campus, staying here and graduating.  Student success is what drives me.

Q. Other than your work for the USU, you teach graduate courses in the college counseling and student services program. How do you do it?

I love it because if you work all day and teach in the evening, it gives you a different kind of energy. The students who are in the master’s program also want to be there. I think my responsibility is to mentor people well. My job is to prepare the next generation of people who are going to take my job. I don’t want them to come out and not have the skill sets and the passion needed to do this kind of work. You have to be compassionate and competent.

Q. So many people on this campus are passionate about what they do, such as yourself. How important is that passion?

The passion of the people here — that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning and say: “I’m going to work!” I’ve always wanted a job that didn’t feel laborious. It should be something that you want to do, where you are being of service, having an impact, contributing to a great good. I get to do that every day. I see some people who hate their jobs and I say find something that inspires you! You have to think about it, you really have to know yourself. You have to figure out what is going to make you happy and sustain you for a long period of time. I think a lot of the professions we choose are related to who we are and what our values are, so if you know yourself, it’s a lot easier to be clear about what you want to do for your future, and that doesn’t mean you have to do that forever. But if you have a number of passions, strengths and talents, you need to figure out how to coalesce them together to create a career for yourself where you are going to be happy.

Q. How did you figure out that this was what you wanted to do?

I was a sociology major and criminal justice minor in college and I spent one semester working in a prison. I hated it. It was soul sucking and I said, “I cannot do this job.” I started being much more reflective about what I wanted to do and what it is that I loved doing. I loved planning programs on the campus. I was involved as a student leader at Rutgers so I talked to some mentors who showed me there was a career in higher education administration and that people did this for a living. I shadowed some people and I took a part-time job as an assistant to the dean for minority affairs, which was academic counseling and social programming. And I took it even though it was part time — some people now don’t want to take things that are part time, but you’ve got to get your foot in the door. That job led to another part-time job, so I had two part time positions. Six months later, I got a full-time position and two years after that I became the assistant dean of students and the director of the campus center. It was about being at the right place at the right time and letting your work speak for you.

Q. We’ve had many new resource centers open up since 2012, such as the Pride Center, the Veterans Resource Center and the Oasis Wellness Center. How did all these projects come about?

With the Pride Center and Veterans Resource Center, most of it came from the students. The LGBTQ students and the veteran students both approached the USU Board of Directors the same year and wanted centers. They had petitions and voices – it was a movement. At the end of the year, the USU wanted to dedicate space to them, but because we are an auxiliary, we had to charge for the space. We asked them if they could raise money for the space, but that didn’t happen. So we had to ask ourselves, are we really committed to this and is this something the USU could take on? We sat down and put together a budget, and we worked with the students and with faculty and staff from those communities over the course of a year to get that program up and running. We applied for campus quality fees, we hired a former student to develop the programs, and the student union contributed the space and infrastructure. And now the spaces are bigger and in different areas because more people are using them. The Pride Center moved into the USU Sol Center building and now it’s about three times the size it used to be. The Veterans Resource Center now encompasses the space where the Pride Center used to be, and now it has doubled in size.

The concept of the Oasis Wellness Center came from listening to the students. I am a huge believer in assessment so that we can make effective decisions. Sitting with a group of students and listening to what they say and what they need is amazing, because they will tell you exactly what they think and feel. And then it’s our job to figure out what it is we can put in place to address those issues. That’s how the wellness center really came about. We also worked with campus colleagues – faculty and staff from the Klotz Health Center, University Counseling Services and the College of Health & Human Development to refine the concept.  We did some research, some surveys, focus groups and based on the National Collegiate Health Assessment, we committed to trying to do something about student stress and lack of sleep. We wanted to create something of quality. We visited other campuses and saw their wellness centers, and some were tiny with three bean bag chairs on the floor. And I said, oh no – that’s not my idea of what it should look like, based on what the students said they needed.

Q. You’ve been in college or working at colleges for most of your life. What do you see that has changed during that time and what has remained the same? Are there any new challenges that students have?

