CSUDH News

The primary source of news and information about California State University, Dominguez Hills, its students, faculty, and staff.

CSUDH In The News

CSU Dominguez Hills gifted $5.2M in grants to use for high school students

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California State University Dominguez Hills has received four grants worth more than $5.2 million to provide 240 local high school students with the resources they need to excel in high school and graduate from college, school officials announced Monday.

Each of the five-year U.S. Department of Education grants will support 60 students participating in CSUDH Upward Bound programs at five local schools: Carson High School, Gardena High School, Hawthorne High School, Leuzinger High School in Lawndale, and Thomas Jefferson High School in South Los Angeles. The grants will fund the programs from Sept. 1, 2017 to Aug. 31, 2022.

“We are extremely excited about the opportunity to deepen our impact in the schools and communities connected to this funding,” said William Franklin, vice president for Student Affairs at CSUDH. “Upward Bound and Upward Bound Math and Science programs are some of the most successful … initiatives offered by the U.S. Department of Education. Even though the grants are extremely competitive, our campus has been quite successful.”

Upward Bound is a national college preparatory program specifically designed for eligible low-income and/or first generation high school students.

Source: My News LA

Spanish-Speaking Teachers Getting Special Training to Meet California’s Demand for more Bilingual Teachers

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spanish graduate language classes held at CSUDH
Lilia Sarmiento, associate professor of teacher education at CSUDH.

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 verbally and in writing in both English and Spanish.

This was the second year CSU Dominguez Hills offered its institute, taught in Spanish, said Lilia Sarmiento, who helped develop the program. Participants included the university’s teacher candidates, instructional assistants and new and experienced bilingual teachers from four Los Angeles area districts.

Source: EdSource

Excessive cellphone use may cause anxiety, experts warn

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Nancy Cheever, Good Morning America
Nancy Cheever on Good Morning America

Spending too much time on your phone may be causing you to feel stress and anxiety, experts are warning.

“The more people use their phone,” Dr. Nancy Cheever, who spearheaded research on the relationship between cellphone use and anxiety at California State University, Dominguez Hills, told ABC News, “the more anxious they are about using their phone.”

Cheever’s research suggests that phone-induced anxiety operates on a positive feedback loop, saying that phones keep us in a persistent state of anxiety and the only relief from this anxiety is to look at our phones.

She warns that there is little known about the long-term effects that phone-induced anxiety can have on your overall health.

“If you’re constantly connected, you’re going to feel anxiety,” Cheever said. “And the more people feel anxiety, that can lead to other things like mental health and physical ailments.” Her research comes at a time when teens may be on their phones for more than six-and-a-half hours a day, according to the nonprofit Common Sense Media.

If you’re constantly connected, you’re going to feel anxiety. – Nancy Cheever

Cheever demonstrated her experiment on ABC News’ T.J. Holmes, as well as two teenage girls, measuring the amount of stress that being away from their phones caused them.

She initially told Holmes, as well as the two teens, that they were going to take part in an experiment on test anxiety, and then strapped measuring equipment to them to track changes in heart rate and even record perspiration levels.

“I’m just going to put your phones back here because they might interfere with the equipment a little bit,” Cheever told her subjects, moving their cellphones out of reach but still within hearing distance if the phones started to ring.

Cheever then sent text messages and called their phone numbers, and as their cellphones started to go off, Cheever used her equipment to measure their stress levels. Most people experience an emotional response that floods their body with stress hormones when they hear their phone go off, according to Cheever.

“His physiological arousal spikes quite a bit right after he hears the text come in,” Cheever told ABC News of Holmes’ reaction to hearing his phone go off.

“You could see immediately he … started sweating quite a bit. He’s anxious about his phone ringing,” Cheever added.

The two teenage girls, Keke and Gabby, also responded with symptoms of stress and anxiety when their phones were taken away from them during the experiment and they could hear them ring. Keke’s stress levels on Cheever’s equipment measured four times higher than Holmes’ levels. Meanwhile, Gabby had the highest stress response out of all three of them.

