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Alumni

Toro Alumna Named California Teacher of the Year

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Toro Alumna Named California Teacher of the Year
CSUDH Alumna Bridgette Donald-Blue, 2023 California Teacher of the Year.

CSUDH alumna Bridgette Donald-Blue never intended to have a career in teaching. When the Florida native completed her bachelor’s degree in English at Howard University in Washington, DC, she planned to go on to law school.

The words of a favorite professor echoed in her ears, though. “I remember he said, ‘I know all of you are going to do amazing things, but I don’t want you to just write a check. I want you to be involved and affect change.’”

Taking those words to heart, Donald-Blue decided to postpone law school for two years and committed to spend that time in the Teach for America program. The nationwide program fights educational inequality, signing up engaged citizens from across the professional spectrum and asking them to spend two years of their lives teaching in under-resourced schools.

Donald-Blue moved out to California and started teaching at an elementary school in Compton–and never left. “I found myself becoming an integral part of the community,” she recalls. “Teaching in Compton at that time, I saw the need and I wanted to be part of changing the educational landscape for the kids in my classroom.” Donald-Blue ended up teaching in Compton for a decade, before moving to the Los Angeles Unified School District to continue her career, which now spans over three decades.

Her thirty years of uplifting students was rewarded this winter when Donald-Blue was named California Teacher of the Year for 2023. Currently serving as a K-3 Math Intervention Teacher at Coliseum Street Elementary in downtown L.A., Donald-Blue is one of five educators to win the award this year.

It was while serving in Teach for America that Donald-Blue was introduced to the CSUDH credential program. “Somebody came and gave a presentation about getting your credential at Dominguez Hills,” she says. “Working in Compton at the time, the ease of getting to the campus was what originally attracted me to the school.”

Upon starting classes at CSUDH, Donald-Blue found much more to like. “I always found that the school has great instructors who were also practitioners. They had been, or still were, in the classroom,” she says. “They were all doing the work themselves. You didn’t get this ‘ivory tower’ feeling when you spoke to them. They were teaching us real skills and methods that they were using successfully in their own classrooms.”

Donald-Blue found herself leaving classes at CSUDH with applicable skills and strategies that she could then try out in her own classes. After obtaining her multiple subject teaching credential from CSUDH, she continued on and got an administrative credential and a master’s degree in educational administration from the university, as well.

Throughout her teaching career, Donald-Blue has been both fascinated and delighted at watching her students learn. “It’s so interesting to watch their minds work,” she says. “When you’re working with a kid and they’ve been practicing sight words or practicing letters, and all of a sudden they blend a word… or you put a book in their hands and there’s a word that they knew orally, but suddenly they can read it in a book–there’s nothing like that feeling.”

Donald-Blue describes her teaching style as reflective. “I’m constantly looking at data, at how students are understanding a lesson, then seeing where it can be tweaked or changed. I always think I could have done something a little better. If I give a lesson to 30 kids and 17 kids are right there and ready to go, that means that I’ve got 13 that are not quite getting it–and that’s absolutely not acceptable.

“So I always try to figure out: what can I do? To help make sure every student is learning, I end up including lots of different modalities. So if I’m teaching a particular topic one day, it might be taught via a lot of listening strategies; another day it might be taught through a lot of speaking strategies. I’m trying to ensure that all my kids can enter in and understand the subject matter, no matter what their learning style is.”

For Donald-Blue, “The greatest joy is knowing that at the end of the day, you have served the child well and served the community well.” Among her biggest thrills is being invited by former students to birthday parties or graduations, which let her know that her students still remember and appreciate how she helped them.

“It’s so great when people look you up years later and say, ‘You were my first great teacher, and you taught me to read. I really want you to come to my high school graduation!’ Those are big highs.”

When asked why she thinks she won the Teacher of the Year award, Donald-Blue is humble. “It was just an opportunity for somebody to peek into my classroom, see what I’ve been through in the last 30 years, and honor me. That’s the only thing I can say. Someone took time to honor me and say, ‘You know, what you’ve been doing is kind of cool and you’ve been helping people and it’s fantastic. So we’re going to name you California Teacher of the Year!’”

