Students and community members of all ages came together on Bayramian Lawn during California State University, Northridge’s Earth Fair.

The Earth Fair, hosted by Associated Students (AS) Productions, was free to attendees. The event aimed to bring awareness of how to live sustainably and help the environment to the student population by combining art, music, education and sustainable initiatives.

“It’s crazy that students don’t know what they’re doing and how sustainable this campus is. This is a way for them to find out, to be a part of it, to have a voice and voice their concerns,” said AS Productions Graduate Assistant Kira Paczkowski. “It’s a way to get their foot in the door if they’re unsure.”

Paczkowski said this year focused on climate change as well as transportation, waste, water, energy and food.

Encompassing a majority of the lawn were booths where vendors from on and off campus such as CSUN’s Institute for Sustainability, Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, CSUN Outdoor Adventures among many others presented activities for fair attendees to play while trying samples, collecting free items and learning different ways to live sustainably. There were hammocks strung up and large beanbag chairs laid out in front of the stage for people to lounge on while enjoying live music from the bands playing throughout the day.

While she enjoyed the live music, Sienna Morales, a third-year marine biology major, said she liked that CSUN had an event like this because she went to a high school that showed a lot of interest in the environment.

“I like that they still do that even in colleges,” Morales said. “They put out that you should think about what’s going on around the world and not just about yourself.”

David Contreras, a sociology and Chicano/a Studies major, was passing by with his little sister when he decided to check out the festivities and ended up at the CSUN Aquatic Center’s painting table.

“[This event] is important because it helps us notice the the organic factors that play a part in this environment and bring awareness to sustainability,” Contreras said. “It’s a nice turnout and it’s kid friendly, so I appreciated that a lot.”

Students and community members were also given the opportunity to attend two separate speaker series located across campus in the University Student Union’s (USU) Northridge Center.

The first event, called Rain: A History for Stormy Times, was presented by Cynthia Barnett, an award-winning journalist. The event highlighted the history of our connection to the climate, bringing it together under the idea of climate change and nature as truth.

SILA and the Gatekeepers of the Arctic: A Feature Documentary Film was the second event. Director and producer Corina Gamma presented the film, which highlighted the impact of global warming on the once-thriving culture of the Arctic Inuit people.

Alexis Ramos, an undecided exploratory major who initially attended the fair to listen to the student speakers, said she wanted to see what else the fair had to offer.

“It’s an amazing event because I feel like we’re stuck on our phones and we don’t pay attention,” Ramos said. “It’s kind of an eye-opener when they listen to people on how they can save energy. It brings us all together and you can find where you belong in some sense.”

Austin Ysais, program coordinator for AS Productions, said he believes the Earth Fair benefits the campus, students and surrounding community because people are able to learn how they can contribute to sustaining our Earth and the quality of life that we have.

“This is a great event that helps promote all the wonderful things this community is doing,” Ysais said. “And the more students that hear about this, the better.”

Student Food Scarcity and Homelessness Flyer.

The term homeless is challenged when it strays from its visual stereotype of a person living in the streets, who lacks money, food and domestic resources. College students might not realize that while they focus on taking notes during lectures, others may also be worrying about when their next shower, meal or opportunity to sleep in a bed will be.

California State University, Northridge’s Civil Discourse and Social Change (CDSC) Initiative will host a student food scarcity and homelessness event on Tuesday, May 2, from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the University Student Union’s Northridge Center, located on the east side of the campus at 18111 Nordhoff St. in Northridge. The event is free and open to the public.

“This event is meant to encourage students to not feel ashamed if they find themselves lacking food or becoming homeless,” said CSUN communication studies professor Emily Paramonova. “We want students to feel open about [homelessness] and we want students [with secure housing] and homeless students to share the information with people and others on campus so we can give assistance to those in need.”

Until a year ago, Paramonova said she was unaware of the homelessness and food scarcity issues students face. The revelation occurred when one of her students stopped coming to class and confided that she had recently become homeless with her two children and was struggling to come to school. Later on, Paramonova was shocked to discover that several of her students had become homeless while in college.

Paramonova began asking her colleagues what they knew about CSUN’s homeless student population. She said some professors had no knowledge of the predicament, while the ones who did know, believed that their homeless students generally dropped out of college.

According to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), more than 58,000 college students nationwide identified themselves as homeless in 2013. FAFSA projected the number would increase by 75 percent within the next three years. Affordable Colleges Online’s article on Homeless Youth and Higher Education indicates the 58,000 figure is underestimated because many homeless youths are unaware that they qualify as homeless and are ashamed of admitting their living situations.

Last year, the “2016 Serving Displaced and Food Insecure Students in the California State University (CSU)” study calculated that out of 460,000 students in the CSU, one in every 10 was homeless. This calculates to 46,000 or more CSU students that are homeless.

“Let’s face it — when a student doesn’t know where they’re sleeping and they don’t have food, they are not capable of being at their strongest,” Paramova said. “They’re in a very challenging situation.”

At the event, students who are currently homeless or who have found themselves homeless during their academic year will share how they stray from homeless stereotypes.

“We can put a face to these people who we have stereotypes about,” said Paramonova.

According to the National Law Center on Homelessness, the leading cause of homelessness is the insufficient income and lack of affordable housing.

Parmaonova’s advanced public speaking class researched the CSU system’s homeless issues and the programs created to aid homeless students.

During the event, students will present their findings and work with attendees to try to formulate plans for CSUN to establish homelessness and food scarcity programs.

The event is supported by the CDSC and CSUN’s departments of Chicano/a Studies, Political Science, Communication Studies and Asian American Studies.

For more information please visit the CDSC website.

Nearly 11,500 graduating students are invited to walk across the stage in front of California State University, Northridge’s iconic Delmar T. Oviatt Library to the cheers of family members and friends as CSUN celebrates its 2017 commencement in less than two weeks.

An estimated 9,353 bachelor’s, 2,000 master’s and 47 doctoral degree candidates are eligible to take part in exercises scheduled to begin the evening of Saturday, May 13, with the university’s Honors Convocation and conclude the morning of Monday, May 22, with the last of CSUN’s seven commencement ceremonies. All eight celebrations will take place on the lawn in front of the Oviatt Library, located in the heart of the CSUN campus at 18111 Nordhoff St. in Northridge.

“Commencement is always an inspiring time at the university,” said CSUN President Dianne F. Harrison. “It is a reaffirmation of the life-changing opportunities that education provides and a celebration of the achievements of our students. Students and their families and friends gather with the campus community in what is a momentous and joyous occasion.

“This time of the year provides us with the opportunity to pause and acknowledge our students’ significant accomplishments,” Harrison continued, “before they take the next steps toward their future and join the more than 340,000 alumni who are elevating Los Angeles and beyond.”

CSUN’s commencement celebrations begin at 6 p.m. on May 13 with Honors Convocation. This year’s speaker will be alumnus and award-winning journalist Julio César Ortiz, a reporter for Univision’s Channel 34 in Los Angeles and an adjunct professor in CSUN’s Department of Journalism.

Ortiz, who graduated from CSUN with bachelor’s degrees in journalism and speech communications in 2000, founded the first-ever, 30-minute, weekly Spanish newscast in the California State University system, which laid the foundation for his career as a television reporter serving the Spanish-speaking community.

Oritz’s stories have taken him from Los Angeles to Phoenix, to the towns on the U.S.-Mexico border and into the heart of Mexico as he reported on the impact of Mexican immigration to the U.S. His work has earned him local, state and national recognition. He has been nominated for 38 Emmy Awards, winning 19. He received two Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for his writing. He is the first Mexican-immigrant journalist to receive two consecutive Associated Press awards as writer of the year in the western United States.

In 2013, Ortiz earned a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy. He intends to specialize in treating those within the Latino community with mental disorders that have developed as a consequence of acculturation and migration. He launched a bi-weekly segment on Channel 34’s 6 and 11 p.m. broadcasts to connect the Latino community with mental health services.

Ortiz established an endowment earlier this year at CSUN for the creation of a scholarship for students who have AB 450, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or other undocumented status. The first $1,000 scholarship will be awarded this fall.

CSUN’s first commencement ceremony — for the graduates of the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics — will take place at 8 a.m. on Friday, May 19.

The second ceremony — for the graduates of the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication — will take place at 6 p.m. on May 19. An honorary Doctor of Humane Letters will be presented to financial journalist and CSUN alumnus Bill Griffeth during this ceremony.

Griffeth, who earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from CSUN in 1980, is anchor of the financial news show “Closing Bell” on CNBC. He is known for his quick wit and ability to think on his feet, as well as his extensive knowledge of the financial markets and market history.

Griffeth also has written four books. The most recent is “The Stranger in My Genes: A Memoir,” in which he shares his experience of discovering through a DNA test that the man he thought was his father was not.

At 8 a.m. on Saturday, May 20, graduates of the Departments of Child and Adolescent Development, Health Sciences, Kinesiology, Nursing, Physical Therapy, and Recreation and Tourism Management in the College of Health and Human Development will take part in CSUN’s third commencement ceremony.

CSUN’s fourth commencement ceremony — for the graduates of the College of Humanities and of the Departments of Communication Disorders and Sciences, Environmental and Occupational Health, and Family and Consumer Sciences in the College of Health and Human Development — will take place at 6 p.m. on May 20.

At 8 a.m. on Sunday, May 21, the graduates of the Michael D. Eisner College of Education and of the Departments of Anthropology, Geography and Psychology in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences will take part in CSUN’s fifth commencement ceremony.

CSUN’s sixth ceremony will take place at 6 p.m. on May 21 for the graduates of the remaining departments in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences – Africana studies, political science, public administration, social work, sociology, and urban studies and planning. At that ceremony, an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters will be presented to substance abuse educator and CSUN alumnus Mike Watanabe.

Watanabe, who graduated from CSUN with a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1973, is president and CEO of Asian American Drug Abuse Program (AADAP). Watanabe is a recognized leader in the field of substance abuse education, prevention, intervention and treatment. Watanabe joined AADAP’s staff in 1975. His success at the agency led to his appointment as president and CEO less than 10 years later. Under his leadership, the organization has grown from a moderate-sized entity to a large, comprehensive agency serving a significant portion of Los Angeles County at 10 sites.

CSUN’s seventh and final commencement ceremony will take place at 8 a.m. on Monday, May 22, for the graduates of the College of Engineering and Computer Science and the College of Science and Mathematics.

For more information about CSUN’s 2017 Commencement, visit the website http://www.csun.edu/commencement.

