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CSUDH News

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

Campus News

Teen Journalists From China Visit CSU Dominguez Hills

August 20, 2010 By Staff

Every summer and winter, high school students from Shanghai, China, visit the United States to learn English and the American culture. Last month, 40 students made California State University, Dominguez Hills their home for six days as part of the College of Extended and International Education’s American Language and Culture Program study tours.

“We call them study tours because the students spend the morning portion of their day in English classes and after lunch they get to do something fun like Disneyland or the beach,” said Dr. Edward Milecki, director of international programs at the university. The students were taken to many famous Los Angeles hangouts such as Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Disneyland, and the Petersen Automotive Museum in the Miracle Mile district.

Logan Lou, 15, in front of University Housing with the words "Flying Dragon" in Chinese calligraphy that he created with ink on rice paper.
Logan Lou, 15, in front of University Housing with the words “Flying Dragon” in Chinese calligraphy that he created with ink on rice paper; Photo by Jessica Russell

Many of the visitors are student journalists with the Shanghai Students’ Post, which is published in both English and Chinese. Some just came along with their friends for fun, but all were here to see America and learn about it, most for the first time. All of the students are from various different middle schools and high schools in Shanghai, a city that many would agree is the financial center of mainland China.

“Many of the students live better lives because of their parents who work in finance,” said Walton Zhai, one of the student program coordinators for the Shanghai Students’ Post. “They can take these trips with us and be exposed to more. Exposure is good for them and their learning process.”

According to Zhai, many of the students in the program are talented journalists. In Shanghai, they had the chance to interview world-famous tennis players such as Venus and Serena Williams, James Black, and Andy Roddick. Some would say they are too young to really know what career paths they would like to go down. Fifteen-year-old Betty Wang disagrees. She wants to be a lawyer and wants to come back to America to go to law school.

“I am excited to come to Los Angeles,” Wang said at a barbeque held for the students of the international programs. “My sister was born here.”

Wang isn’t the only driven and talented student in the bunch. Some are comedians. Some play instruments such as the guitar and the piano, while several others are young experts in the art of calligraphy. Logan Lou, 15, is one of those students. He has been practicing calligraphy for 11 years but his real passion, like many teenage boys, is computer games.

“I think I would like to go to M.I.T [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] to study programming,” Lou said. “I am already very good at it. We have to learn basic programming at school and I would like to learn more.”

Chinese high school students, many of whom write and produce the Shanghai Students' Post, visited CSU Dominguez Hills this summer
Chinese high school students, many of whom write and produce the Shanghai Students’ Post, visited CSU Dominguez Hills this summer; photo by Jessica Russell

Wang and Lou, along with the other students, mingled with college-age American Language and Culture Programs students and engaged in conversations with staff members of University Housing including resident advisors. The teens feasted on American dinners of hot dogs and hamburgers along with chips and sodas. Dr. Milecki himself helped run the grill himself with help from staff member Ernest Williams.

“This was one of the better groups that I have taught,” said Skyler Gil, one of the English teachers for the international program. “I’ve been doing this for a while and this was one of the few groups that already had good English skills and they communicate very well. They were a joy to work with.”

For more information on programs for international students at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here.

– Jessica Russell

Jessica Russell is a junior majoring in communications with an emphasis on public relations. She is a marketing assistant in the College of Extended and International Education.

Joni Johnson: English Master’s Student Receives University’s Graduate Equity Fellowship

August 20, 2010 By admin

Joni Johnson (Class of ’10, B.A., English literature) has received a Graduate Equity Fellowship, a two-year grant awarded by California State University, Dominguez Hills. Johnson, an administrative support assistant in the Child Development Program in the College of Professional Studies, says that her work environment at the university has been a great influence on her performance as a student – and on her career goals as an educator.

Joni Johnson
Joni Johnson

“Knowing what offices to go to, who to speak with, forming relationships that help me to do my job efficiently, as well as being surrounded by faculty who are so motivated about teaching students, have all aided in my [own] accomplishments,” she says. “And what they’ve done, they’ve encouraged me to do the same. Dr. Anupama Joshi (professor and chair, Child Development Program and acting director, School of Health and Human Services), Dr. Dee Parker (program coordinator, communication sciences and disorders), and Dr. Kimberley Radmacher (acting program coordinator, Child Development Program) have been a huge, huge support. They’re definitely some of the reasons why I feel like I’ve done well. That kind of support makes a huge difference.”

As an undergraduate, Johnson discovered a love of research that enhanced her aspirations as a writer. Showing great distinction at the university’s Student Research Day this past February, her abstract for “Race in ‘The Great Gatsby: A Post Colonial Perspective” under the guidance of her faculty mentor Lois Feuer, professor of English was the only submission by an English major that was accepted for presentation.