There are some things that are the same and some things that are different. I think a big challenge for students is having so many competing priorities. There are so many things to worry about because they have to work, they have to put a certain amount of time into their school, their families. I was doing a workshop for students called ‘What’s on Your Plate?” and I asked them to identify the things that they do in a day. They were adding up their time and on average it was 18 or 20 hours a day without factoring in sleep. So if you are a student and are working or have other commitments and it’s taking up all these hours in your life – and there are only 24 in a day, something is going to be compromised. Some people don’t have an understanding of just how important sleep is! I like sleep, it’s restorative. For me, seven hours is optimally what I would like to have, but most nights I get about 6.5 hours. There are a couple nights when I get four hours and I don’t function as well the next day and I’ve got to make up for it.

Technology was a game-changer — it’s a different world now. Students have the devices in their faces all day long, but that’s how they communicate. I remember when a young staff member sent me a text saying they are going to be sick and I thought, how come he’s not calling me? But that’s not how people communicate any longer. And social media does suck up time. You can use it for good and not as a time waster, but it’s about discerning between those things.

Q. You are known to help students deepen their connection to the university to get them to graduation. Many of our students are low-income and the first in their families to go to college, so that must be especially important for these students.  

That’s why I have such a deep appreciation for students at CSUN. They know this can open up all sorts of doors for them. They know this is an opportunity that they need to take advantage of. CSUN provides hope, it promotes dreams and positive change. The greatest gift is a change in mindset, how you feel in your heart — it’s not just an exercise. Younger siblings and relatives come and see their brother or sister graduate and that encourages the next generation. Education provides options and opportunities and that is the true value of education. It’s not just to get a degree or just get a good job, it’s to explore, to come to know yourself and figure out who you are in the world, how you can contribute while still taking care of your family and being happy.

Q. Being happy — do you try to teach your students the importance of that?

I try to teach my students that they should enjoy their lives. I want them to work hard but also have fun. You may not be able to do it all at the same time, and not at the same degree. It’s about work-life rhythm. There is a rhythm to your life and if you can figure out the rhythm of your life, wouldn’t that feel good? It’s about choices, and sometimes we don’t always make the best choices for ourselves. We’ve got to figure out ways to help students make better choices. You can do it all, but not all at the same time.

Q. What is the biggest challenge you have faced in your time at CSUN?

I started working here about a month before the Northridge earthquake. Recovering from the earthquake was huge. When I first got here we had almost 31,000 students and after the earthquake when we reopened in February, we had 23,000. That was a huge drop and our budget is driven by student fees. We had to figure out what we needed to do in order to keep the programs open and not lay people off. We were one of the few buildings on campus that was standing and that was secure. Counseling services, admissions and records, and the art department occupied our building.  We also used it for classroom space.  One of the biggest lessons I learned — was having to figure out and navigate a new system in the midst of a crisis and how to innovate while you are recovering.

I’m somebody who believes all things happen for a reason. If you learn the lessons from an experience, then you are better prepared for it the next time or that particular lesson is not repeated. That was a great opportunity to learn and meet people, to see people come together to do something and repair the campus. We opened about a month later, and we all figured out how we were going to make that work. We had some tough, lean years during that time period. It was also an opportunity to look at things with new eyes and truly ask ourselves, what do students really need and what do they care about? Why are we even doing this particular thing? Sometimes you are doing things because we’ve always done them, but not because it’s what people need. It was a time for action as well as reflection.

Q. What a way to start at CSUN!

“I know! It was like baptism by fire.”

Q. What is the greatest thing you have learned from your students?

The greatest lesson I get from students is how to really listen. You have to keep asking those questions – being open to new thoughts and discovery. I think that as directors of departments, we can have a lot of preconceived notions about what we think is right. Sometimes we go into meetings or situations with those notions, and they are not always right. So we have to be open enough to really hear people, listen and hear at a deeper level and then ask questions. That’s the greatest tool we have. It is our ability to ask questions and then listen for the answers as opposed to mentally preparing our arguments. We have to overcome that. And I get that lesson over and over again. It’s like yoga or meditation – something you have to continually practice while mitigating distractions.

Q. What are your future goals and plans?

I have lots of ideas, but it’s all about deepening students’ connection to the campus and figuring out how we can serve them better to achieve their educational goals and change their lives. We are possibly envisioning a new center, a ‘center on centers,’ so we can put all of our resource centers into one space. They would all still have their own identities, but they would be able to collaborate together. We are in the exploration phase of this concept and we are going to talk to students and other stakeholders about it. With our current centers, we can see the difference in how various communities feel about the institution. These centers help students feel safe on campus, feel accepted; this is a place for them. That’s what deepens the connection between the students and CSUN and that’s one of the things that gets them through. So these physical spaces are not just because we think it’s nice to have, it’s deeper than that. There is a physiological, psychological connection that’s formed and that’s really important in making sure people feel like they are included, their existence is validated and they matter to this institution.