California State University, Northridge’s Child and Family Studies Center Lab School will celebrate 50 years of inclusive early-childhood education, with a “casual backyard party” at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 7,  at the center’s playground area.

The Lab School has been a presence on CSUN’s campus since 1967, serving as a preschool program and a training facility for university students studying early childhood development and education. The school operates within CSUN’s College of Health and Human Development.

Children and a teacher at CSUN’s ‘Lab School.’

The 50th-anniversary celebration will commemorate the center’s accomplishments and founders while emphasizing its pursuit of continued excellence. Light refreshments will be served, and guests are invited to participate in a silent auction fundraiser event.

“The need for quality child care in the community and the need to produce well-educated professionals in the field of early childhood education has never lapsed,” said Christa Dunlap, program director for the Child and Family Studies Center. “[The celebration] is highlighting how important high-quality early childhood education is, and we owe it to the new generation to continue to serve them in that way.”

The Lab School’s directors said they believe scholastic advancements are as important as character development, and its teachers strive to make the learning process fun and constructive. Ashleigh Larson, a Lab School parent, said this approach made her daughter excited to attend the preschool program.

“My daughter begs to go to school, even on her days off,” Larson said. “Their play-based philosophy [has] prepared my daughter to succeed socially and academically when it’s her turn to enter kindergarten.”

“It’s not just about academics,” Dunlap said. “We look at the whole child, and that includes how to best develop their creativity, imagination and motor skills.”

In addition to serving children and their families, the Lab School offers CSUN students learning about early childhood education an opportunity to observe and interact with children, under the guidance of experienced teachers and faculty. The center also employs nutrition and kinesiology students who devise snack menus and help children develop their motor skills, respectively.

The program is accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and works closely with the CHIME Institute, a national leader in developing and implementing model educational programs. The Lab School implements CHIME’s Inclusion Program, which has children with disabilities learning side-by-side with non-disabled children.

“One of the things that is unique and wonderful about the Lab School is our collaboration with CHIME that came about in 1990,” said Annie Cox, director of the CHIME Preschool Inclusion Program at the Child and Family Studies Center. “Providing support for children of all abilities became much easier to do.”

Throughout the years, the Lab School has fostered valuable, close-knit relationships between faculty, students and families, Dunlap said.

“I really feel like the Lab School is a family,” she said. “I’ve had so many people tell me that — parents and university students alike. We take care of each other, and early childhood is traditionally nurturing. There’s just a connection.”

The celebration is open to the public. The Lab School is located at 18330 Halsted St. in Northridge, next to CSUN’s Associated Students Children’s Center. Tickets are available through Eventbrite and cost $30 for adults and $10 for kids. All proceeds directly support the Child and Family Studies Center.

For more information, contact the Child and Family Studies Center at (818) 677-3131.

CSUN alumni and LAUSD administrators Gonsalo Garay and Patrizia Puccio meet up for a “memory lane” tour at their other alma mater, Reseda High School, in March 2017. Photo by Lee Choo.

If California State University, Northridge officials had to pick just two “poster children” for public education in the San Fernando Valley who are paying it forward, right back to the public, that might be Patrizia Puccio and Gonsalo Garay.

Graduates of Reseda High School, the two friends (who act like family) went separate ways for their bachelor’s degrees: Garay to UC San Diego and Puccio to Pierce College and then CSUN, where she earned a bachelor’s in child development in 1997. Armed with emergency teaching credentials, each followed a lifelong dream and dove into classroom teaching. In no time, they were teaching together, in adjacent classrooms, at Bertrand Avenue Elementary School — just up the road from their alma mater, Reseda High. Garay ’02 (Credential), ’06 (M.A., Educational Administration) taught fourth grade and Puccio, fifth.

“LA Unified has unified us. We were raised in LA Unified, and we work together in LA Unified,” Puccio said of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest. “We’re really close now because we realize we’re getting older.

“I will only work for LA Unified because it’s the system that gave to me and I’m giving back,” said Puccio, whose parents emigrated from Cuba and Italy. “I had an amazing education from kindergarten to 12th grade.”

After earning her bachelor’s at CSUN, Puccio returned to campus to earn two master’s degrees (one in special education in 2008 and one in school administration in 2010), as well as a teaching credential and administrative credential. Since 2014, she has served as principal of Pinewood Elementary School in Tujunga.

“When [Gonsalo] and I started teaching, never in a million years did we think we’d go into administration,” said Puccio, who, like Garay, spent a decade as a classroom teacher.

Garay chose CSUN’s master’s program and administrative credential, which he completed in 2006. In 2012, he became the principal at Roscoe Elementary in Sun Valley. Recently, he was promoted to administrator of parent and community engagement for the entire Local District Northwest, LAUSD’s largest region (headquartered in Lake Balboa).

The fourth of seven children, Garay was raised by immigrant parents who always put education first, he said.

“My parents were immigrants who came from Mexico and they — particularly my father — were huge on giving back to the community and close ties to your roots,” Garay said. “You think about social upward mobility. Look at the United States and our public education system, wow. It’s free! Just show up.

“My parents said, ‘Listen, you’re not out on the farm. You’re getting an education for free,” he said. “And so, it was: God, parents, teachers. Education was that important. You had to do well. My parents knew they didn’t want us to be working the way they worked.”

After earning a bachelor’s at UCSD and years of teaching in elementary school classrooms, Garay chose CSUN’s Michael D. Eisner College of Education because he’d done his research.

“I knew CSUN had a top program. It was in the Valley, it was local, it was more affordable,” he said. “So when you talk about bang for your buck, there was no question. The program [was taught by] practitioners, people who were actually in the field, with real-world experience. That’s what I wanted. The other thing that really drew me to CSUN was the diversity of the student body.”

Puccio praised her CSUN administrative degree cohort, which met off campus at an LAUSD school site.

“That was the best education I’ve ever gotten in my life, because it was mostly taught by LA Unified principals, so it was geared for exactly what we were going to become,” she said. “It really prepared us to be principals.”

But she won’t sugarcoat her job as school principal: “I’m not going to lie. It’s the hardest job I’ve ever done,” she said.

Garay, who earned his master’s at CSUN in the on-campus program, loved the college’s emphasis on project-based learning.

“We worked in collaborative groups,” he said. “You weren’t working in isolation, which is what education is about, and all our Common Core standards are based on that. We learned to collaborate, to think critically. CSUN was [way ahead] on those trends.”

Reflecting on his years of classroom teaching and the work he does now to support hundreds of teachers and families, Garay noted the changing times.

“The level of accountability for teachers has just gone through the roof,” he said. “Telling the true stories of teachers and what we really do is key. Unfortunately, the public doesn’t know: Teachers work countless hours, spend all their own money, go in on the weekends, do the clubs, give up their recess and their lunch.

“A lot of us know that when you first start teaching, you’re not going to be a millionaire,” Garay continued. “But teaching is a career — you can become a math specialist, a science specialist, you can go into curriculum. There are promotions and opportunities.”

Of the approximately 2,100 graduates invited to take part in California State University, Northridge’s Honors Convocation on Saturday, May 13, six individuals will be singled out for special recognition as outstanding graduating students.

Angelina Finau, Wolfson Scholar

Among those to be recognized will be Angelina Finau, this year’s Wolfson Scholar, the top award given to a graduating senior. It is presented each year in memory of CSUN’s first vice president, Leo Wolfson. Not only must the student have an exceptional academic record, but he or she must also have made significant contributions to CSUN or to the community through co-curricular and extracurricular activities.

“I’m still processing the fact that I’m getting this amazing honor,” said Finau, 21, of Van Nuys, who will receive her bachelor’s degree in political science in two weeks. “I can’t believe that this girl whose family comes from these little islands in the Pacific, Tonga, that nobody has ever heard of — I’m nobody special — is getting this award.”

Finau gets teary-eyed when she thinks about her time at the university, and the opportunities it has presented her. She has helped find ways to improve the university’s graduation rates while working in CSUN’s Office of Student Success Innovations; researched water conservation habits of Los Angeles renters; explored ways to improve the performance of students in general education classes; appeared as the lead witch in a production of “Macbeth;” and spent a semester in Washington, D.C., where she got to shake hands with former President Barack Obama as CSUN’s Panetta Congressional Intern.

In addition to all of that, she has maintained a 3.9 GPA and volunteers as a student judge and coach for her former high school’s speech and debate team, and at New Horizons, a nonprofit that works with persons with disabilities.

“I’ve gotten to do so many things, I have been so blessed,” Finau said. “I remember being in Washington, D.C., on the steps [of the Lincoln Memorial] and thinking, ‘How is this possible for a girl from a little island that nobody has heard of?’ It was because of CSUN. If you have that burning desire to do something, it’s possible, but you’ve got to seize the opportunities, and you have to have people to believe in you. The people here at CSUN believed in me.”

Finau, whose parents emigrated from Tonga in the 1980s, said she also found support from her family — in particular, her older sister, who has disabilities.

“She reminds me what it means to be kind, even when you’re really stressed out,” she said. “And she reminds me that, even if it is my worst day, I am doing something positive for the community.”

Finau said her time as a Panetta intern in the fall of 2015 helped her focus on what she wants to do with her life.

“What I learned was that no matter what talents you have, it is your civic duty to give back and change as many lives a possible,” she said.

To that end, Finau plans to attend graduate school in the fall, “because knowledge gives you the power and increases the resources you have to make a difference in people’s lives,” and eventually go to law school, she said.

Finau will be taking part in the commencement ceremony at 6 p.m. on Sunday, May 21, on the lawn in front of the Delmar T. Oviatt Library, located in the heart of the CSUN campus at 18111 Nordhoff St. in Northridge.  (CSUN’s 2017 commencement ceremonies can be watch live online at www.youtube.com/CalStateNorthridge.)

CSUN’s Honors Convocation is taking place in the same location at 6 p.m. on May 13. The other students being honored at the Honors Convocation are:

Maria Akopyan, Nathan O. Freedman Memorial Award for Outstanding Graduate Student

Maria Akopyan, 2017 Nathan O. Freedman Memorial Award for Outstanding Graduate Student

Maria Akopyan was finishing her first year of graduate school when she received an award from the Association of Retired Faculty. While attending an event celebrating this achievement, she saw the announcement of the 2015 Nathan O. Freedman Award, given annually to the top graduate student during CSUN’s Honors Convocation. She filed that away, intending to apply when she was close to completing her own graduate work.