All five Teacher of the Year winners were honored with a reception in Sacramento on Jan. 23. “It was amazing. I feel like every teacher should be honored like that at least one time. It’s a celebration of the hard work you’ve been doing. It says ‘thank you’ for putting in the time, the long hours. It says ‘thank you’ for surviving rainy days with first graders, which is a test of any teacher’s strength and dedication,” she laughs.

For Donald-Blue, “The best part is now when you Google my name, videos about me winning this award will pop up. A couple of weeks ago, one little kindergartener told me, ‘ I have your video saved on my screen and I can play it any time I want to.’

“He said, ‘Thank you, Mrs. Blue, for being a teacher leader. We really appreciate you.’ But when he told me he had the video saved and liked to watch it over and over–that was really fantastic. To me, that means I’ve really made a connection and a difference in his life.”

Homecoming Is Every Day for These Toro Alums

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engagement photo
A newly engaged Mark Kerr and Paola Carbajal at CSUDH.

What do Dance Dance Revolution, Dungeons & Dragons, and theatre arts have in common? For alumni Mark Kerr and Paola Carbajal, these were just a few of the building blocks for their deep commitment to each other and their devotion to the Toro community.

Perhaps no previous (or future) Toro alums have had as close a relationship with the campus as Kerr and Carbajal. CSUDH is their alma mater and employer. They were married on campus, and they’ve lived in student housing for the last eight years.

“It’s quite a legacy story,” says Carbajal. “It’s not always ideal to live where you work. Some day we would like to have a house of our own. But we’ve made a good life here for us and for our two cats, Freyja and Gutz.”

Kerr and Carbajal met on campus in 2008, though each tells the story a little differently. “We met in the old game room at Loker Student Union, where we would play Dance Dance Revolution,” Kerr says. “Paola was in between relationships, and I was single. We just vibed.”

Visit our DH Stories page to read more about those special people that Toro alums found on campus-lifelong friends, academic mentors, and even the loves of their lives!

As Carbajal tells it, she was singing Karaoke during a session of Rock Band when Kerr introduced himself. “Mark thought he would be funny by coming up during my song and asking what was dying,” she says, laughing. “I knew it was a joke, but my friends were really angry.”

Both are local South Bay kids. Kerr grew up in Lawndale and attended El Camino College before transferring to CSUDH in 2005. Carbajal was raised in nearby Wilmington and started at CSUDH right after graduation from Bishop Montgomery High School in 2007.

Walks along the Pike in Long Beach, a shared passion for music and theatre–they both majored in theatre arts at CSUDH–and of course, Dungeons & Dragons, convinced them that they had found something special.

Onstage image from She Kills Monsters
Paola Carbajal, left, and Mark Kerr, lying at her feet, in a CSUDH production of She Kills Monsters.

Kerr says it wasn’t just one thing but an accumulation of things that convinced him he’d found true love. “She’s 100% down for Dungeons & Dragons. She even wanted her own dice. When she took on different creative projects and theatre roles, she told me she’d be happier if I was a part of those projects with her,” Kerr said. “Over time, I was just, like, I don’t ever want to leave this person.”

Kerr had completed his bachelor’s degree when he met Carbajal. He was working as a student counselor for the College of Health, Human Services and Nursing while starting on his Master of Education degree. Carbajal’s path to graduation took a more circuitous route.

“Mark got to see me go through many different majors. I even transferred to Harbor College for a time, but I came back and finally settled on a degree in theatre arts,” Carbajal says. “I was fortunate to have my own personal student counselor to help me through some difficult times.”

The two also worked together in campus theatrical productions of Biloxi Blues, a modern retelling of MacBeth, set among Mexican drug cartels, and She Kills Monsters–a comedic take on, you guessed it, Dungeons & Dragons.

“There’s a photo of the first time we both appeared together on stage in She Kills Monsters. You wouldn’t know it because I’m on a platform, and he’s lying on the ground dead,” says Carbajal.

Bulletin wedding photo
Kerr and Carbajal make the front page of CSUDH’s The Bulletin.

Carbajal graduated in 2013 and accepted a job with student housing as a residential life coordinator. A year later, she and Kerr were married during a ceremony in the sculpture garden, followed by a reception in the student union. “We were still young professionals. I had just graduated, and money was tight,” says Carbajal. 

