Co-founder of Black LIves Matter comes to CSUMB

Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, will make a presentation at CSU Monterey Bay on Oct. 6. Garza will talk about how #BlackLivesMatter went from a political project to a global movement and how social media served as a platform to elevate the founders’ dreams, vision, hopes and love for humanity.

Garza took to social media to express her anguish and love for the black community after the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Ending her message with Our Lives Matter/We Matter/Black Lives Matter, Garza, together with Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, turned those last words into a Twitter hashtag. #BlackLivesMatter has evolved into the banner under which this generation’s civil rights movement marches.

An established social activist committed to challenging society to recognize and celebrate the contributions of all individuals, specifically black people and gay communities, Garza’s activism is rooted in connecting individuals and emerging social movements. Her work also involves advocating for an open Internet to provide a space for these movements to emerge.

She has earned a variety of honors, including two Harvey Milk Democratic Club Community Activist Awards for her work fighting gentrification and environmental racism in San Francisco's largest black community.

Currently the special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Garza previously served as executive director of People Organized to Win Employment Rights, where she led the charge on significant initiatives, including organizing against police violence in black neighborhoods.

The talk will be held at 7 p.m. on Oct. 6 in the University Center on Sixth Avenue and B Street. Tickets are $10 and will be sold only at the door.

The Associated Students of CSUMB, the Otter Cross Cultural Center and the Otter Student Union are sponsors of the event.

For information or to request disability accommodations, contact Shanna Kinzel at skinzel@csumb.edu.

Hartnell College tops California for transfers to UC system

Hartnell College is leading in transfers of underrepresented minority students to the University of California, Hartnell officials announced Thursday.

The top three community colleges in the state to transfer minority students to UCs are: Hartnell College, Rio Hondo and West Los Angeles College, according to an analysis by UC.

“We are being asked by other colleges about our successful practices,” said Superintendent/President Willard Lewallen. “We have many, but the first thing I tell them is this: at Hartnell College we believe that our students are UC material. We lift them up in small and large ways.”

Lewallen was invited to moderate a panel in Los Angeles this week to talk about best practices Hartnell has implemented to have higher percentages of minority students transferring to UCs.

Sixth graders from all over Monterey County visit CSUMB

A slew of sixth graders descended upon Cal State Monterey Bay in the last few days to learn more about what the university has to offer them.

It was five days of about 2,000 students coming to get a taste of the university life. Sixth graders from the Alisal Union, Gonzales Unified and Salinas City Elementary school districts visited CSUMB. Since the program began in the spring of 2009, more than 12,000 Monterey County sixth-graders have visited campus.





The students promise to do well in school, work hard, get good grades, graduate from high school, and pursue a college degree.

In return, Interim Coordinator of TRiO Student Support Services Omar Murillo promised that the university will save a spot for them if they complete high school and meet other basic requirements. As part of the promise, the university will work with the students and their parents to help arrange financial aid.



Each student received a poster that explains what they need to do to prepare for college on a year-by-year basis starting in the sixth grade; a certificate for them to sign acknowledging their promise to prepare for and attend college; information on the outreach and support programs available at CSUMB; and a letter to their parents explaining the event and asking them to frame and display the certificate.

And they got to take pictures with Monte Rey, the university's mascot. What joy!

UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal visits Seaside High School

UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal visited Seaside High School on Wednesday as part of Achieve UC, a series of events designed to inspire students to apply and attend college.

Blumenthal shared some personal history with about 200 students from all grades. He told them how he and his sister were the first to attend college, how college taught him about the world, and how he dreaded his English classes but ended up loving writing, according to Raul Ebio, interim director for early academic outreach at UC Santa Cruz.

Deciding whether to go to college "isn't really about jobs and money, but it is true that college graduates make a lot more money over the course of their lives than than students who stop after high school," Blumenthal said.

Chancellor Blumenthal also bragged about UC Santa Cruz's marine sciences, astronomy, and genome programs on campus. President Barack Obama awarded Professor Sandra Faber the National Medal of Science. Professor David Haussler was one of the first to crack the genomic code.