After three years of research in evolutionary biology – specifically the courtship behavior and evolution of color and genetic variation in red-eyed treefrogs –  and a perfect 4.0 GPA, Akopyan is the 2017 Nathan O. Freedman Awardee, with a spot in Cornell University’s Ph.D. program waiting for her in the fall. She has received 14 scholarships or awards in her academic career, including the 2017 Mack I. Johnson Memorial Research Award for Outstanding Graduate Student.

It’s been a remarkable journey for Akopyan, whose parents, Robert and Seda, immigrated to the United States from Armenia in the late 1980s. She is a first-generation college student who has had to forge her own path, fueled by an appetite to conduct research and a drive that “comes from this immense sense of gratitude that I have for my family, and the sacrifices they’ve made,” she said.

“I don’t lose sight of that,” she continued. “Having that in the back of my mind, I can’t see any other way of living other than working really hard and making them proud.”

Akopyan credits the CSUN community, in particular her master’s adviser, biology professor Jeanne Robertson, for giving her the foundation to succeed. She was put in charge of a research team that included two undergraduate students, something she hardly saw during her undergraduate years at UCLA.

“[Robertson] was really adamant about fostering a relationship where I could benefit from having undergrads help me and they could benefit from the research experience,” Akopyan said. “It’s something that’s very special about CSUN.”

Akopyan said she chose Cornell to continue for her doctoral studies largely because its collaborative environment matched that of CSUN’s. She added, “it really takes a village to do research.”

She said it’s heartening to look back and see how far she has come in three years.

“I wouldn’t even recognize myself if I could go back in time,” Akopyan said. “It’s still really surreal. I feel like someone is going to wake me up and say, ‘just kidding you’re really not going to Cornell.’ I could not have done it without the amazing community here.”

Akopyan will be taking part in the commencement ceremony at 8 a.m. on Monday, May 22, on the lawn in front of the Oviatt Library.

Braulio Diaz, Outstanding Graduating Senior

Braulio Diaz, Outstanding Graduating Senior

While a student at William Howard Taft Charter High School in Woodland Hills, Braulio Diaz came across astronomer Carl Sagan’s reflection on the “Pale Blue Dot” — a photograph taken by the Voyager 1 space probe that shows Earth as a tiny speck from billions of miles away.

Diaz, a computer engineering major with visions of working in aerospace, said Sagan’s words piqued his interest in space exploration. But Sagan’s larger message on humanity, and how the Earth is our home and we need to take care of each other resonated with Diaz.

“That whole speech really touched me, and that’s the way we should live — respect everybody for who they are and live in harmony,” Diaz said.

Diaz was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, and came to the United States as a 1-year-old with undocumented status. He is a recipient of a CSUN Dreamers Scholarship, which gives undocumented students — who are not eligible for federal financial aid — the funds they need for a college education. He said he wants to be an inspiration for fellow undocumented students who have a lot to offer schools, communities and society.

Since the day he set foot on the campus as a student, Diaz has been committed to making the most of his experience at the university and taking care of others.

As a freshman, he became a University Ambassador and gave tours to prospective students and their families in English and Spanish. For three years, he served as a Student Housing resident assistant and was promoted in his fourth year to serve as the community center manager. He was elected by his peers to represent CSUN’s College of Engineering and Computer Science as a senator with Associated Students. Diaz also represented CSUN at the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities annual conference in Denver in 2014 and was nominated for Resident Assistant of the Year, two years in a row.

“I wanted to be involved,” Diaz said. “I didn’t want my experience just to be going to class and then going home. I wanted to develop relationships with people and give back, be an active member of CSUN. And it helped develop my love for CSUN.”

Diaz will be taking part in the commencement ceremony at 8 a.m. on Monday, May 22, on the lawn in front of the Oviatt Library.

Kimberly Madhwani, Outstanding Graduating Senior

Kimberly Madhwani, Outstanding Graduating Senior

For Kimberly Madhwani, the college experience is only halfway over. The biochemistry major will be attending the University of Wisconsin, Madison in the fall and will spend the next five years working on a doctorate in neuroscience and genetics.

Madhwani attended CSUN with plans of going to pharmacy school, but everything changed when she joined the Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE) program.

“Doors opened as a result of coming to CSUN, and I haven’t regretted any of the decisions I have made since I came here,” Madhwani said.

Even as a Presidential Scholar, Associated Students senator, leadership member of the CSUN Women and Science Club, and re-establishing member of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Club, Madhwani has kept strong grades and even had time to publish and present her research to the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and at the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science. She also completed two summer research internships at the University of Miami and the University of California, San Francisco.

Madhwani’s parents also pursued careers in science — her father was a chemist in India, and her mother was a nurse in the Philippines before they moved to the United States and took jobs in other career fields. Madhwani and her younger brother, who also is attending CSUN, are continuing the family’s love of science.

“[My parents] are both hard workers, and I carry on that with my work ethic in science,” she said.

Madhwani is thankful for her time at CSUN and the people who encouraged her along the way. She credited much of her success to the faculty mentors and peer mentors who urged her to apply for the opportunities she has received, and assured her that she was just as qualified as anyone else.

“I’m a very proud Matador,” Madhwani said. “Moving forward, I will scream from the top of my lungs that I am from CSUN, and I would not be anything if it weren’t for the people I’ve met here.”

Madhwani will be taking part in the commencement ceremony at 8 a.m. on Monday, May 22, on the lawn in front of the Oviatt Library.

Sunshine Williams, Outstanding Graduating Senior

Sunshine Williams, Outstanding Graduating Senior

If you asked a younger Sunshine Williams if she was a leader or a follower, she would immediately have answered the latter. “I’m not big on conflict,” she said. “I like to go with the flow.”

But the 35-year-old graduating creative writing senior has done nothing but lead during her two years studying on campus. During her first year, she tackled editing at The Northridge Review. Last year, she became the president of the Northridge Creative Writing Circle. This semester, she took a writing position at the CSUN Career Center; became the lead editor of C.A.P.T.U.R.E.D., the Department of Africana Studies’ scholarly journal; was elected an Associate Students senator for the College of Humanities and served on the MataCare Emergency Grant board.

Williams regularly spent at least 10 hours every weekday on campus, but still managed to maintain a 3.96 GPA overall, joined three honor societies on campus and was the recipient of the 2017 AIFS Generation Study Abroad Scholarship. She is busy, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I realized I was the happiest when I was here,” she said.

Williams faced a difficult road to CSUN. Growing up in poverty in rural Texas, homeschooled by a single mother, she earned her associate’s degree in music from Northeast Texas Community College at age 18, got married and started her life as co-owner of a real estate appraisal company.

Before age 30, however, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer, split from her husband and decided to move to Los Angeles for a fresh start.

“By that time, I had a fairly good idea of who I was, but I still had no notion of what I wanted to do with my life,” Williams said.

She found her calling her very first semester at CSUN. “I ended up in a class with professor Christopher Higgs, and watching him I thought, ‘I want to do that — I want to teach!’”

After graduation, she plans to earn her master’s and doctoral degrees in literature, hoping to eventually return to teach at CSUN.

“I realized that this was my path,” she said. “It’s changed my life.”

Williams will be taking part in the commencement ceremony at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 20, on the lawn in front of the Oviatt Library.

Roxxette Zepeda, Outstanding Graduating Senior

Roxxette Zepeda, Outstanding Graduating Senior

In a life of so many closed doors, it was a CSUN recruiter who opened a window for Roxxette Lezly Zepeda. The 17-year-old was late to class, running down the hallway of Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Los Angeles, one day during her senior year.

Joel Monroy, a recruiter for the university’s Educational Opportunity Programs (EOP), stopped her in the hallway and asked, “‘What are your plans after high school graduation?’” Zepeda recounted recently. “I said, ‘I’m getting married, in an arranged marriage to an older man in Mexico.’ He asked me, ‘Do you want to?’ And I said, ‘No! I want to be a nurse.’ He invited me to apply to CSUN’s nursing program, through EOP.”

Zepeda’s first visit to CSUN was for her interview, on her 18th birthday. She was accepted through the EOP Residential Bridge Program, which gave Zepeda and gives other low-income, first-generation college students a summer home in the freshman dorms on campus and support transitioning to university life.

Five years later, Zepeda is completing her Bachelor of Science in public health in CSUN’s College of Health and Human Development. This fall, she begins a graduate program at the UCLA School of Nursing. She plans to pursue a master’s and Ph.D. in clinical practice and neonatal research.

She defied her family and an arranged marriage to pursue a college degree. She has finished college on her own — at times overcoming homelessness, hunger and wrenching family upheaval. But her maternal grandparents and other relatives, Zepeda said, have come around to support her because they see how far she has come.

Though she was born in LA, Zepeda was raised by her maternal grandparents at their ranch near Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, until the age of 11 because her teenaged parents were unable to care for her. When her father won full custody, he brought her back to LA. Her mother has been in and out of jail due to a drug addiction, Zepeda said.

“When I graduated from high school, my father expected me to find full-time employment and a husband. I had a different agenda,” she said. “When I was accepted to CSUN, my father gave me an ultimatum: him or college. … Even though I have known hunger and did not always have a place to stay, I took challenging classes, volunteered, mentored and conducted research. I kept moving forward with my education because I knew that was my future.”

In 2015, Zepeda was accepted into CSUN’s BUILD PODER research training program, which aims to increase diversity in biomedical research fields and prepare participants for Ph.D. programs. As part of her research, Zepeda volunteered at several area hospitals. She also worked as a peer mentor and EOP student office assistant, where she often mentored freshmen.

Zepeda will be taking part in the commencement ceremony at 8 a.m. on Saturday, May 20, on the lawn in front of the Oviatt Library.

California State University, Northridge welcomed former West Wing Receptionist, a position commonly known as Receptionist of the United States (ROTUS), Leah Katz-Hernandez to the Kurland Auditorium on April 25.

Katz-Hernandez, a deaf woman of Mexican-Japanese heritage, delivered a presentation themed The Future Is Female, Intersectional and Deaf to a room of approximately 250 people, focusing on the dynamics of working and advancing in politics as a deaf, multiracial woman.

Katz-Hernandez was a volunteer for the Obama-Biden 2008 and 2012 campaigns, a part of the inauguration team in 2012, and a research assistant for Michelle Obama. Her service for the Obama administration culminated in the West Wing receptionist position she held from February 2015 to January 2017. She shared what it was like for a deaf person in politics.

“I was the only deaf person on the campaign,” Katz-Hernandez shared. “I did not have an interpreter, so when we had meetings, a colleague would type everything on the laptop and if I had anything to say or ask, I would take the laptop and type.”