And then we’ll see where the next road takes me. I’m not quite sure where that’s going to be, but that’s a good thing.

The idea of helping others is something that hits home for California State University, Northridge physical therapy student Ashley Peña.

In her second year in the university’s renowned doctorate in physical therapy program, Peña already has been able to help make a difference in the lives of so many people through the many clinical hours and volunteer work that she and her fellow classmates put in as part of their postgraduate work. Yet for Peña, there is more. Her mother is fighting a battle with multiple sclerosis, and her sister is receiving treatment for cancer.

Her family lives in central California, so Peña keeps up with their respective treatment protocols as best as she can while keeping her pace in such a demanding program. Yet, when joining them for medical appointments, Peña has seen “how people can treat you differently, either pity you or ignore you just because there’s something going on, because it’s easier,” she said. “So I think just going through that with them and helping them along with their rehab process has influenced me.”

Peña is one of 15 physical therapy students who recently were honored at a luncheon to commemorate a partnership between CSUN’s Physical Therapy doctoral program, the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation and the Roy and Roxie Campanella Foundation. The Dodgers and the Campanella Foundations have donated scholarships to CSUN physical therapy students like Peña who are on track to help people rehabilitate their bodies and, in some cases, their lives.

“It’s such a rare association to have with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Campanella family and their foundation, who have been such strong supporters of our program,” said Aimie Kachingwe, a physical therapy faculty member who was at the initial meetings to discuss this partnership more than six years ago. Kachingwe noted that the number of scholarships awarded by this partnership has grown from one to 15, and it will increase to 25 by fall 2017.

Helping these CSUN students is a way of giving back for the Campanella Foundation, as physical therapists played such a major part in the life of Roy Campanella, who was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969. From 1948 to 1957, Campanella built one of the most decorated careers of any catcher in baseball history, earning the National League MVP award three times and leading the Brooklyn Dodgers to the World Series five times — winning it all in 1955. He was also one of the first African-American players in baseball history, debuting just a year after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947.

Campanella’s career came to a tragic halt when he was involved in a car accident during the offseason preceding the 1958 season, the Dodgers’ first in Los Angeles. The accident left him a quadriplegic, and his life changed forever at age 36.

His life began to change for the better when he started physical therapy. Though he would be wheelchair bound until his death in 1993, the work he did with physical therapy led him to become an active member of the Dodgers’ community relations department and part-time instructor of young catchers. Two of his prized pupils were Mike Scioscia and Mike Piazza, the latter joining Campanella in Cooperstown this summer.

“It’s wonderful to know that we’ve got great physical therapists who are going to be going out and helping people who have disabilities, who will be working with people like my father, and how they made such a difference in his life in terms of the immediate relationship of helping him find his spirit again and wanting to live,” said Roy’s daughter Joni Campanella-Roan, who attended the luncheon at CSUN’s Orange Grove Bistro and helped present the scholars with gifts. “It’s always inspiring to hear their stories and how much us giving them this wonderful scholarship impacts their lives, so that they can get out there and make a difference within the community, help to bring back people’s independence and make themselves self-sufficient. That was a major part of what made my father reenter society and reenter baseball — the independence he gained from the physical therapists.”

Though she never got the opportunity to see Campanella play, Peña and her classmates want to carry on his legacy in hopes of being able to help other patients who might be facing similar circumstances.

“It’s devastating to somebody — especially if they’re an athlete — to have a major injury like a car accident, like Roy Campanella, and their life is going to change,” Peña said. “But just being able to help them either adapt to those changes and get back to their life or form a new one, I think that’s definitely one of the biggest reasons why I love physical therapy. Just being able to help people on those journeys, help people adapt to a new way of life or get them back to what they were before if that’s possible. [Campanella] is an inspiring person in general.”

With Campanella having been such a prominent part of Dodger history both on and off the field, it seemed natural for the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation to become involved in the partnership to award these scholarships. In addition to the scholarships, the Dodgers have hosted a physical therapy intern during every Spring Training since 2011, with the intern getting real-world experience alongside the athletic trainers for the Major and Minor Leagues.