Blumenthal also made a deal with Seaside: if the school can pay for transportation to UCSC, the university will pay for dinner before attending the Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation, a favorite event on the City on a Hill.

Chancellor Blumenthal ended his intervention by urging students to go to college, regardless of which one they attend.

"Yes, I'm biased. I think UC Santa Cruz is a great school. But my message today is un-biased: Go to college, wherever you choose. What matters is that you go to college. If you choose a UC campus, we will help you in every way we can. So, work hard, keep your grades up, and realize your dreams!"

I hear the students were not the only ones impressed. The administrators were swooning. It's not every day that a university chancellor visits a high school, they said.

Pretty cool, huh?

CSUMB students shine at SACNAS

Thirteen CSUMB students took part in the annual conference of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science, which this year took place in San Antonio, Texas.

Three of them took top honors: Timothy Fuller, a senior marine science major, received the top prize in the general ecology category. He studies thermal adaptation in the European green crab.



Sean Windell and Mary McCormick, graduate students in the Applied Marine and Watershed Science program, were awarded first- and second-place honors, respectively, for their oral presentations in marine science. Windell’s work examined the value of habitat diversity in marine reserves; McCormick studied intertidal foraging habits of fished and protected spiny lobsters.

For more information, click here.

The science department at CSUMB has been growing some amazing talent, and they continue to impress. Go Otters! 

CSUMB President Eduardo Ochoa to deliver state of the university address

In case you're terribly curious about what Prez Ochoa will say today, when he delivers his state of the university address, but can't really get away from your desk, here's the link to watch him live.

And if you want to watch him live, the event will take place at 3 p.m. at the World Theater at CSUMB.

Enjoy!

Carmel's Jane Margaret Brunson heading to UCLA with $10,000 scholarship

Jane Margaret Brunson of Carmel is heading to UC Los Angeles in September with a scholarship from Jewish Guild Healthcare. She is one of 16 legally blind, college-bound high school seniors throughout the United States to receive scholarships of $10,000 each from the Guild for this upcoming academic year.

The GuildScholar Program was launched in 2005 and awards each student a scholarship to help assure that more students with vision impairments are able to enroll in a college or university that might otherwise be out of their reach financially. While there are other scholarships available for such students, this is the largest program of its kind in the country. It was created, in part, through a generous grant from the Jeannette A. Klarenmeyer Trust. As many as 16 students are selected for scholarships each academic year. For information on the GuildScholar Program’s scholarships for the 2014 academic year, contact Gordon Rovins at 212-769-7801 or e-mail guildscholar@guildhealth.org.

CSUMB President Eduardo Ochoa will stay for a while -- what do you want to know about his plans?

Now that Ochoa was been confirmed to stay at CSUMB, I'll be sitting with him for an interview this week.

What do you want to ask him about the future of the university? Let me know and I'll include it in my questions.

Call me at 753-6755, email me at cmelendez@montereyheraldl.com, send me a tweet @MelendezSalinas.

Pacific Grove High graduate, Moss Landing Marine Lab student, earns top state science honors

Brian Maurer, a graduate student from San Jose State University and Pacific Grove High alumnus received this year's California State University’s top award for graduate student research in Biological and Agricultural Sciences.

This year’s competition was held May 10th and 11th at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Maurer, who conducts his research at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories’ Biological Oceanography Lab, was one of three graduate students from San Jose State University at the statewide event.

The twenty-seventh annual CSU competition gave awards in 10 categories for student excellence in scholarly research and creative activity. Maurer presented his research on the optimization of bulk FDA, a water quality analysis technique developed for ballast water testing by his advisor, Dr. Nick Welschmeyer. Maurer has improved the method, which is critical for both scientific and public sectors, as it provides a way to determine if living organisms are present in water samples.

Maurer received a cash prize of $500 for his First Place award.

Moss Landing Marine Laboratories is the graduate program in marine science for California State Universities East Bay, Fresno, Monterey Bay, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose and Stanislaus. To learn more information about MLML and Brian Maurer, click here.