“As an undergrad, I figured you do what is assigned to you and don’t necessarily step out of that box,” says Johnson. “But when I had an opportunity to conduct research and obtain feedback from faculty who have been doing it for a long time, I was thrilled. Dr. Feuer gave me great feedback from the judges because they had never looked at ‘The Great Gatsby’ from that perspective. She encouraged me to continue on so that I could eventually get it published.”

In her non-academic writing, Johnson hopes to ultimately write a novel that explores her interest in personal change and growth.

“I like looking at the world with a sense of how people cope with the day-to-day and what life experience teaches the individual,” she says. “I look at characters who have gone through transitions in their lives, who come back full circle, and who, because of these difficulties, find out if they are better or not.”

Johnson, who is exploring such topics for her master’s thesis as fragmented or dual identity in African American literature from a transnational perspective, says that she always seeks to expose new ideas in her research.

“One of the things I do first is to see if a lot has been written about my idea,” she says. “I want to make sure it’s original and that I’m not saying the same things a lot of other people have said.”

Johnson, who hopes to teach at the community college or university level, says that she looks forward to the challenge of making the traditional canon of American and English literature relevant to a diverse student population by finding “the best way to approach it where it will reach a larger audience. My point is to evoke not necessarily change, but an understanding.”

“My wanting to teach is to transfer information to people, but not necessarily coming from a standpoint where I know it all,” Johnson says. “There are a lot of things that professors know and some things, that when we have discussions in class, they’ve never thought about. I would be open-minded and at the same time because I’m so passionate about it, transfer that passion to students. When students are taught that way, it is contagious and they grab hold of it. I know I did.”

Johnson looks forward to working more as a grad student with her mentors Feuer, Rod Hernandez, associate professor of English, and Thomas Giannotti, professor of English. She also names associate professors Debra Best and Timothy Chin, professor C. Edward Zoerner, adjunct faculty Karen Coley, and department chair Helen Oesterheld, as role models.

“My experience in the English department has been a positive one,” Johnson says. “My professors have made learning so much more interesting, that it was not a burden to do the work. These are qualities I want to emulate when I teach as well.”

For more information on the English Department at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here.

CSU Dominguez Hills Receives Federal TRIO Grant

August 19, 2010 By admin

(Carson, CA) – California State University, Dominguez Hills has been awarded the first year allocation of a five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education to continue its Student Support Services (SSS) program for disadvantaged students. The first year award is for $259,059, with the full award totally approximately $1.3 million.

SSS is a Department of Education TRIO program that aims to improve college retention and graduation rates among low-income, first generation or disabled students by providing such services as advising, counseling, mentoring, tutoring, and career planning. This is the third multi-year TRIO/SSS grant CSU Dominguez Hills has received; its program has been in place for about a decade.

“It’s all about retention, matriculation and graduation,” said Dr. William Franklin, CSU Dominguez Hills associate vice president of student success services. “So the program works with freshmen through seniors. This new grant will allow us to continue what we have been doing and also allow us to expand to more transfer students and former foster care youth.”

Former foster care youth are a population of students with one of the lowest college-going percentages, and for those who enroll in college, the retention rates are far below other students. Issues related to these youth living a transitory childhood and becoming independent at 18 years old with little to no family or economic support systems are factors in those statistics.

Transfer students, in most cases, are believed to transition to four-year college life better than first-time freshman; however that’s not always the case. Many low-income, first-generation or disabled transfer students continue to have many of the same needs as their classmates who entered as freshman.

“There were thousands upon thousands of institutions applying for this year’s grant cycle, in part because of shrinking budgets nationally in higher education,” Franklin said. “We were pleased to be selected. It validates the good work that we’ve been doing. We’re going to do our very best to be good stewards of this money.”

Outcomes from the last six years of SSS at CSU Dominguez Hills showed a 70 percent year-to-year retention rate and a 65 to 70 percent graduation rate for students in the program. The program serves 200 students each year, which is the maximum number per federal guidelines.

More information visit www.csudh.edu/studentaffairs/studentsupportservices.

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About CSU Dominguez Hills — California State University, Dominguez Hills is a highly diverse, urban university located in the South Bay, primarily serving the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The university prides itself on its outstanding faculty and friendly, student-centered environment. Known for excellence in teacher education, nursing, psychology, business administration, and digital media arts, new degree programs include computer science, criminal justice, recreation and leisure studies, social work, and communication disorders. On campus is the Home Depot Center, a multi-purpose sports complex that hosts world-class soccer, tennis, track and field, lacrosse, and cycling.