November 2024 will mark Kerr and Carbajal’s 10th wedding anniversary, and Kerr says he hopes to have some kind of celebration on campus. “We’re not thinking of anything massive, but it would be nice to do something in the sculpture garden again.”

Carbajal, who has one year left to finish her master’s degree in educational administration, says they’re still talking about options, including a vow renewal ceremony. “We were so young when we got married. 25-year-old me is different in some ways from who I am now. Renewing our vows would be a good way to solidify this new chapter in our lives.”

As for life on campus, it has its advantage and disadvantages, says Kerr. “I love being here. Most of our students have a really great vibe. But it can be stressful. When you’re an advisor, or a residential life coordinator like Paola, the job doesn’t just end at 5 p.m.,” Kerr says.

“I might come across a student in the commons area who’s dealing with a family loss,” Kerr adds. “I can’t just turn my counselor mode off. It might be 7 p.m., I might be hungry or have a headache. But the student needs me. That’s what we do. That’s why we’re here.”

Toro Baseball Aiming for Consistent Success

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Toro Baseball Aiming for Consistent Success
Toro All-American infielder Scott Ogrin swings for the fences. 

After a successful post-season run in 2022, CSUDH head baseball coach Tyler Wright has one main goal for the program entering the 2023 season. “Consistently being in the mix for a conference championship is the next step for us as a program.”

“Our goal is to make this three years in a row in which we are a competitive, top team in the in the conference,” he continues. “We’re looking to compete for a conference championship and a conference tournament each and every year going forward.”

Competing in the California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA), one of the top Division II conferences in the nation, doesn’t come easy. But Wright is confident that he has the team to do it.

2022 was a bit of a breakthrough season for the Toros. After an injury-plagued regular season that saw them finish sixth in the CCAA, the team went on a run in the conference tournament. They defeated national number 28 Chico State and number 10 Cal State Monterey Bay on their way to the championship round.

Although they were ultimately eliminated by Cal Poly Pomona, the tournament proved that the Toros could compete with the best of the CCAA. “It was a good year, something we can build on,” says Wright. “Hopefully, we continue to get better.”

Although the team did lose a few key players to graduation, they return several award-winning position players. Senior infielder Scott Ogrin set a new CSUDH single-season home run record in 2022, knocking 24 balls out of the park–including four during their tournament run. He was named the tournament’s co-MVP, and was recognized as a second-team All-American by the American Baseball Coaches Association at season’s end.

Another key returnee is junior centerfielder Eric Smelko, who won the CCAA Newcomer of the Year award in 2022, as well as being named to the First-Team All-CCAA squad. His season included a team-best 22-game hitting streak, and he led the team with a .357 batting average.

Most of the Toro’s question marks this season revolve around pitching. Having lost most of their top hurlers after last season, Wright has a staff largely comprised of first-year players or transfers. He’s looking for some of the young pitchers to step up once the season gets underway in earnest.

“We’ve had a really competitive fall,” he says. “Everybody threw pretty well, but nobody seemed completely unbeatable. We just need a few guys to step up and be big-time difference makers, but sometimes you don’t find that out until the games really matter.”

The Toros were picked to finish fourth in this season’s preseason coaches’ poll, and Wright says that they’ll be competing with the usual suspects for this year’s crown. “Cal Poly Pomona, Cal State Monterey Bay and Chico State have probably won 15 of the last conference championships,” he says. “We’re trying to break into that mold this year, to be up there with those established programs. They’re expected to be good again, and I’m sure they will be.”

Win or lose, Coach Wright is proud of the way his players reflect CSUDH’s students and mission. “We play very hard and our student-athletes are the same as every student here,” he says. “We’ve got a lot of first-generation student-athletes and a lot of kids that really work hard to be good at what they do. Our guys are working hard to represent the university the right way.”

The CSUDH baseball team opens their home schedule at 2:00 P.M. on Thursday, Feb. 9, against Concordia at Toro Field. They also play Concordia at 1:00 P.M. on Friday, Feb. 10, at Toro Field.

NBC4: CSUDH Can Boast about Graduating 5 Current Mayors

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Source: NBCLA (Video)

In LA County there are several big name and world-class universities but there’s only one university that can boast about graduating five sitting LA County mayors.