“We are proud to be supporters of such a special group of individuals,” said Nichol Whiteman, executive director of the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation. “It is our hope that the scholarship recipients will exemplify the proud legacy of Dodger great Roy Campanella.”

During the luncheon on campus, the scholars expressed their thanks for the scholarship, and how the funds will help them realize their dreams. They talked about the scarcity of scholarships that are dedicated to physical therapy students, and how they are able to volunteer as a result of the scholarships. Peña pointed out an event that is for recent amputees to help them adapt to their new lives.

“We were able to help out at that point, and if we had to find part-time jobs, we wouldn’t be able to do a lot of the volunteer things that CSUN brings to our attention,” Peña said.

“The more we have them out there in the community helping others, the prouder we are,” Campanella-Roan said. “My father’s dream was to be able to give opportunities so physical therapists could go out there and help so many people. Through the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation, this has been one of the partnerships that has allowed us as the Campanella Foundation to provide more scholarships, so there are more kids out there helping everybody.”

Through the CSUN physical therapy program, which only in recent years became a doctoral program, these students are thoroughly prepared to impact patients’ lives in the future. Their enthusiasm and passion was very evident, and those who are there to foster that drive look forward to the increase in scholarships — to help others grow their dreams through this unique association between CSUN, the Dodgers and the Campanella Foundation.

“It’s not about the job, it’s not about the money. It’s because they want to help people,” Kachingwe said. “It really becomes evident when you’re at something like this, and you hear them speak those words. They’re great PTs. If you ask anybody who works with CSUN physical therapy students, they will say these are some of the best physical therapists that are out there. Not only are they educationally prepared, but they’re just really good people.”

California State University Chancellor Timothy P. White visited California State University, Northridge on Jan. 29, as part of his statewide tour of the university system’s innovative learning environments.

During the daylong visit to CSUN, White met with students, faculty, staff and alumni and learned about groundbreaking academic, student-life and campus infrastructure programs.

“It’s very impressive what you’re doing here,” said White about the innovative programs and projects at CSUN. He told the campus community, during an open forum at the Plaza del Sol in the University Student Union, that part of his goal in making campus visits is to get feedback on the common “touchstones” for talking about the CSU system and its success.

Friday’s visit was part of the chancellor’s tour of the 23-campus CSU system. President Dianne F. Harrison and CSU Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs Loren J. Blanchard joined him during some of the day’s activities.

“Hosting Chancellor White gave CSUN the opportunity to demonstrate the outstanding work being done across the university by our faculty, staff and students,” Harrison said. “He saw first-hand the abundance of innovation and creativity that are hallmarks of a CSUN education.”

The chancellor’s day began with breakfast at CSUN’s Physical Plant Management’s Ground Shop with the staff members who maintain the campus landscaping. They demonstrated a unique and innovative system that monitors the campus’ irrigation system in “real-time” to detect malfunctions, helping the campus conserve water.

White answered staff questions and talked about his humble beginnings as a first-generation college graduate.

“We don’t often connect the grounds back to learning and student success,” White said. “But a welcoming, clean, beautiful campus is a much more engaging place to live and to work and learn than a place that does not have that kind of ambience.”

The College of Engineering and Computer Science showed off its innovative, award-winning projects including the El Toro, an autonomous robot built by CSUN students; a Formula SAE race car designed and built by CSUN students; a hybrid layer 3-D printer; a portable solar charging tree; and a solar- and wind-powered reverse osmosis desalination system designed by students.

White also met with Associated Students President Jorge Reyes and about 30 other students to discuss a range of issues including financial aid and student access. During the open forum, White called on all CSU faculty and staff to commit to eliminating achievement gaps and providing access to all underserved communities.

“When we succeed we will eliminate the disparities from graduation success,” White said. “We declare a war on the achievement gap.”

Later in the day, White visited the Matador Emerging Technology and Arts (META) Lab. Thanks to an interdisciplinary partnership between the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Art, undergraduates and graduate students at CSUN are working together to develop web applications to help improve academic- and student-centric services, as well as taking on projects for external clients.

With this new lab, faculty advisers and university officials aim to educate and train the next generation of industry professionals (computer scientists, graphic designers and engineers) — armed with the tangible skills they’ll need for employment and success in the region’s burgeoning tech industry.