CSU Dominguez Hills, Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum Receive National Endowment for the Humanities Grant

August 16, 2010 By admin

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded California State University, Dominguez Hills and Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum a $171,788 grant through its Landmarks of American History and Culture program to offer two weeklong professional development workshops next summer for high school teachers across the country. The proposal also received a “We the People” designation for its “efforts to strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture,” according to an NEH press release.

Professors from CSU Dominguez Hills, along with staff in the university’s Service Learning, Internships and Civic Engagement (SLICE) and Archives and Special Collections offices will partner with Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum to conduct a multiple-disciplined, experiential learning program that explores the history of the Dominguez family from colonial days to the 1920s. Workshop participants will attend lectures, visit historic sites like the Rancho San Pedro, Mission San Gabriel and Olvera Street, and work with artifacts and original documents, all of which will help them gain a deeper understanding of the different cultures that shaped America and further enrich their classroom teaching.

“Family history is the framework, and that opened opportunities to examine a number of issues that are essential to understanding the development of not just California’s, but the nation’s history,” said Laura Talamante, assistant professor of history at CSU Dominguez Hills and project co-director. “It’s an excellent opportunity to showcase what we have here in Carson, at CSU Dominguez Hills and the rancho.”

“As the home of the family who helped shape L.A. and southern California, the rancho is a physical representation of history,” said Dominguez Rancho executive director and project co-director Alison Bruesehoff. “Getting a chance to work with actual objects that go back hundreds of years is a rare experience, and the museum is excited to partner with the university to provide such an experiential learning opportunity for teachers.”

Each week-long session will be open to a maximum of 40 teachers from across the country. Notices about the workshops and how to apply will be sent to schools and through various education venues beginning in early spring 2011. The selected teachers will receive a stipend for travel expenses.

The grant was one of 201 grants totally $31.5 million that NEH awarded to humanities projects nationwide. For details, visit www.neh.gov/news/archive/20100810.html.

For more information about the CSUDH/Dominguez Rancho “American History Through the Eyes of a California Family 1780s to 1920s” project, call project coordinator Cheryl McKnight, director of SLICE, at (310) 243-2438.

CSU Dominguez Hills One of Nation’s Top 100 Degree Producers for Minority Students

August 13, 2010 By admin

(Carson, CA) – California State University, Dominguez Hills is among the top 100 universities in the nation to confer the most degrees, both undergraduate and graduate, on students of color.

The magazine Diverse: Issues in Higher Education recently released its annual “Top 100 Undergraduate Degree Producers” and “Top 100 Graduate Degree Producers” rankings, and CSU Dominguez Hills ranked as high as 17th in the nation in one of the undergraduate discipline categories. Using graduation data reported by two- and four-year institutions to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics for the 2008-09 academic year, the magazine ranked universities not only on how many degrees were granted overall to minority students, specifically African American, Asian American, Hispanic and Native American, but also gave separate rankings by ethnicity for specific fields of study.

The university saw its highest undergraduate ranking–17 out of 100–in the number of Hispanic students earning bachelor’s degrees in math. It was ninth in the number of Asian American students earning master’s degrees in health sciences. In the overall ranking combining all disciplines and minority groups, CSU Dominguez Hills ranked 52nd in granting bachelor’s degrees and 53rd in granting master’s degrees.

Other highlights in the undergraduate ranking include a 36th place for Hispanics in all disciplines, a 37th for Asian Americans earning health science degrees, a 40th for total minorities who were math majors, and 56th in degrees earned in all disciplines by African American students.

Highlights from the graduate ranking include a rank of 15 for the total number of minorities receiving health science master’s degrees, a 27 for total minorities receiving advanced degrees in education, 40 for Hispanics earning degrees in all disciplines and a 50 for degrees to African Americans in all disciplines.

CSU Dominguez Hills granted undergraduate degrees to 1,324 minority students in 2008-09, or 68 percent of the overall class, and master’s degrees to 467 minority students, or 50.2 percent. Hispanics represented the largest minority group who received their undergraduate degrees in 2008-2009 at nearly 40 percent, while African American students represented the largest minority group earning their master’s at 20.2 percent of the total number of receiving advanced degrees.

For more information on the rankings, visit diverseeducation.com/top100/BachelorsDegreeProducers2010.php or diverseeducation.com/top100/GraduateDegreeProducers2010.php

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About CSU Dominguez Hills — California State University, Dominguez Hills is a highly diverse, urban university located in the South Bay, primarily serving the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The university prides itself on its outstanding faculty and friendly, student-centered environment. Known for excellence in teacher education, nursing, psychology, business administration, and digital media arts, new degree programs include computer science, criminal justice, recreation and leisure studies, social work, and communication disorders. On campus is the Home Depot Center, a multi-purpose sports complex that hosts world-class soccer, tennis, track and field, lacrosse, and cycling.

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