It may have been brought to the United States from Europe in the 1860s for its flavor, but garlic mustard, a member of the Brassicaceae plant family, is now an invasive species in the forests of North America that is negatively impacting native flora and fauna. To help discover ways to eradicate the intrusive plant, California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) biology student Karina Martinez spent the first 11 weeks of her summer in Harvard Forest, a 4,000-acre ecological research site and outdoor laboratory that has been administered by Harvard University since 1988. Her research focused on if the “Eurasian invasive duo,” garlic mustard and exotic earthworms, work in tandem to ... Read More
Spanish-Speaking Teachers Getting Special Training to Meet California’s Demand for more Bilingual Teachers
A first step for Los Angeles is training the teachers who will be working in the district's 16 new dual language programs starting this year, said Hilda Maldonado. With these new classes, the district's bilingual programs will grow to more than 100. Besides in-house training, the district also sent a dozen bilingual teachers to a two-week summer institute at CSU Dominguez Hills in June. And the district is partnering with a training program offered through UC Davis to help strengthen bilingual teachers' abilities to teach Common Core standards in math and English language arts in formal Spanish by helping them build their vocabularies and their abilities to communicate with students ... Read More
Ximena Cid Stands on ‘Path of Totality’ After Teaching STEM 0 Students about Total Solar Eclipses
On Aug. 21, Ximena Cid was standing with family and friends in Idaho on the “path of totality,” watching the bright morning sky dim to a twilight hue and feeling the air temperature steadily drop while the moon gradually blocked the sun's light from reaching Earth. Cid, an assistant professor of physics at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), was far from alone during her observation of the “Great American Total Solar Eclipse.” She joined millions of awe-struck Americans on the path's 70-mile wide swath of land stretching from Oregon to South Carolina from which the total eclipse of the sun was visible. “We tried to go to Oregon, but all along the path the hotels ... Read More
Alexandra Gutierrez Spends Summer Seeking Early-Earth Microbes
Unlike most undergraduate students who go to the Colorado River during the summer to camp or enjoy whitewater rafting, Alexandra Gutierrez, a biology major at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), spent much of that time processing soil samples harvested in the shallows of the river in search of Archaea microorganisms. Funded by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo's Robert Noyce Scholars and the STEM Teacher and Research (STAR) programs, Gutierrez–an avid environmentalist–was tasked with searching for more diverse families of the microbe during her internship at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), along with working on campus at Stanford in the Green Earth Sciences ... Read More
Faculty Highlights: July 2017
Our faculty members participate in conferences around the world, conduct groundbreaking research, and publish books and journal papers that contribute to their field and highlight their expertise. We feature those accomplishments and more in this section. College of Arts and Humanities Assistant Professor of Art Devon Tsuno's painting “Watershed 3,” part of the “80/50 Quiet Storm” exhibit in the Denk Gallery in Los Angeles through Aug. 19, was named “Pick of the Week” by Artillery Magazine and positively reviewed by art critic Ezrha Jean Black. Tsuno has also joined artists Hung Viet Nguyen and Erin Harmon to create “Verdant Loop,” which presents landscape as an “invented not-nature where ... Read More
