It was a September to remember for the Center for Innovation in STEM Education (CISE) at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), thanks to the announcement of three U.S. Department of Education (DOE) grants totaling $13 million. "We compete with hundreds of universities and organizations for each of our grants,” said CISE Director and Annenberg Endowed Professor Kamal Hamdan. “Considering the competition, it is very rewarding and exciting to learn that one or more of our proposals were selected for funding.” A New STAR on Campus On Sept. 26, Hamdan received word that the DOE had awarded CISE a five-year, $7 million grant through the Teacher Quality Partnership Grant ... Read More
STEM
John Price Receives Fifth DOE Grant to Continue Proton Research
John Price, professor of physics and interim dean of graduate studies and research at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), conducts original research in nuclear physics with his students, and their success has kept the funding coming in. Price recently received a three-year, $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to expand “Nuclear Physics with Short-Lived Beams,” his ongoing experimental nuclear physics program in proton research. This is the fifth grant the DOE has awarded Price for the program since 2007. The funding covers research costs for Price and his students, including travel to the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in ... Read More
David Puerta: Forging a Path in Biotechnology
When Forge Therapeutics COO and VP of Discovery David Puerta first set foot on the CSUDH campus, he wasn’t sure what kind of career he wanted to pursue. As a first-generation college student, his (and his parents’) initial goal had been to just get to college. After being recruited to play soccer for the Toros, he started classes with only a vague notion that he wanted to be involved in science. “I was always interested in science,” Puerta said, “but I didn’t know where you could go with that in terms of a career, outside of being a physician or dentist..” Due to a close relationship with his chemistry professor, Leonardo Martinez, Puerta began to focus his studies on biotechnology. ... Read More
Tree-Ring Lab Gives Students ‘Core’ Hands-On Experience
Education is all about empowering students, according to Parveen Chhetri, assistant professor in the Department of Earth Science and Geography at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). For the trio of student assistants working in CSUDH’s Tree-Ring Lab -- David “Skip” Saldana, Michelle Mohr, and Gabriel Angulo -- that means getting invaluable hands-on experience in the skills of dendrochronology, the dating and study of annual growth rings in trees. The Tree-Ring Lab is currently working on a project analyzing the history of drought events in California. By examining the thickness of trees’ yearly growth rings, they can deduce the amount of rainfall an area received in a ... Read More
Elvira Teller Reveals Opportunity for Students and Non-Tenure Track Faculty
For Elvira (Vera) Teller, lecturer of information systems and operations management at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), being an educator means helping students make connections and challenging them to reach their full potential. Teller, who has been teaching at CSUDH for 10 years, was honored this year with the Catherine H. Jacobs Outstanding Faculty Lecturer Award. The award recognizes faculty who demonstrate excellence in teaching effectiveness, and acknowledges the role non-tenure track lecturers play in student success and the campus community as a whole. Before moving into teaching, Teller spent over 25 years as director of systems and programming for ... Read More