“This school produces a lot of, you know, greatness,” said Johnathan Kaufman, a Cal State University of Dominguez Hills student.

From Dominguez Hills to city hall only Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson can brag about graduating five siting LA County mayors.

They are Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson, Compton Mayor Emma Sharif, Carson Mayor Lula Davis-Holmes, Hawthorne Mayor Alex Vargas, and LA’s newest Mayor Karen Bass.

“She grew up in our community, she grew up like we did, she went to school where we did and she understands how life here is,” said Natalie Ruiz, a CSUDH student.

Ruiz is studying political science at Dominguez Hills.

Following the 1965 Watts Rebellion, this campus was strategically placed in Carson to bring more educational opportunities to underserved communities in South LA.

Nearly 60 years later, five graduates are now leading nearby cities.

“I think it just speaks to the testament of who she is and how she can only break doors open for more of us,” Ruiz said.

Dr. Thomas Parham is the 11th President of Cal State Dominguez Hills, he says the school has a legacy of teaching students how to serve their communities.

Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson was once student body president.

“Some might argue it happens by, you know, happenstance, but really it doesn’t,” Parham said. “I think you can’t love the people unless you’re willing to serve the people and what we have are people who come with the mentality of being servant leaders.”

Student Christopher Hendrix says it also makes him proud to know you don’t need to the big name school to make big time moves.

“It makes me feel empowered. You know, it goes back to the idea that I don’t need to go to Harvard or an Ivy League,” Hendrix said. “I can get the same education, the same understanding of what needs to be done in my communities, in my community. I don’t have to go and then come back. I can stay here and help it grow.”

Daily Breeze: With Karen Bass, Rex Richardson Mayor-Elects, CSUDH Counts 5 LA County Mayors as Alumni

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Karen Bass, CSUDH President Parham, and former Consul General of Japan Akira Muto.
Karen Bass, President Parham, and then-Consul General of Japan Akira Muto at the Japan Jobs Training Program launch at CSUDH in May 2022. Mayor-Elect Karen Bass, received a BA in Health Science from CSUDH in 1990 and was recently elected as the first female Mayor of LA.

Source: Daily Breeze

When Karen Bass and Rex Richardson are sworn in as the mayors of Los Angeles and Long Beach, respectively, Cal State Dominguez Hills, near Carson, will have something particularly special to boast about:

Five alumni will serve as mayors in LA County.

Bass will soon make history as the first female mayor of America’s second-largest city and Richardson will pave the way as Long Beach’s first Black mayor.

They join the ranks of fellow alumni – affectionately known as the ‘Toros’ – Carson Mayor Lula Davis-Holmes, Hawthorne Mayor Alex Vargas and Compton Mayor Emma Sharif.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, the state senator and assemblymember for the districts that represent Carson also attended Dominguez Hills. Recently elected 62nd District Assemblymember Tina McKinnor took classes at CSUDH from 2005 to 2009, while 35th District Sen. Steven Bradford graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1985.

These collective achievements would be notable for any university – but are especially significant at CSUDH.

That’s partly because CSUDH is a public university and not an elite institution that only takes “top-tier” students. And all five CSUDH alumni who are or will become mayors are people of color who come from humble beginnings and worked their way up to where they are today.

“You now have seen the impact of making education affordable and accessible in our communities,” Richardson said in a recent interview, “because you have people who wanted to serve but they just needed access to the educational opportunities and the resources to make a difference.”

CSUDH, the mayor-elect added, “should be highlighted and lifted up as a national standard on quality community-based higher education.”

CSUDH accepts more than 80% of students and has a student body that is 87% people of color. Nearly 50% of the university’s population are first-generation college students.

“One of the things I’m proudest of is that we don’t judge our worth and merit based on our selectivity ratios,” said CSUDH President Thomas Parham. “We try to make sure that we are not simply replicating privilege, but see if we can provide the most access to students possible.”

A key benefit of Dominguez Hill’s access-focused admission policy is that it produces leaders from within their own communities, Parham said. And those leaders also have first-hand experience of the problems facing their constituents.

Davis-Holmes, for example, was a teen mother when she enrolled at CSUDH. She earned her bachelor’s degree in behavioral science and sociology in 1983, her master of public administration degree in 1992 – and spent 27 years working her way up the ranks in Carson.