With White looking on, students demonstrated some of the state-of-the-art work with “gamification,” the concept of applying game mechanics and game design techniques to engage and motivate people. Students talked about the “DevOps” movement, a new approach and collaboration between developers and operations staff.

“It’s good to see the chancellor interested in what we’re doing,” said Lisa Smith, a student employee at the META Lab, majoring in computer information technology. “This lab is definitely innovation at CSUN. We are learning new ways to work together and collaborate.”

It’s easy to tell a young person what you think they should do to succeed. The challenge lies in recognizing that young people, particularly those from underrepresented communities, sometimes need help in removing the obstacles in their path to success.

Hoping to provide young people and their mentors — from parents and teachers to community leaders — with the tools needed to help clear that path to success for African-American youth, officials at California State University, Northridge are hosting a free, daylong Black Youth Guidance Forum on Saturday, Feb. 13.

“We spend a lot of time at conferences, workshops and symposiums focusing on the ‘issues’ in the community — incarceration, gangs, violence, etcetera — but we also need to spend time talking about the positive things we can do as a community to help our young people feel empowered and hopeful about their future,” said Cedric Hackett, a professor in CSUN’s Department of Africana Studies and director of the university’s W.E.B. DuBois-Fannie Lou Hamer Institute for Academic Achievement. The institute is organizing the forum as part of the university’s Black History Month celebration.

The event is scheduled to take place from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the University Student Union, located on the east side of the campus at 18111 Nordhoff St. in Northridge. The day will feature workshops, a health resource and advocacy fair, and keynote addresses by Troy Vaughn, president and CEO of Christ Centered Ministries, and Yvette Jackson, CEO of the National Urban Alliance.

Hackett said the forum will include four tracks — one for students in kindergarten to fifth grade, one for students in sixth to 12^th grade, one for parents and one for teachers, administrators, counselors and community leaders — designed to foster dialogue and collaboration among the attendees. Students, staff, faculty from CSUN are also encouraged to attend, especially those who will be our future teachers.

“The leadership track will discuss ways to end the school-to-prison pipeline, while the parent track will talk about how parents can support their kids in their post-secondary efforts,” Hackett said. He noted that for many parents, their children are the first ones in their families to go to college, and they are often at a loss on how to help them.

For Hackett, the most exciting tracks may be those geared toward the young people themselves.

“It’s important to include them in the discussion,” he said. “You can call it empowerment, liberation, validation, whatever. They are all components of outcomes that result in young people being enriched with all types of information that can help them succeed, and the awareness that there are people out there who are willing to help them.

“The whole day is geared to promote racial uplift, health and wellness, college preparation and leadership development,” Hackett continued. “What I would love to see come out of this is a college collaboratory — community partnerships — with nonprofit organizations, for understanding and developing clear pathways for African-American youth and other youth of color to enter post-secondary education.”

For more information about the forum or to register, call (818) 677-7155 or visit the website https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-youth-guidance-forum-tickets-20688960237.

The panel of speakers at the screening of Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race in the Armer Theatre. From left: Lorraine Bradley, Tom Bradley’s daughter; Alison Sotomayor, co-producer; Lyn Goldfarb, co-producer; and Kent Kirkton, director of the Tom and Ethel Bradley Center at CSUN. Photo by David Hawkins.

The daughter of legendary Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley was among a panel of experts who talked about his extraordinary life, during an event that kicked off Black History Month at California State University, Northridge on Monday, Feb. 1.

“Perhaps this film will ignite the fire. … Spark an interest in the next leader,” said Lorraine Bradley, after a screening of a film about her father’s life, Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race, in CSUN’s Armer Theater.

CSUN political science major Zakiyyah Babatunde-Bey said she was inspired by the film. “Everyone should see it,” she said.

The film chronicles the life of Bradley, the first African-American to be elected as mayor of a major U.S. city with an overwhelming white majority. His extraordinary multi-racial coalition redefined Los Angeles, ushered in police reform and transformed American politics.

Bradley’s daughter was joined by the film’s producers, Alison Sotomayor and Lyn Goldfarb, and Kent Kirkton, the director of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center at CSUN, during a panel discussion. Lorraine said telling her father’s story is part of the mission of the Tom and Ethel Bradley Foundation.

The foundation partnered with CSUN last year to form the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center at CSUN. The center has continued the work of the Institute for Arts & Media to preserve the visual history of Southern California, but will have a renewed focus on the years when Tom Bradley served as Los Angeles’ mayor, from 1973 to 1993.