The presentation at CSUN was the first stop of Katz-Hernandez’s tour. She said she chose to do this because of her personal connection to the campus.

“Both of my parents, Ricardo Hernandez (hearing) and Lizabeth Katz (deaf) are CSUN alumni who graduated in the 1970s. They actually met here,” Katz-Hernandez shared.

There was a question-and-answer forum after the presentation. An audience member asked her if she would ever run for political office.

“Someone once told me that there are two types of people in the world — elected officials and staffers. I truly believe that I am a staffer,” Katz-Hernandez confessed.

Katz-Hernadez ended by offering several suggestions for young professionals, both hearing and deaf.

“Go for it” she said. “You are fully capable of doing [anything]. Look for mentors to support you, always smile and as you rise, pull others up.”

It took a lot of hard work, late nights in the library, mastering of complicated schedules, seemingly endless papers and projects, and the understanding and support of loved ones. The payoff begins this weekend with California State University, Northridge’s 2017 commencement.

Nearly 11,500 CSUN students have been invited to walk across the stage in front of the Delmar T. Oviatt Library in the heart of the university campus and receive congratulations from university leaders as they celebrate their graduation to the cheers of thousands of family members, friends and fellow classmates. (CSUN’s 2017 commencement ceremonies can be watch live online at www.youtube.com/CalStateNorthridge.)

Some of the students are the first in their families to get a college education. Others veered from paths initially laid out by their parents and instead are inspired by their own dreams. Still other students are completing a journey started years earlier, but interrupted by jobs and familial obligations.

Below are some of those students’ stories:

Kaitlyn Amodeo

Kaitlyn Amodeo, B.S. Geophysics

            Not long ago, Kaitlyn Amodeo, 22, of Simi Valley, was sitting on a plane, reading research papers about newly discovered planets, when the man sitting next to her interrupted her to ask, “What’s a young lady like you reading about planets for?”

Amodeo told him that she was a geophysics student, “and I don’t think it’s weird to read about planets.” Impressed, the man, who turned out to be a geologist, admitted he had never met a lady geophysicist before.

Amodeo, a CSUN Presidential Scholar, said the number of women going into science, engineering, technology and math (STEM) fields are still too low, but she hopes that changes — and she plans to be part of that change.

“We’re told as little girls that guys are better at math and science, and girls are better at history, art and English,” she said. “So, a lot of girls grow up to think that they are bad at science and math. I know I started to, but I got lucky in the sense that I was bad at [science and math] but I still liked what I was doing, so it was all good. I would like to tell young girls that just because they think that they can’t do something, it does not mean that they can’t.”

Amodeo discovered her love for Earth science while in sixth grade.

“I had been doing badly in the class, then we started talking about earthquakes and [I] was very, very interested,” she said. “I went from a ‘C’ student to getting perfect grades.”

Her science classes in high school continued to fuel and shape her passion so that by the time she got to CSUN, she knew she wanted to study geophysics.

During her time here, Amodeo was one of only a couple of undergraduates to work on a joint research project by scientists at CSUN, UCLA and the California Institute of Technology comparing oceanic and continental subsurface features. Their research could have implications for assessing seismic hazards in Southern California.

“It’s definitely not easy research, but it is rewarding in the sense that it can help people, and it is able to advance science where it hasn’t gone before,” she said.

When she leaves CSUN, she will be heading to a fully funded doctoral program at UC Davis to study planetary science, a field she discovered with a little help from Wikipedia.

“I don’t know why, but one day I was on the Wikipedia page for geology, and it lists all the subdivisions of the field, including planetary science,” she said. “I knew that was it. I’ve always been fascinated by the planets and seriously considered switching to astrophysics at CSUN.”

Planetary science, she said, is the perfect marriage between her love of space and her passion for Earth science.

Amodeo will take part in the College of Science and Mathematics commencement ceremony scheduled at 8 a.m. on Monday, May 22.

Jessica Barajas

Jessica Barajas, B.S. Health Administration

            CSUN seemed like a natural college choice for Jessica Barajas, 22, of Tujunga. Her cousins had attended the university and raved about their experience and the education they got. With plans to go on to medical school after her undergraduate studies, she felt the price couldn’t be beat.

“It seemed perfect,” Barajas said.

Wavering between kinesiology and biology, Barajas settled on biology, saying it fit better with her medical school goals. “I had dreams of becoming an optometrist, maybe an eye surgeon,” she said.

Her plans changed after a visit to a retina specialist in the middle of her freshman year. Barajas, who had been having problems with her eyesight for a couple of years, was convinced by her older sister, who also was having problems, to visit a specialist to find out what was wrong.

“We have Stargardt disease, a form of macular degeneration, which means that our vision will continue to get progressively worse and it could mean complete vision loss,” she said.

Barajas said her first thoughts turned to her academics, and her dream of becoming an optometrist. Concerned about her future, she talked to faculty members and the staff in CSUN’s Disability Resources and Educational Services, which offers support to students with disabilities. They pointed out that her failing eyesight may preclude her from becoming an eye surgeon, but it did not prevent her from a career in health care.

“What I loved is that when I felt most vulnerable, when I needed help the most, [people at CSUN] were there for me,” Barajas said.

Encouraged, Barajas switched her major to health administration and discovered a new passion. An internship shadowing the chief medical officer at Providence Hospital this year cemented her decision.

“I never realized how much collaboration there was in health administration, how much they work with the doctors and the patients,” she said. “The person I am shadowing probably knows the names of more people than I have known in my entire life.”

Her new major also has forced her out of her shell. “I am kind of a shy person,” she said, “but this field is very collaborative, and working with my classmates has made me more social.”

Barajas said she plans to work in health care upon graduation, and then go to graduate school.

“I want to get a little real-world experience under my belt before going on to get my master’s degrees in public health and health administration,” she said, adding that she would eventually like to earn a doctorate and return to the classroom as a university professor.

Barajas will take part in the College of Health and Human Development commencement ceremony at 8 a.m. on Saturday, May 20.

Joveen Grewal

Joveen Grewal, B.S. Accountancy and Business Honors

There were days during his junior year that Joveen Grewal, 21, of Reseda, didn’t think he would make it. His face was covered with black scars, the skin was peeling off the back of his neck, his nose was constantly bleeding and his hair was falling out in patches. He was emotionally and physically exhausted from the effects of radiation treatment for stage 2 adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare form of cancer in the nervous system.

“The moment they told me [I had cancer], I shut off my ears and broke down inside,” Grewal said. “I kept thinking, ‘I am 19 years old. Why do I have cancer? Why is this happening to me?’ I don’t smoke. I rarely drink. I don’t have any vices in life, and here I am being told I have cancer. I remember asking my doctor later on, ‘How did I get this?’ And he said, ‘Bad luck.’”

But Grewal wasn’t going to let “bad luck” get in the way of his dreams of getting an education and entering the world of finance and accounting. With the support of his family, understanding faculty and staff in the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics and an “angel” of a girlfriend, he made it through his junior year with his cancer in remission, a 4.0 GPA and a job offer upon graduation from the international accounting firm Ernst & Young, where he had been interning.

Grewal said the experience taught him “not to stress about the little things in life, but to enjoy each day as it comes because you never know what might happen.”

He entered CSUN four years ago with the goal of fulfilling his immigrant parents’ dreams of him becoming an engineer. Despite his success in his mechanical engineering classes — he was even selected by classmates much older than him to be their group leader — he realized that engineering wasn’t for him and switched to business.

Both his parents work for the U.S. Postal Service and are of Indian descent, though his father was born and raised in Singapore and his mother was born and raised in the Philippines.

“They sacrificed so much to come here, and to give me the opportunities the United States has to offer and to go to college. I knew that if I made the switch [in majors], I would have to prove myself and be successful at it,” he said.

He flirted first with majoring in finance, but found there were more opportunities for his interests in accountancy and business honors. He excelled in his classes from the start. During his first year in the Nazarian College, Grewal and two classmates entered the program’s annual Case Competition, in which student teams from the Business Honors Program complete real-world case studies.

“We knew we were the underdogs, that everyone expected us to be eliminated in the first round,” he said. “But we put in long hours and hard work, and we came out champions.”

The trio donated half their prize money, $8,000, back to the Business Honors Association —a gesture, he said, that was a heartfelt “thank you” for all that the program had taught them to that point and what they knew they would continue to learn.

“I am so grateful for the opportunities I’ve had at CSUN,” he said. “It’s one of the best experiences in my entire life. Some of my friends at other schools are coming out with thousands of dollars in debt and no job after graduation. Here I am, with zero debt and an amazing job at an amazing company, and able to start my life off on the right foot with an amazing perspective on life. I don’t think I would have gotten that at any other school.”

Grewal will be spending the summer studying for the CPA exam before starting his job in Ernst & Young’s finance division in August. He will take part in the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics commencement ceremony scheduled for 8 a.m. on Friday, May 19.

Yuliya Meskela

Yuliya Meskela, B.A. Economics, B.S. Business Honors, with a minor in Finance

            International student Yuliya Meskela, 23, is grateful for her time at CSUN, in particular for the opportunities the university has provided as well as the support from faculty.

When she first came to the United States to study at Chaminade College Preparatory High School in West Hills as a high schooler, she wasn’t sure what to expect. The native Ethiopian’s exposure to American culture was mostly through the movies.

“I was only 14 at the time, and I kind of thought it would be like ‘Mean Girls,’” she said, referring to the American teen comedy film about an A-list high school clique.

While the language — she spoke Amharic — and culture took a while to get used to, Meskela said her host families and her classmates were welcoming and understanding.

The opportunity to study in the U.S. came through her father. Concerned that large corporations were taking advantage of Ethiopia’s coffee growers, he organized the country’s first coffee growers’ union and pioneered the export of Ethiopia’s fair-trade coffee. Fair-trade coffee is coffee that is certified as having been produced to a variety of standards that ensure the coffee farmers are treated fairly and compensated fairly for their product. His work caught the attention of Chaminade officials, who offered to host one of his children to study at their school.

Meskela said her father’s efforts to organize the coffee growers’ union, despite intimidation and threats, inspired her to remain in the U.S. to continue her education after high school. Eager to learn, she took a variety of courses at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. It was there that she discovered the world of finance and economics.

“You understand the world better through finance and economics,” she said. “It was like I got a new pair of glasses that I can see the world through.”

She transferred to CSUN in 2015 and dove into her classes. She also landed a job working in the dean’s office for the College of Health and Human Development.

Meskela said she never considered returning to Ethiopia to finish her education.