Submitted by Brynn Hooton-Kaufman

Monterey College of Law President gets another five years

Monterey College of Law President and Dean Mitchel L. Winick has received a five-year contract renewal to continue at the helm of the school. Winick, 57, has served as dean of the law school since 2005 and was named president and dean in 2010. With the contract renewal, Winick becomes the longest serving dean in the law school's 40 year history.

Winick currently serves as co-chair of the Monterey County Business Council Higher Education Cluster along with Sunder Ramaswamy, president of MIIS. He also serves as vice chair of the City of Monterey Redevelopment Successor Agency.

During his tenure at the law school, Winick has been instrumental in a number of successful initiatives, including improving bar pass rates to rank MCL among the highest of the California-accredited law schools, opening a first-year law program in Santa Cruz, and addition of a two-year master of legal studies degree program. In recent years, the law school was recognized by the Monterey County Business Council with the 2009 Public-Private Partnership Award for its small slaims mediation program and the 2010 Top Green Business Award for construction of the law school's LEED Platinum Community Justice Center.

Science work paying off at CSUMB

Three members of this year’s graduating class at Cal State Monterey Bay and an alumna have won prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships.

Michael Diaz of Upland, Liz Lopez of Sacramento, Emily Roncase of Ridgecrest and Stacy Mauzey of Salinas, were awarded the fellowships, which provide $90,000 to support three years of graduate education.

Diaz, mentored by Aparna Sreenivasan, researched potentially toxic cynaobacteria from local freshwater environments. He also investigated stomach bacteria pathogensis at UC Santa Cruz. A biology major, he will begin work on his Ph.D. in the cellular and molecular biosciences program at UC Irvine in the fall.

Mentored James Lindholm, Lopez worked on a project to monitor Marine Protected Areas along the Southern California coast and also conducted research at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center. She is considering graduate programs at the University of San Diego, Western Washington University and Oregon State.

Roncase, a biology major, worked with Henrik Kibak and Aparna Sreenivasan to investigate cyanotoxin levels in a freshwater lake in Watsonville. She also worked at the University of Illinois at Chicago, researching antibotic resistance at the molecular level. She is considering offers from a number of doctoral programs, including Scripps Research Institute and Brown University.

Stacy Mauzey, an alumna of Hartnell College and CSUMB, is now a graduate student in plant pathology at Washington State University. While at CSUMB, she worked with Carolee Bull in the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service facility in Salinas.

The NSF graduate research fellowships went to 2,000 students – from more than 13,000 applicants – across the country; 595 of them were awarded to undergraduates. CSUMB was the largest recipient of undergraduate awards in the California State University’s 23-campus system.

“Nine CSUMB undergraduates and one alumna have received NSF fellowships in the last four years,” said Bill Head, director of the university’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center. “This is a clear indication of the world-class education students receive at CSUMB and a reminder of how well public institutions serve the students of California.”

submitted by Joan Weiner, CSUMB

Moss Landing Marine Lab professor Erika McPhee-Shaw earns Stanford fellowship

Erika McPhee-Shaw, San Jose State University Associate Professor at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, has been selected as one of 20 recipients of the next generation of Leopold Leadership fellows. The fellowship was created to provide successful midcareer scientists in Canada, Mexico, and the United States with tools to communicate their science beyond the scientific community more effectively.

McPhee-Shaw is the chair of the Central and Northern California Ocean Observing System and a member of Center for Ocean Solution’s coastal hypoxia working group. She's interested in presenting complex oceanographic and environmental issues to policymakers, resource managers and legislators. Her specific plans are to use this fellowship to contribute to a greater understanding of nitrate pollution, ocean acidification, and the ocean’s role in storms and forecasting weather and climate.

The Leopold Leadership Program, named for famed early environmentalist Aldo Leopold, is administered by Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment.

Moss Landing Marine Laboratories is the graduate program in marine science for California State Universities East Bay, Fresno, Monterey Bay, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose and Stanislaus.