“It’s an amazing period in our history,” Kirkton told the audience. “We should mine it for the lessons it can teach us.”

The center’s online, digital collection can be accessed through the Oviatt Library website.

Sotomayor and Goldfarb said they decided to produce a documentary on Tom Bradley in 2008 during Barack Obama’s campaign for president. They were surprised to discover there were no documentaries, scholarly biographies or substantive interviews about Bradley, who died in 1998.

“Tom Bradley laid the foundation for the kind of coalition politics that allowed President Obama to be elected,” Goldfarb said.

CSUN alumnus Jacquil Constant ’02 (Radio Television Video Film/Pan African Studies), M.A.’14 (Cinema and Television Arts /Pan African Studies) who coordinated the event called Tom Bradley a “transformational leader.”

The event, which was sponsored by the Department of Art, Department of Cinema and Television Arts, Department of Africana Studies and the CSUN Black Alumni Association, was the first of several events planned for Black History Month.

For more information about Black History Month events, contact the Department of Africana Studies at (818) 677-3311.

The first Education on the Edge lecture of the year on Thursday, Feb. 18, at California State University, Northridge will explore how technology, big data and students’ ever-changing learning needs are transforming learning and how students should be taught.

Candace Thille

Candace Thille, founding director of the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University, will talk about how educators can use open, web-based courses and technology to improve the educational outcomes for students with diverse learning needs. Her lecture, “Technology, Big Data and Student Learning Needs: Transforming Education,” is scheduled to take place at 7 p.m. in the University Student Union’s Northridge Center, located on the east side of the campus at 18111 Nordhoff St. in Northridge.

“CSUN’s Center for Teaching and Learning is always looking for recommendations for strong speakers on cutting-edge educational topics for our Education on the Edge series,” said Wendy W. Murawski, executive director and Eisner Endowed Chair of the Center for Teaching and Learning. “Imagine how excited we were when CSUN’s own president, Dr. Dianne F. Harrison, recommended Candace Thille to us! President Harrison said that she had recently heard Dr. Thille speak and thought that every faculty member at CSUN should hear her message about how students learn and how that can impact our own teaching.”

Thille’s focus of research and development is in applying results from the learning sciences to the design, implementation and evaluation of open, web-based learning environments.

The Open Learning Initiative, which Thille first built at Carnegie Mellon, was originally designed to make courses freely available to non-enrolled learners. It also created software that would adapt to the individual needs of students. When the program was used, researchers found that students who used the open-learning program scored just as well as those who attended weekly lectures and a lab.

Those results prompted a re-examination of the initiative. In recent years, it has been used to help liberal arts colleges better educate academically underrepresented students or free up classroom time for other purposes. In addition, the software is being developed to meet the needs of particular educational communities. Thille’s work at Stanford expands on what she was doing at Carnegie Mellon.

Thille also serves as a redesign scholar for the National Center for Academic Transformation; as a fellow of the International Society for Design and Development in Education; on the Assessment 2020 Task Force of the American Board of Internal Medicine; on the technical advisory committee for the Association of American Universities STEM initiative; and on the Global Executive Advisory Board for Hewlett Packard’s Catalyst Initiative. She served on a U.S. Department of Education working group, co-authoring the “National Education Technology Plan,” and on the working group of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that produced the “Engage to Excel” report for improving STEM education.

The Education on the Edge series is free and open to the public. However, reservations are required. For more information and to reserve a seat, visit www.CTLthille.eventbrite.com.

CSUN’s Center for Teaching and Learning is the research, collaboration and professional development arm of the Michael D. Eisner College of Education. Faculty from departments across the college are conducting cutting-edge research and professional development to better address the needs of schools, as they work in collaboration with K-12 teachers and administrators and community members.

The center was established in the summer of 2002, thanks to a generous gift from the Eisner Foundation, the family foundation of Michael and Jane Eisner. The center initially focused on neurodevelopment and how knowledge of those constructs can be taught to teachers — and ultimately impact the way they teach and the way students learn. It has since broadened its scope. Faculty and affiliates are researching and analyzing multiple innovative approaches to teaching, counseling, educational therapy, administration and professional development. The center also offers a speakers bureau that provides local schools and organizations an opportunity to bring these new approaches to their campuses. More information about the center can be found at www.csun.edu/ctl.