“While the colleges there are not bad,” she said, “here at CSUN there are so many resources to support students and professors who are willing to look past their authority to ensure that you have what you need to succeed. They care about how you are doing beyond the classroom. I don’t know if students realize just how many resources are available to them at CSUN. I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to come to CSUN and take advantage of these resources.”

Meskela said she hopes to attend graduate school in the fall and someday earn a doctorate in economics. Once she finishes her education, she plans to return to Ethiopia and create work and professional opportunities for women and other people who are disadvantaged.

“It’s going to be hard to go back home,” she said. “I am not naïve. I know there will be some challenges, but I believe that it is possible. I know that if I stay here, there are opportunities for me in this country. But people my age are the future of Ethiopia, and if we don’t go back and try to change things for the better, who will?”

She will take part in the Nazarian College’s commencement ceremony scheduled for 8 a.m. on Friday, May 19.

Juan Pilar

Juan Pilar, B.S. Mathematics

When Juan Pilar, 35, of Santa Clarita, decided to return to school, he knew the move would be hard. He had spent more than a decade in the workforce, but he wanted to have a greater impact on people’s lives than he did as a manager of a CVS Pharmacy.

“I liked my job, but I wasn’t passionate about it,” he said. “I decided that I was going to go back to school to pursue something I really am passionate about.”

Pilar, who came to the United States from Mexico with his parents when he was four years old, wants to teach; specifically, he wants to teach math to high schoolers.

“I’ve always loved math; it’s always been one of my favorite subjects,” he said. “Working at CVS and at other jobs, I realized that the part I enjoyed most was teaching and training others. That is what I am passionate about — math and teaching.”

Pilar, who became a U.S. citizen two years ago, said he hopes to one day teach students who were like him in high school — kind of lost on the margins.

“Regardless of where the high school is, there are always kids who feel like they don’t belong — whether they are immigrants like I was, or racial minorities and females, who many times, feel that they don’t belong in a STEM classroom,” he said. “I want to help them feel that they belong, and that math can be fun. Understanding math is essential in understanding what goes on around us, and it doesn’t have to be boring to learn.”

Pilar earned his associate’s degree in biological and physical science, with honors, from the College of the Canyons in 2006, so he was able to enroll at CSUN in 2015 with about half of his requirements already completed. Aware that he wanted to finish his degree as quickly as possible, Pilar quit his job with CVS, gave up his apartment and rented a room from his brother to ensure that his savings stretched enough to cover the cost of his education.

Once at CSUN, Pilar threw himself into his coursework. His dedication attracted the attention of faculty in the Department of Mathematics, and the National Science Foundation, which last year awarded him a prestigious Noyce Scholarship, given to math students who have indicated the desire to teach. While at CSUN, Pilar has been invited to teach supplemental math classes and currently is helping a graduate student teach an experimental calculus lab. The lab is designed to help students majoring in the sciences understand calculus as it applies to their chosen fields of study.

Pilar will take part the College of Science and Mathematics commencement ceremony at 8 a.m. on Monday, May 22. He will begin CSUN’s teaching credential program in the fall.

California State University, Northridge has been ranked among the top 30 film schools worldwide in “Variety”’s April 25 issue.

“Variety” has included CSUN on its 2017 list of top film schools worldwide.

The entertainment trade magazine listed CSUN’s Department of Cinema and Television Arts as one of 2017’s “Stellar Film Schools.” The elite group also included the University of Southern California, the University of California, Los Angeles, the London Film School and New York University, among other prestigious institutions. The publication featured CSUN on similar lists in 2015 and 2016, and “The Hollywood Reporter” has included the university on its lists of best film schools in previous years.

Jon Stahl, chair of the Department of Cinema and Television Arts, said he is honored to see CSUN’s merits receive consistent acknowledgment.

“I’m incredibly proud that we continue to be ranked among the best film and television schools in the world,” Stahl said. “When we’re included among such elite programs, it validates the work we do and what our students do, and gives us more incentive to push forward and become even better.”

The department offers undergraduate programs focusing on entertainment media management, film production, media theory and criticism, multimedia production, screenwriting and television production, as well as a Master of Fine Arts in screenwriting program. Stahl attributed the department’s accolades to its highly qualified faculty and ambitious students.

“Our inclusion [on ‘Variety’’s list] is a testament to the fantastic work that our faculty does,” he said. “We have award-winning directors, writers, producers, cinematographers, editors and sound specialists who bring professional experience and great wisdom to our students, and that enables them to do the fantastic work they’ve been creating.

“Our students are out in the world exhibiting their work in festivals and competitions, and they’re winning awards against students from top graduate programs,” he continued. “[CSUN] students are accomplishing at the undergraduate level what a lot of the competition is accomplishing at the graduate level.”

Stahl said one of the keys to CSUN’s “growing reputation as a great film and television school” lies in the department’s flexibility. The faculty constantly adapt their curricula to include the latest developments and technology, which recently have included virtual and augmented-reality devices, he said.

“As the entertainment industry continues to evolve, so will our program. That way, our students will always be prepared,” he said. “It would be easy to become complacent now that we’ve been receiving wonderful accolades, but none of us want to take them for granted. We want to continue doing what’s best for the students.”

CSUN’s Department of Cinema and Television Arts, housed in the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication, 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’s alumni work in all aspects of entertainment media, from writing, producing and directing to manning cameras and having the final say in which projects are made.

The California State University, Northridge campus community invited faculty and staff to the seventh annual Technology Fair on May 11 at the University Student Union Grand Salon. The fair familiarizes faculty and staff with new technology trends in higher education.

This year’s tech fair, organized by CSUN’s Department of Information Technology, featured tables with representatives from vendors such as Microsoft, Lynda and Apple.

Ryan Zervakos, a representative from Lynda.com, explained how Lynda is beneficial to CSUN students. “Lynda.com is an online learning platform for students — it’s provided by [CSUN] for free, for any student,” Zervakos said. “Lynda.com is for personal development and professional development.”

The event also included a lecture from Robbie Melton, a special education teacher and associate vice chancellor of mobilization and emerging technology for the Tennessee Board of Regents.

Melton’s presentation titled The Emergence of the Internet of Things, Smart Connected Devices and EduGadgets for Real-Time On-Demand Transformation of Education, covered different types of technology and explained the importance of technology in classrooms.

“[Technology makes it] so that learning takes place any time, any place, for anyone,” Melton said. “I say to you, faculty members, you must become engaged with the technology for the betterment of our students.”

Melton said even though there are millions of apps, only 30 percent are education-based. To bridge this gap, she encouraged the audience to look at their  smartphones differently.

“This is the day and age when we learn that they are no longer [just] phones,” she said. “This is the day we learn they are also powerful teaching tools.”

It used to be that graduate students were often pegged as scholars so entombed in their studies and their campus libraries, they rarely saw the light of the day. There was usually not time for a family or children or even a social life.

Now imagine having two young children and managing four track & field and two cross country programs and the student-athletes that entails all while pursuing a master’s degree with your spouse.

Although it seems incredible and nearly impossible, CSUN track & field head coach Avery Anderson and his wife Bridget Anderson, an assistant track & field coach with the Matadors, finally accomplished the feat on the evening of May 21 when they graduated from CSUN with their Master of Public Administration degrees with an emphasis in Leadership.

Like some of the races their student-athletes compete in, the experience was a long and grueling test which made crossing the finish line that much sweeter for the two track & field coaches.

The Andersons’ story is one steeped in college athletics. The couple met as track & field student-athletes at UCLA, married in 2009 and have two children, son Andy and daughter Avery. While at UCLA, Avery competed in both football and track & field while Bridget competed in the pole vault and javelin for the Bruins.

Avery is in his seventh season as the Matador head coach and 13^th overall with the program. Before taking the helm of the program, he worked under CSUN legend and U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Famer (USTFCCCA) Don Strametz. This 2017 campaign is Bridget’s 12^th with the Matadors and she works with the CSUN pole-vaulters and multi-event student-athletes.

For the family, education is paramount. With son Andy and daughter Avery, the Andersons make it a priority that they spend substantial time each day working on reading, writing and other fundamental skills. So when they decided to take the plunge into graduate school after a lengthy break from the classroom, they knew they had to be fully committed.

“We like to be people who walk the walk and not just talk the talk. With all the student-athletes we’ve helped get to graduate school and beyond, we looked at each other and knew we need to be about it as well,” Bridget said. “The reality is we work for the State of California and the program at CSUN is fantastic. We have some great professors that I wanted to learn from while also setting a great example for our children. After we enrolled, I envisioned our second child, with whom I was pregnant at the time, and Andy watching us walk across the stage.”

“We had a lot of motivations to get this degree. Part of it is what we are here at CSUN, as coaches, but being NCAA coaches at the Division I level is not just about the athletic competition. It is about shaping and helping these young people become successful,” Avery added. “That’s the mission statement for our program. In doing that, we are entrenched in the university and I feel like the professors in this program are a big part of what is happening on this campus. They are really about the students here in a way that is better than at other institutions I have been at as a student-athlete and a coach.  This is by far the best combination of faculty helping the students on campus succeed that I have experienced.”

The names of their favorite professors roll off their tongues like close friends and Avery is quick to point out that Bridget is graduating with a 4.0. Of course, getting there is a story in itself.

“I was looking at a coach who is instrumental on our team, handling travel and working with student-athletes, and also doing all the things at home with two young babies, including a newborn,” Avery said of his wife. “Our daughter was born on a Tuesday, we had a track meet on Saturday and Bridget was out there. This is in the middle of the master’s program. It is amazing to see how much she was able to balance because this was not easy. To have done so with the largest roster on campus all while coaching on the national pole vault summit staff, it was like watching the impossible get done.”

“Obviously, Avery and I have not slept for the past few years,” Bridget said with a laugh.

“Seeing him as the head coach of six teams, sometimes I would feel guilty asking him simple questions because I was adding to his plate. I learned that President Obama no longer chooses the ties he wears because he has to make so many decisions, it becomes too many to make. The reality was we got through this successfully because of how much we believe in CSUN and our student-athletes. They inspired us to be better and we wanted to inspire them. I would drag my body out to the track some days dreading how I was going to be energetic and positive enough for them. All that went away when I saw their faces.”

Both mentioned that managing around 100 athletes in over 20 different events is a lot like public administration. Traveling, getting hotel rooms, buses and food for a traveling party of 70 can be a daunting task. One factor that re-assured the Andersons was the support they got from their parents, something that had to increase with the foray into a post-graduate degree.

