Series: Meet HSU’s Newest Faculty Members

Over the course of the fall semester, Humboldt State NOW will be profiling our new tenure-track faculty. In this edition, we introduce Professor Joshua R. Zender, School of Business, whose expertise includes government accounting, and Professor Kauyumari Sanchez, Dept. of Psychology, whose prior teaching includes a stint in New Zealand.

Professor Joshua R. Zender, School of Business

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Where are you originally from?
Bellingham, WA

Where did you complete your education?
Auburn University

Why did you choose your field?
Interest in solving complex problems of a national or international scale.

Where have you taught prior to coming to HSU?
Auburn University, Central Washington University, Athens State University

What are your specific areas of expertise?
Government Accounting, Management Accounting, Public Finance and Budgeting, Performance Measurement.

What classes are you teaching this year?
Triple Bottom Line Accounting, Management Accounting, and Governmental & Nonprofit Accounting

What attracted you to Humboldt State?
The culture and research agenda of the institution, as well as the ideal location.

What do you do in your free time outside the classroom?
I love to engage in any outdoor recreational activity, especially hiking, cycling, and running.

What is your favorite classroom technique to engage students?
Getting students out into the field (aka workplace) to apply lessons they’re learning in the classroom.

What is the best thing about being a university professor?
The flexibility to create a research agenda that will have a meaningful and positive impact on people’s lives.

Where is the strangest place you’ve done research?
A few years ago, I was asked to perform an internal control review to detect potential fraud within a prison manufacturing environment. The prisoners were not only responsible for manufacturing products, but also maintaining accounting records of their operations. I found it ironic that the prisoners keeping the accounting records of the operations were generally in jail for “white collar” crimes. Needless to say, I came across some sophisticated and “creative” accounting practices while performing my review inside the barbed-wire fences of state prison.

If you weren’t an HSU professor, what would you be?
If I had the talent, I would be a major league baseball player. Who wouldn’t want to make millions of dollars playing a child’s game?

What superpower would be most valuable to your research?
At this stage, I need to get a lot of publications completed; therefore, the ability to clone/ replicate myself would be quite helpful.

Professor Kauyumari Sanchez, Dept. of Psychology

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Where are you originally from?
I am from the Central Valley of California, from a city called Clovis, which is near Fresno.

Where did you complete your education?
I obtained my B.A. from CSU Fresno and my PhD from UC Riverside.

Why did you choose your field?
I love psychology! As an undergrad I discovered I had a passion to investigate various aspects of speech.

Where have you taught prior to coming to HSU?
CSU Fresno
University of Canterbury in Christchuch, NZ
UC Riverside

What are your specific areas of expertise?
My area is in Cognitive Psychology. My research concerns speech perception, production, memory, and social factors.

What classes are you teaching this year?
Cognition
Introduction to Statistics
Learning and Motivation

What attracted you to Humboldt State?
Humboldt State University’s commitment to students and value of professional research attracted me to the university.

What do you do in your free time outside the classroom?
Listen to music, read, spend time with friends, play European-style board games and video games, go exploring.

What is your favorite classroom technique to engage students?
I like to show video clips of topic relevant material and use Clicker quizzes, or anything that gives students immediate feedback concerning their own knowledge on the class topics.

What is the best thing about being a university professor?
The best thing about being a professor is the students! It is great to see them engage with the materials we discuss and to use it outside the classroom.

Where is the strangest place you’ve done research?
I don’t think New Zealand is a strange place, but it is different.

If you weren’t an HSU professor, what would you be?
Possibly a museum curator at an art museum.

What superpower would be most valuable to your research?
I would love to speak and understand all human languages.