Nancy Colier, a psychotherapist and author of the book, “The Power of Off,” emphasized to ABC News that the long-term dangers of this anxiety remain largely unknown.

“Let’s meet in 30 years,” Colier said when asked how much damage is being done to a child who goes through these levels of anxiety every day, “and we’ll know the answer to that.”

“My experience in talking to teenagers is if it’s ‘My heart rate is higher’ versus ‘I have a social life,’ they’re going to choose social life,” Colier added. “But the way we’re living doesn’t actually serve our deeper well-being.”

“All of this attention to technology, and the mind, and thoughts is coming at a great expense to the other aspects of what … human beings need to feel well,” she said.

Source: ABC News

Actor Nick Cannon kicks off African American Leaders of Tomorrow Conference at CSU Dominguez Hills

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Nick Cannon, Tomorrow ConferenceActor and entertainer Nick Cannon was the keynote speaker Wednesday at a kickoff of the four-day African American Leaders of Tomorrow Conference held at CSU Dominguez Hills.

Sixty African American high school students from throughout the state were selected to participate in the program that aims to cultivate the next generation of African Americans to become leaders in their communities, according to the CSU Dominguez Hills website.

The students will receive leadership training and attend workshops on topics that include college experience, career development and civic engagement, according to the California Legislative Black Caucus website. Students are housed on the campus of CSU Dominguez Hills, with meals, program materials, as well as transportation during the conference provided at no cost to the participants.

Source: Daily Breeze

Gov. Jerry Brown doubles down on California measure changing recall process, calling it ’eminently reasonable

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California, Gov. Jerry Brown and South Bay Sen. Steve BradfordThe partisan volleys have continued this week in the effort to recall state Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) over his vote to pass an increase in the gas tax. Those seeking to recall Newman submitted more than enough signatures needed to qualify the measure for the ballot, if they’re all deemed valid.

Newman supporters looking to halt the recall filed a lawsuit Thursday, claiming signature gatherers had misled voters. And Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that makes changes to long-standing recall rules, an effort that Republicans have decried as an attempt by Democrats to “rig the system” to protect one of their own.

Brown seemed to double down on that measure Friday at a press conference at Cal State Dominguez Hills, where he discussed the new gas tax, calling the new recall process “eminently reasonable.”

The measure allows voters up to 30 days to remove their signature from a recall petition and creates a new process to review costs associated with a recall election. Brown said the bill provides an opportunity for “people who have been hoodwinked” to change their mind.

“It’s all about truth and giving people the opportunity to make sure that their vote and their signature is knowingly given,” Brown. “The only people who would be against that are people who wanted to fool people and don’t want to test it in court or in the light of day.”

Brown’s comments came after a roundtable discussion in which he and state Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Compton) spoke about the importance of directing transportation dollars raised by the gas tax increase to businesses owned by women, minorities and people who are disabled. Brown cast it as part of a larger question of equality and opportunity in America.

But the discussion took place even as Brown mused about efforts to repeal the controversial tax package, which is expected to raise $52 billion over 10 years for road repairs and other transportation projects.

“If people want to not fund the roads, then they can put something on the ballot and maybe change things,” Brown said. “But I think most people in California want to fix the roads.”

Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach), who is running for governor, has filed a ballot measure to repeal the gas tax.

Brown dismissed a recent poll by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley, which said that a majority of registered voters oppose the gas tax increases Brown and legislators recently approved.

“That was a poll that said, ‘Do you want to raise a tax?'” Brown said. “Of course people are going to say no.”

Brown added that when voters are given “concrete situations” like education and roads, they’re more likely to support tax increases.

“I think Californians are always leery of taxes. I’m leery of taxes,” Brown said. “You want to drive around on gravel roads? I’ve got a gravel road out in front of my house in the country. It’s not bad. But I don’t think that’s what people want. I think they want real, paved roads – and to have paved roads you’ve got to spend real money.”

Times staff writer Patrick McGreevy contributed to this report.

Source: Los Angeles Times