“When I hear that something is wrong, I’ve already lived it,” she said recently. “I lived the good, the bad and the ugly because I live here and I came up from the bottom, from a volunteer teen mother all the way to the mayor of the city of Carson.”

Lula Davis-Holmes and President Parham at the Memorandum of Understanding signing between CSUDH and the City of Carson in July 2021.
Lula Davis-Holmes and President Parham at the Memorandum of Understanding signing between CSUDH and the City of Carson in July 2021.

Davis-Holmes said that she loved the “family atmosphere” on campus and that the support, flexibility and understanding of her teachers was essential to her success.

“When I was struggling, I always knew I had a mentor on campus that would help me,” she said, “and knew that I was a mother, a wife, and understood my situation.”

Richardson also overcame hurdles to be where he is today. He grew up with divorced parents who experienced job and housing instability and, as a result, he attended 14 public schools across five states.

When he applied to CSUDH in 2001, his GPA didn’t meet the criteria for admission, Richardson said.

Nevertheless, the school put faith in him, by offering him admission through the Educational Opportunity Program – an initiative of the Cal State University system that admits underserved students under special circumstances, if they demonstrate a drive to succeed.

“Circumstances are places people come from,” Parham said, “but not who they are at the core of their being.”

CSUDH, he said, focuses on every student’s individual potential regardless of their background.

As a result, Parham added, the university tends to attract students who are committed to community mindedness and social justice.

Richardson is an example of this. He excelled at Dominguez Hills, becoming student body president, founding the Black Business Students Association, and working on state Assembly and Carson City Council campaigns.

Rex Richardson and family with former CSUDH Athletic Director Dena Freeman-Patton at CSUDH Homecoming in Feb 2022.
Rex Richardson and family with former CSUDH Athletic Director Dena Freeman-Patton at CSUDH Homecoming in Feb 2022.

Those experiences, Richardson said, are what led him to become the youngest councilmember in Long Beach history and now the first Black mayor.

“That spark, for me, was ignited at Cal State Dominguez Hills,” Richardson said.

Civic and community engagement is a key part of the educational philosophy at CSUDH, not just for those studying political science, but also for students in all degree programs, Parham said.

This can be seen in the breadth of programs that the alumni mayors studied, he added. Bass, whose communications representatives were not able to provide a comment by deadline, received a bachelor’s degree in health science in 1990; Vargas received a bachelor’s degree in physics 1995; and Richardson, under the flexibility allowed by CSUDH, just recently completed the final coursework for his bachelor’s degree in 2020.

The university’s history is rooted the social justice movement.

The school first opened on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 1965, but was quickly relocated to Carson in an attempt to open greater economic opportunity for residents of South Central Los Angeles following the Watts riots.

The school has proven highly successful in this mission and currently ranks second in the nation for producing economic mobility, according to public policy think tank Third Way. And because of the relatively low-cost of attending a CSU, students leave the university without being saddled with debt.

The social-justice focus, meanwhile, continues permeating into classrooms today, Parham said.

“Some (students) in business might say, ‘Let me go banking because I need to create more economic empowerment and not just enrich my own coffers,’” Parham said. “Someone may go into health care because, you know, health services will allow our people to get what ought to be a right rather than a privilege.”

Another commonality across all programs is a deep community connection as students work on service projects and participate in internships and apprenticeships with local companies.

Around 60% of CSUDH graduates live within a 25-mile radius of campus. The school is also a top producer of teachers for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“Not only do we have people who come from the communities that we serve,” Parham said, “but we have a campus that is committed to being engaged in the community.”

Going forward, Parham said, he hopes that the impressive student outcomes at CSUDH help lead to a change in how America ranks universities – by focusing on the number of lives these institutions transform instead of the exclusivity of their admissions.

He is also looking forward to seeing the continued work of CSUDH alumni as mayors and state representatives.

“These policymakers, these public servants, who are committed to making their communities better, I love the fact that their dreams and aspirations were nurtured in the soil that represents CSUDH,” Parham said. “I think that’s a feather in the cap not only for Dominguez Hills, but more broadly for the California State University system as a whole, that is committed to doing that kind of transformative work.”