“Both sets of our parents have been instrumental and basically went through the program with us,” Bridget said. “We had to approach them before we got started to make sure we had their support in this venture. So when we had night classes, it was my mom who came to babysit.”

“We had to schedule classes together to keep our babysitters from going crazy and some nights Bridget would have to save a seat for me because issues with the team would keep me late,” Avery said.

One thing that never wavered was their commitment to their studies and to their kids’ studies.

“For me, it was important for my son to continue to learn and read every day. Bridget works with him on this every day and I had no idea all that went into it. Actually, my mom was a teacher and I just forgot,” Avery said. “Ensuring proper education is critical and Bridget is constantly doing that with our kids. It also spills over to our student-athletes through their course work and making sure they are succeeding. It is a continuous cycle of making adjustments and getting things to work, especially in the physical training regimen of our student-athletes and the nuances each individual requires. Finishing out this program became a thing where all the other things in our life drove us.  Seeing my kids asleep was a motivation. We knew we had to set an example for them.”

Bridget admitted to studying in the kids’ rooms while they slept, the glow of the computer screen illuminating her face while she watched her babies.

“Something about being around them kept me from falling asleep. Avery and I had much different studying routines, but we hold each other accountable and it worked well,” she added. “We could speak the same language about a paper or a class. Through it all, we remained committed to being CSUN Matadors and to track and field because we live this and our kids are invested in it.”

All that work culminated in comp exams, a lengthy written test challenging all that the Andersons had learned over the course of the program. The date for the exams was May 12, the same day as the opening day of competition at the 2017 Big West Track & Field Championships at Cal State Fullerton. So, the Andersons sacrificed the extra day of studying that most of their peers got and took the exams a day early.  Then they there were off to Orange County.

The Matadors had a sensational time at the 2017 Big West Track & Field Championships. The women’s side claimed six individual titles from four different student-athletes and won the team championship by claiming the 4x400m relay over UC Davis by a narrow .09 seconds. The team championship was the 10^th for the women’s program since joining the league.

For his efforts, Avery was named Big West Women’s Coach of the Year, the second time in his career that he has received the award. The team title was his third as the Matadors’ head coach and both coaching awards and two of the team titles came during his time enrolled as a graduate student.

Now that the experience is over, neither are reticent to look back and reminisce wistfully.

“There are so many reasons to not do it, you just have to find the one reason to do it and hold on to that,” Bridget said. “We went slowly in our program and I would tell people I was slowly working away. You just have to find the reason why and hang onto it because the world will give you a thousand reasons why not.”

“Bridget is the only female coach at CSUN working with male student-athletes and she has helped guide them to conference championships in a variety of events,” Avery said. “There are not as many opportunities for her as for others, but she never allowed that to be an excuse. I am proud of her and myself for this achievement. I am more proud that we went out and walked the walk and not just talked about it.”

CSUN will be sending a large contingent of student-athletes to the NCAA Western Regional Preliminary Championships in Austin, TX on the campus of the University of the Texas from May 25-28.

While it’s unlikely the Andersons will take a victory lap for their academic achievement, they may be able to claim fatigue from walking across the stage.

The California State University, Northridge community expressed gratitude for researchers and scholars at the 2017 Principal Investigators Recognition Event on May 11 at the Valley Performing Arts Center.

The recognition event served as a thank you to more than 190 CSUN faculty and staff members who are conducting research as principal investigators in fields ranging from biology to psychology, and from management to child development.

The principal investigators being recognized were CSUN faculty and staff members who bring external funding to their research and provide students with opportunities to do work outside the classroom.

The event kicked off with a reception where principal investigators enjoyed refreshments and had a chance to speak with one another. CSUN Provost Yi Li delivered a welcoming address in which he thanked them on behalf of himself and CSUN President Dianne F. Harrison for their hard work and dedication.

“I want to say ‘thank you’ for the work you do and the recognition you bring to the university,” Li said. “Without you, CSUN wouldn’t have been named a Top 25 Rising Star Institution for Research in North America.”

In addition to the seven commencement ceremonies and Honors Convocation, California State University, Northridge held a series of cultural celebrations, which aim to celebrate the diversity of our students and commemorate them on a successful academic journey. These celebrations are organized by student organizations or campus entities. Aztlán Graduation took place May 12.

The concept of unmanned vehicles and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), known today as drones, was born out of the 1898 invention of the wireless-controlled boat by Nikola Tesla. Tesla’s invention helped pave the way for drone technology, which over the years has evolved in military use and beyond the battlefield.

The U.S. military has employed drones to carry out bombings, target practice and surveillance. Now, the use of drones has expanded to a multitude of different areas such as law enforcement, search and rescue, mining, real estate, construction, media, wildlife conservation, agriculture and applied sciences.

The Department of Geography at California State University, Northridge, one of the largest such programs in the nation, is collaborating with CSUN’s Institute for Sustainability this year to implement a new drone program. CSUN officials expect the new drone program to help develop strategies to make the campus more sustainable — and arm students with the skills and knowledge needed for future careers in fields that use drone technology.

The department will launch a test course on drones during the fall semester of the 2017-18 academic year. The university will introduce the class for geography and environmental studies majors, according to geography professor Amalie Orme, who joined the Institute for Sustainability as a faculty associate for research. Students in the class will study field skills such as building and deploying a weather station, how to use drone images when monitoring the setup for weather stations and monitoring landscape change.

Orme first introduced drones in the geography department during the 2015-16 school year, during California’s historic drought.

“We were trying to document the landscape under extreme conditions, where we were losing trees, other types of vegetation and water supply was low,” Orme said. “With the tremendous rainfall we had this year, we are now able to look at change as the ecosystems recover.”

In previous years, department faculty, graduate students and undergraduates had conducted extensive field mapping using sophisticated, traditional instruments such as weather stations, light detection and ranging (a remote-sensing method), and global positioning system (GPS) units linked to Google Earth. After reviewing the images, they realized they needed greater detail in order to gauge environmental changes.

Two CSUN geography students purchased drones for their own personal use and soon saw the incredible increase in detail and resolution they could achieve in the mapping images, Orme said.

One of the students, Sean Robison, a graduate student, was looking for ways to link the images with location points and elevation points on the ground. This would provide the department with images with rectification, points on the ground to which student and faculty researchers could return, Orme said. These points enable geographers to monitor environmental changes.

“Our goals really began to be very precise mapping to look at change in landscapes over time, and it seemed appropriate that we start a program that is based both in geography and in the Institute for Sustainability,” Orme said.

Robison, a licensed flight instructor with more than 1,000 hours of flight time, has worked closely with the other students, teaching drone safety and how to navigate through the complicated software programs.

“This UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) type of science is being adopted by not just geography, but all disciplines,” Robison said. “There’s so much that can be done with it. Over the coming years, it’s going to be part of everyone’s life — like computers, it’s going to be ubiquitous. We’re excited that we are on the front edge of this movement.”

To generate more student interest in the program, the department enlisted the help of the CSUN Geography Council, a campus organization. The council president, Marcella Rose, has visited CSUN classrooms and other campuses around the area to demonstrate how the geography department and Institute for Sustainability have used drones for environmental mapping. The budding geographers plan to form a CSUN student group called the Aerial Environmental Research Group, Orme said. 

This new drone program could cost the geography department several thousand dollars. However, the exact amount is tentative, she said. The actual cost of the program will depend on the number of drones purchased, replacement equipment and repairs, and the number of computers and software programs required to set up in the lab.

“It’s a lot of money, there’s this whole support system people don’t see,” Orme said. “We’re trying to tackle this one computer at a time, investing a little bit at a time.”

There are multiple sources of funding from the geography department and the Institute for Sustainability: The department receives funding from CSUN’s Instructionally Related Activities (IRA) and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. The Institute for Sustainability receives funding from the Office of the President as well as from CSUN Facilities Planning Services.

Geography and sustainability students are currently using three drones on campus: an Inspire drone with a thermal camera attached, a Phantom 4 with an RGB (red, green and blue color component) camera and a Phantom 4 with NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) or infrared/heat sensor. These types of drones can map environmental landscapes in 2-D and 3-D with an accuracy of two centimeters.

The flying of drones on campus is governed by strict regulations and policies established by CSUN administration: permission from the Federal Aviation Administration and the university, a licensed pilot for the larger Inspire drone, training, filing of flight plans and flying at times when there are very few people on campus.

The Institute for Sustainability is using the Inspire drone to collect data on heat loss from campus buildings and to assess the impact of exposed grass areas and moisture retention in the soil. With these projects, administrators and faculty aim to identify areas of campus where there are “hot spots” or “cold spots” — zones where temperatures are above or below what the department believes they should be at — and develop mitigation measures to develop a thermally sustainable campus.

Robison said achieving a sustainable campus will require an efficiency evaluation of current energy and water use, and utilizing drones equipped with high-resolution sensors offer safe and innovative approaches to assessing CSUN’s resource usage.

“We are very excited to implement this program,” said Orme. “This is not a stand-alone project. We have integrated the drones into a 21st century mapping program that uses high-level GPS, the establishment of ground truthing (information obtained by direct measurement at ground level used to verify or calibrate remotely obtained data) for accuracy and the generation of 3-D models of landscape change.”

The geography department and Institute for Sustainability officials plan to add more projects around campus that use drone technology in areas such as sustainable plant growth, reducing the heat-island effect, reducing water use and capturing storm water.

“In the coming years, if all goes to plan, we’re going to be able to offer students a pathway to learning how to use this equipment, how to get their certification and how to develop these job skills, so that when they leave CSUN [they’ll] be well trained and ready to compete with other schools,” Robison said.

Drone technology represents the future of mapping in geography, Orme added.

“We’ll still do traditional ground mapping, but this way, students create their own data — they’re not working off of someone else’s database,” she said. “They ask the question, figure out how to answer it, collect the proper data and then own that data. They can do something original, creative with it. This is do-it-yourself from the ground up. It’s critical that our students have a multitude of skills. You can’t get a good job with just one skill.”

For more information on the Institute for Sustainability, go to www.csun.edu/sustainability

CSUN alumnus Tony Pennay ’09 (second from right), chief learning officer for the Ronald Reagan Foundation and Institute in Simi Valley, helps cultivate citizen leaders for the next generation. Photo courtesy of Tony Pennay.

Tony Pennay ’09 (Teaching Credential) is surrounded by books — anthologies of great speeches, tales of war, portraits of women and men who shaped United States and world history. The tomes and volumes that occupy more of his thoughts these days, however, are housed 3,000 miles away — in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.: the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution. The Bill of Rights. The Emancipation Proclamation.

