In a typical year, CSUDH's New Student Convocation is a chance for the university to welcome and greet its new freshmen and transfer students. At the convocation, new Toros begin to acclimate themselves to the campus, meet fellow students and faculty members, and generally get acquainted with what college life is all about. As we all know, though, 2020 has not been a typical year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year's convocation took place virtually, as has almost all instruction and campus business since the lockdowns began in March. Faced with our current virtual reality, the CSUDH Alumni Association decided to use the unique situation to do something a little different to help new ... Read More
Archives for August 2020
Cheryl McKnight Honored with CSU’s Faculty Innovation and Leadership Award
In the 1990s, when gang violence in Los Angeles County was at its peak, Cheryl McKnight was a member of the Gang Prevention and Intervention Unit in Long Beach. She helped initiate a truce between the East Side Longos and Insane Crips gangs, resulting in a long-standing peace that remains to this day. She soon became director of the city's Future Generations Youth Center, where she enabled marginalized youth to take some ownership of the program. In 2007, she joined California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) and used what she learned about empowering to expand experiential learning and service opportunities for students as coordinator for the Center for Service Learning, ... Read More
CSUDH Receives STARS Silver Rating for Sustainability Achievements
(Carson, CA) - California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) has earned a “STARS Silver” rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) in recognition of its sustainability achievements. The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System (STARS) measures and encourages sustainability in all aspects of higher education. Since earning AASHE's “Bronze” rating in 2018, CSUDH's efforts to establish the next generation of student sustainability leaders has grown into a thriving student internship program. Dozens of interns and student volunteers have engaged nearly 2,500 people in sustainable campaigns and education, while working to ... Read More
CSUDH Jumpstart Celebrates 10 Years of Service
Editor's Note: Interviews for this article took place in late 2019. It's 9 a.m. on a school day, but Paola Gonzalez isn't in a lecture hall. She's leading a rapt circle of four-year-olds in a rousing rendition of “Slippery Fish” at the YWCA preschool in Compton. “Slippery fish, slippery fish, gulp gulp gulp,” she sings, wriggling her hands as the children squeal with delight. Gonzalez, a fourth-year theatre arts major at CSUDH, is well experienced in putting on a show. As a team leader for Jumpstart, she has ample opportunity to put those creative skills to good use. Each week, Gonzalez and her team of fellow Jumpstart volunteers plan and deliver an engaging curriculum for local ... Read More
Engagement and Activism in Modern Physics Education
Source: Physics Central By Korena Di Roma Howley As a young girl growing up in Sacramento, California, Ximena Cid would sit on her roof and stare at the night sky. “I always had a love of the stars, of the universe,” she says. Today, Cid is chair of the physics department at California State University, Dominguez Hills and has pivoted from a focus in space science to one in physics education research (PER). “In grad school, I became more and more fascinated with the way people learn [and how] the ways in which we present ideas impacts how people understand them,” she says. She looks at how topics in physics might be rendered to better support students, noting that teaching in ... Read More