As the chief learning officer for the Ronald Reagan Foundation and Institute in Simi Valley, it’s no surprise that Pennay — a California native, father of three, passionate reader and writer, and seasoned English teacher — is driven to help create informed young citizens. What might surprise visitors to the institute (at the Reagan Presidential Library and Museum) and fellow educators is the 38-year-old’s depth of knowledge about civics education and wide-eyed enthusiasm for American government, its workings and, most of all, history.

“Our mission is to cultivate citizen leaders — thoughtful, engaged citizens,” he said. “Every program, regardless of when a student comes to us or what program they participate in, they get a piece of that larger puzzle.”

Pennay has served on the advisory board for the California K-12 Civic Learning Task Force, which was convened in 2014 by state Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and state Superintendent Tom Torlakson. This year, Pennay said, the task force is piloting civic learning partnerships in six counties, including Los Angeles.

“Especially after this election cycle, [civics] is becoming a hot issue,” he said. “I got letters and emails from associations around the country saying, our work is more important than ever!

“The approach we’ve taken to education in this country for a couple of decades is — math and literacy are important. And they are, but [so is] social studies education,” he continued. “The historic purpose of education in this country is around helping to create those informed citizens. Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania. The people sitting in the room — and the framers of the country and founding documents — knew that in order for this form of government to work, you have to have informed citizens who are in the know.”

Pennay joined the library and museum in 2010, in preparation for the 2011 centennial celebration of Reagan’s birth. He grew up in San Jose, studied literature at Claremont McKenna College and then served with Teach for America. After two years, Pennay went back to school and earned his master’s in creative writing at the University of Hawaii. He returned to California to teach English, this time at the private, K-8 Jewish school, Sinai Akiba, on LA’s Westside.

“The resources were so vast,” he said. “It was great for me to grow as a teacher and I went to a lot of conferences, but eventually, I thought — I love these kids and these parents, but they’re going to do OK. With or without me as a teacher, they’re going to do OK. I wanted to get back into public education — my passion was for public education. To do that, I needed to get my credential.”

Pennay chose CSUN for economic and logistical reasons: He taught on the Westside and lived in Valencia — CSUN was on his way home.

“Lucky for me that I did, because I had Kathy Rowlands as a teacher — and she very quickly became a mentor to me,” he said of the professor in the Department of Secondary Education. “I enjoyed her [methods] class. Even though I had been teaching already for seven years, I felt like I learned so much in her class about what it meant to be a teacher, what it meant to be a professional, and what it meant to continue to push yourself in terms of how you instruct students and engage them.”

A few years later, Pennay was attending the National Council for Teachers of English conference.

“It was just coincidence and fate: I was coming down an escalator at the conference, and Kathy was going up the other way,” he said. “Just before she got on, she called out, ‘Hey, Tony!’ She was there for the National Writing Project conference. She told me, ‘I’m starting up a writing project at CSUN — you’re going to apply.’ She just handed me an application.”

Pennay followed his mentor’s directive and spent the summer of 2008 in the first cohort of CSUN’s Writing Project — which helped lead to a training and later, a job opportunity at the Reagan Library.

“Following powerful, influential mentors has always been important to me,” he said of Rowlands and his experience at CSUN. “Even though I had taught for seven years, I knew I could get better. I needed to be better. In my first year of teaching, one of my colleagues pulled me aside and said, ‘There are two types of teachers: One is the teacher who teaches the same thing every year for 20 or 30 years. The other is somebody who changes up — every year you get better and better.

“You look back at that first year of teaching,” he said. “You have to make a choice about what kind of teacher you want to be. You can challenge yourself, really push yourself to be a better instructor, to connect more with students — to push the bounds of what they’re doing. That was the kind of teacher I wanted to be, and CSUN really gave me that opportunity — both through my credential coursework, and then again through the Writing Project. A lot of the things I’ve learned, I’ve applied here [at the Reagan Library].”

The Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institution Educators (AHSIE) has selected California State University, Northridge graduate student Alvaro Castillo as one of three winners nationwide of the alliance’s Seed to Tree Student Scholarship.

The AHSIE scholarship highlights college students who have helped promote the retention and presence of underserved communities — particularly Latino communities — in higher education.

“My journey and education haven’t ended yet, but I know I’m going to have to seek support and there will be barriers,” said Castillo, who is pursuing a Master of Arts in English, with an emphasis in creative writing. “Obtaining this scholarship is one of those motivations to keep going forward.”

Castillo, an undocumented student, learned about the opportunity to apply for the AHSIE scholarship while participating in a study-abroad program in Mexico, specifically in Mexico City and the state of Cuernavaca, in the winter of 2015-16. There he met professor Daniel Loera from the University of La Verne. Loera is the director of that university’s multicultural center and active in the AHSIE organization.

“[In] one of our projects, as part of the study abroad program, we had to devise a way to become involved in the undocumented student circles,” said Castillo, one of approximately 1,400 undocumented students at CSUN.

While at CSUN, Castillo has served as a writing tutor and supplemental instructor at the Learning Resource Center (LRC) and as a communications coordinator intern at CSUN’s expanded DREAM Center — a resource center for undocumented students located in the University Student Union.

As a DREAM Center intern, Castillo worked to help students with questions ranging from class schedules to navigating campus bureaucracy. As a tutor and instructor at the LRC, he offered support to students struggling with things such as papers or essays revolving around immigration and underserved populations. The students often feel scared to speak and write honestly about topics that hit so close to home, he said.

“I’m there to open that space up for students who feel connected to [those issues] — who want to become involved,” he said. “I met undocumented students who had never come out to anybody except me, and in doing so, I connected them with the DREAM Center. I feel like we’re painting a diagram. If my involvement in the DREAM Center is a big circle, my involvement in other sectors on campus feeds back to that.

“I may not be the most vocal advocate, but if I see an opportunity where the DREAM Center could be involved or benefit [the students], I do my best to make sure that happens,” he continued.

Castillo said that one responsibility of DREAM Center interns is to try to make their majors correlate with the work they do there. In his case, he wanted to see which English programs around the country were aware of the needs of undocumented students.

When Castillo asked various programs whether they had services or opportunities for undocumented students, many responded that they had never been asked for such assistance.

“I found I was repeating myself,” he said. “It made me realize that the need [to help undocumented students] is real. I see it as an opportunity to understand where the need for creative writing falls within Hispanic Serving Institutions.”

After completing his master’s at CSUN, Castillo said, he plans to pursue his Ph.D. in creative writing and literature, in hopes of one day becoming a professor. He has closely studied strategies that promote the retention of first-time, undocumented university students.

“I do want to become a professor, but I’m also [committed to] serving in a position that directly affects student success and enjoyment on campus,” Castillo said. “I don’t want to let go of that advocacy.”

AHSIE invited all three scholarship winners to its annual conference at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which was co-hosted by the Nevada System of Higher Education. Castillo and the other winners were honored during the conference’s welcome reception, and had the opportunity to speak to the more than 500 attendees about their experiences as students at an HSI.

“I [had] the opportunity to remind educators across the country that undocumented students are still doing their best to attend school,” he said. “They’re trying everything in their power to successfully complete their degrees, maintain mental and physical health, all while we have to navigate a very complex and ever-changing landscape.”

Each year, the conference brings educators and administrators from grant programs at HSIs around the country together to share best practices. For more information, visit the AHSIE web site.

Recognizing the valuable but often overlooked role community organizations play in partnering with universities to improve student success, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU) today announced has awarded California State University, Northridge a grant to expand its partnership with the San Fernando Valley community of Canoga Park.

The $50,000 grant to CSUN’s Neighborhood Partners in Action (NPA) program is one of 12 awarded to public institutions across the country to advance university-community partnerships as a way to boost student success. The awards, known as Collaborative Opportunity Grants, support innovative approaches that link student success with an institution’s community engagement.

“This grant award is enormously meaningful for CSUN and NPA’s Bridge to the Future Program, which supports a tuition-free CSUN education for students from Canoga Park,” said David Boyns, a professor of sociology and one of two directors of the program. “By bringing national attention to this program, we hope to signal to the Canoga Park community and others like it the important role that CSUN can play in supporting higher education for young people in our community. Funds from the grant will help us to support program and outreach coordinators, and support other internal infrastructure so that we can engage with more students and promote their academic success.”

Housed in CSUNs Institute for Community Health and Wellbeing, NPA was the product of a two-year community listening campaign to identify how the university could help increase educational attainment in Canoga Park. CSUN faculty visited nonprofits and schools, talked to community leaders and mapped out the neighborhood’s assets and social challenges. This campaign revealed that financial issues were a major factor in a high school student’s decision whether to attend college. In response, the university two years ago launched Bridge to the Future (B2F) — a scholars program that provides a four-year, tuition-free education to a cohort of Canoga Park students.

B2F students receive mentoring and other support to ensure their success at CSUN. As part of the program, students are expected to give back to their community. The first 25 B2F scholars were named earlier this year and have committed to attend CSUN.

“All of our Bridge to the Future Scholars will be giving back to their community by participating in service activities and mentoring their younger peers at Canoga Park High School,” said theater professor Doug Kaback, the other director of the program. “As students return to Canoga Park as role models for younger students, they will help to build a college-going culture within their community so that more students apply to CSUN, pursue a four-year degree and increase the economic and social standing of their families.”

Shari Garmise, vice president of APLU’s Office of Urban Initiatives and executive director of USU, said the universities receiving these grants have undertaken efforts that represent “a sea change in the way we think about student success.”

“For decades, institutions have applied a nearly singular focus on addressing academic hurdles students face once they’re enrolled [in college],” Garmise said. “These institutions are saying, that isn’t enough. We have to work with community partners to ensure students have the required resources to apply, the necessary instruction to be prepared for the rigor of college coursework, and the tools they need to thrive in the workforce and drive positive change in their communities.”

In July, representatives from CSUN and the 11 other universities awarded grants will convene in Washington, D.C., to strategize and collaborate on their initiatives. USU and APLU will disseminate key findings from the institutions’ work after the Collaborative Opportunity Grant program has conclude — to help promote best practices that other public universities can adapt.

In addition to collaborating with an external partner and aligning with investment priorities, CSUN and the other grantees had to show that their programs take an emerging approach to student success and demonstrate that their institution has the capacity to sustain and scale the effort. Finally, grantees had to outline a quantitative and qualitative assessment plan to track the program’s efficacy.

The 11 other institutions that will receive $50,000 each to expand their work are: California State University, Fresno; California State University, Los Angeles; Cleveland State University; Fort Valley State University; Georgia State University; the University of California, Riverside; San Jose State University; the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; the University of Memphis; the University of South Alabama; and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Another application period will open early next year for additional APLU and USU institutions to apply for funding. Institutions currently receiving grants are eligible to re-apply for grants next year to qualify for a total of $100,000 in funding. All grants are supported with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

APLU is a research, policy and advocacy organization dedicated to strengthening and advancing the work of public universities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.  With a membership of 235 public research universities, land-grant institutions, state university systems and affiliated organizations, APLU’s agenda is built on the three pillars of increasing degree completion and academic success, advancing scientific research and expanding engagement. Annually, member campuses enroll 4.8 million undergraduates and 1.3 million graduate students, award 1.2 million degrees, employ 1.2 million faculty and staff, and conduct $43 billion in university-based research.

APLU works in permanent partnership with the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU), an organization committed to enhancing urban university engagement to increase prosperity and opportunity in the nation’s cities, and to tackling key urban challenges.

The coalition includes 36 public, urban research universities representing all U.S. geographic regions. The USU agenda focuses on creating a competitive workforce, building strong communities and improving the health of a diverse population. The Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU) has partnered with APLU to establish an Office of Urban Initiatives, housed at APLU, to jointly lead an urban agenda for the nation’s public universities.

Dan Hosken, CSUN’s new dean of the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication.

Dan Hosken, former associate dean of the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication at California State University, Northridge, has been named dean of the college.

Hosken, an electronic music composer and author, had been serving as the college’s interim dean for the past two years, following the retirement of Jay Kvapil.

“I’m really very excited,” Hosken said. “This is a great opportunity to start looking out toward the future of the college in longer distances — looking many years in the future, rather than just a few months.”

CSUN’s Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication has more than 4,800 undergraduate and 220 graduate students in myriad programs that span the arts and fields of communication. The college’s faculty, staff and students are inspired by the shared belief that arts are community, community is art, and art and communication are essential pillars for building and maintaining community. Its programs — in art, music, theatre, cinema and television arts, communication studies and journalism — have an international reputation for graduating skilled professionals who succeed in their respective fields.

Hosken said his time as interim dean has given him insight into the strengths and goals of the college’s six departments and its more than 360 tenured and tenure-track faculty members and lecturers.

He said he would like to strengthen and expand the college’s already-existing ties with local industries, such as the entertainment industry, and include the departments in his college, as well as links to “strong programs found all across the campus.”

“If an entertainment company needs accountants, we have amazing accountants coming out of the [David Nazarian College of Business and Economics]. If they need engineers, CSUN’s College of Engineering [and Computer Science] can help them,” he said. “This campus has a broad array of disciplines that can support the entertainment industry in all areas, and I would like to see CSUN’s reputation in the industry grow even stronger.”

He also would like to strengthen the Curb College’s ties with the community, Hosken said.

“The impact that we can have in the community, across all of our disciplines, is strong, but it can be even more coordinated and more visible,” he continued. “By working together collaboratively, we create great opportunities for our students and have a positive impact on the community and related fields in the arts, communications and media.”

Hosken noted that the way people share and tell their stories — whether through journalism, film, television, music or other means of communication — has changed dramatically over the past few years.

“Faculty in the Curb College have been at the forefront of many of these changes,” he said. “It’s an exciting time to be leading the college.”

Hosken, a native of Michigan, came to CSUN in 1999 as faculty in the Department of Music with an expertise in music technology. During his tenure at CSUN, he has served as assistant chair of the music department and as a member of the board of directors of The University Corporation. As a composer, his music has been performed in major cities around the world and has been featured at prominent festivals of electronic music.

He has a doctorate in music composition from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a master’s degree in composition with academic honors from the New England Conservatory of Music and a bachelor’s degree in humanities and science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Isela Lieber was 17 years old when she left behind everything she knew. In 1988, she set out on her own from Guayaquil, a small city in Ecuador, for New York City — without a high school education or a word of English.

She traveled thousands of miles to New York, where she lived for two and a half years, working at a factory for $3 an hour while learning English. Then, the teen traveled for three days by bus to Los Angeles. Once in LA, she worked as a housekeeper, took night classes and earned her GED certificate in order to achieve her dream of becoming a teacher.

In 1998, Lieber transferred to CSUN from Los Angeles Valley College. Hard work and perseverance paid off for Isela Lieber ’00 (English), M.A. ’02 (Educational Administration), both as a student at California State University, Northridge and as an educator: in October of 2016, state officials recognized her as one of five California Teachers of the Year, after she’d been named one of six LA County Teachers of the Year and one of 22 LAUSD Teachers of the Year.

Lieber teaches English Language Development at James Monroe High School (just a few miles east of CSUN), where her students are primarily immigrants. She said that sharing similar experiences gives her empathy for her students, since she understands the obstacles they face.

Alejandra Quiñonez, the student who nominated Lieber for LAUSD Teacher of the Year, said she noticed “how much time and effort she puts into her job.”

“She always tries to inspire other students to do better. She always goes out of her way to see others succeed,”Quiñonez said.

During an interview with Lieber in her Monroe High classroom after school, she discussed her connection with her students. She turned to the 10 high schoolers hanging out in the classroom and asked, “I don’t know, do you guys think I connect with you?”

“Yes!” her students shouted.

“We kind of have the same story, and I try to share my story and listen to theirs,” Lieber said of her students. “We make a very cool environment where we can help each other — they help me to grow as a person, and I help them with their English language skills, and sometimes with words of advice and encouragement.”

Of the students lingering in her classroom after school, many female students had come to browse the dresses Lieber had brought in for them to wear to the school’s senior prom. Some dresses were donations from other teachers, and some were from Lieber’s own closet.

The ninth- and 10th-grade teacher also leads a school club called Succeed, which guides teens — particularly those who would be first-generation college students — through the college application process.

Carlos Martinez, a member of Succeed, never had Lieber as a teacher, but said she has had a strong impact on him.

“She stays after school to help us with applications, financial aid and everything else,” Martinez said. “Students really relate with her because of her background and how [well] she treats us.”

Despite her family’s circumstances during her childhood in Ecuador, she gained access to books and developed a strong interest in reading, Lieber said.

“My family was very poor, but I was given access to a lot of libraries because my family would do the laundry of [upper-class people],” she said. “And that’s how I got this love for reading.”

By 9 years old, Lieber was reading advanced classics.

“I was reading The Odyssey and Don Quixote,” she said. “So when I came to [the United States], even though I’d only gone up to seventh grade, my Spanish vocabulary was very high because of all my reading.”

Lieber said that this background is why she encourages her students to read as much as they can, and that reading sparked her passion for teaching.

“I know that education is such a powerful engine of change,” Lieber said. “I want to give that to my students, and they respond very well most of the time. And even when they don’t, at least I know that I’m providing a venue where they have the information [to excel].”

Lieber has been teaching for 18 years, and her love for teaching has not dimmed, she said.

“My passion for teaching is getting stronger,” Lieber said. “I have pursued many different [directions]. I became a national board-certified teacher in English as a New Language. I’ve learned a lot of things — different pedagogies, different methodologies, different ways of helping students.”

Lieber said she hopes to pursue a doctorate in the near future.

“I would love to do my [doctorate] in educational research in a subject that’s relevant to what I like. I’m currently looking for fellowships, and maybe next year I’ll start looking for funding,” she said. “I would love to attend CSUN and get my Ed.D. from there.”

Lieber also recalled the impact CSUN professors had on her at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

“I remember my [professors] — Dr. Sabrina Peck; Dr. Hayashi; Dr. Judy Fish; Dr. John Lucid; Dr. William Walsh, who did the methodology for teaching kids; Dr. Alfonso Nava, whom I liked because he was no nonsense; Dr. Yvonne Garcia, I loved her; and Dr. Patricia Watkins, who gave me a fail in one of my English classes and made me want to work harder,” Lieber said. “They are all very inspiring individuals. The professors [at CSUN] molded me into wanting to do what’s right.”

The Johnson family, along with the College of Science and Mathematics, recently hosted a reception honoring the fifth annual awarding of the Mack I. Johnson Research Award for Outstanding Graduate Student at the Orange Grove Bistro on California State University, Northridge’s campus.

The award was established by Gail Johnson to honor the legacy of her husband, Mack I. Johnson, associate vice president of Graduate Studies, Research, and International Programs and professor of biology. Johnson worked at CSUN for 25 years and was an ardent supporter of research excellence and friend of the College of Science and Mathematics. He was best known for his compassion for students, his many accomplishments in academic administration and his commitment to supporting student and faculty researchers.

The Mack I. Johnson Research Award for Outstanding Graduate Student is the most prestigious award given to a graduate student in the College of Science and Mathematics.  It is presented annually to an outstanding graduate student who has excelled academically, demonstrated extraordinary research abilities and has been accepted into a Ph.D. program in the sciences or mathematics.

In the history of the award, there have been only two years in which there were two recipients. This year was one of them. Special Assistant to the Dean and biology professor Robert Espinoza said that the committee couldn’t decide between the applicants because they were both outstanding.

“All of them were saying ‘[this is my choice], but I could be swayed the other way.’ There wasn’t a clear consensus,” Espinoza said. “This year, both applicants were very strong, so we went to Gail and she said we should give the award to both of them.”

One co-recipient of this year’s award is Malachia Hoover ’14 (Cell and Molecular Biology), who earned her M.S. in Biology this year. Hoover said that winning this award serves as validation of all of her hard work.

“I’ve been [at CSUN] for a long time,” Hoover shared. “It feels good to be honored by faculty and staff as I graduate and start the next chapter of my life.”

This fall, Hoover will pursue her Ph.D.in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University with all costs covered by a scholarship.

The other co-recipient is graduate student Maria Akopyan, a Matador who completed her M.S. in Biology with a perfect 4.0 GPA. Akopyan said this award reminds her of the friends and family she’s made at CSUN.

“It’s more than just monetary,” Akopyan said. “Receiving this award reminds me that I belong to the CSUN community — that I have people who support me.”

Akopyan will begin a Ph.D. program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University in the fall on a full scholarship.
Past recipients of the award are now pursuing doctoral degrees at University of Pennsylvania, University of Memphis, Rutgers University, Yale University, and the University of California, Davis.

Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics, Jerry N. Stinner, said that “the Mack I. Johnson Memorial Research Award for Outstanding Graduate Student is the perfect tribute to everything Mack stood for. To have such a big impact on the lives of students is exactly what he would have wanted.”