Joy Adams (geography), Justus Ortega (kinesiology and recreation administration) and Andrew Stubblefield (forestry and wildland resources) are recipients of the 2009 McCrone Promising Faculty Scholar Awards.
Joseph LaManna, a graduate student in wildlife, garnered the Alistair McCrone Graduate Fellowship Award. McCrone was President of Humboldt State from 1974 to 2002.
The faculty awards are $1,500 each. The fellowship is $2,500 for academic year 2009-2010.
The funds acknowledge the potential of newer faculty and encourage their continued achievement. The graduate fellowship recognizes prospects for meritorious contributions by currently enrolled students.
Dr. Adams, the geography professor, developed a successful interdisciplinary pilot course named “Humboldt Connections" that enabled freshmen to write about the theme of place, using Humboldt County resources. She has presented five papers at major professional geographic meetings since 2006 and her work with a colleague is about to be published concerning the development of a Highway 96 Tribal Transportation Corridor Management Plan. It is an outreach effort with the Hoopa Tribe.
The award to Dr. Stubblefield recognized his trailblazing research on the links among land use, erosion and water quality. His work engages scientists, managers and policy makers at the regional, national and international levels, including his investigation of erosion in Mongolia. He also was saluted for his grantsmanship, which has reached nearly $700,000 since Fall 2006. He has $280,000 more pending for Tahoe Basin research.
Director of HSU’s Biomechanics Laboratory, Dr. Ortega specializes in integrative physiology. In his three years at the Arcata campus, he has collected a series of grants, contributed pioneering work in kinesiology research, been published in a bevy of professional journals and recognized nationally for his advances in biomechanics. In 2007, he was honored by the American Society of Biomechanics Journal for his breakthrough research of gait in older adults.
LaManna’s graduate fellowship is based on his future research of connections between the structure of vegetation and the abundance of voles in the meadows of the central Sierra Nevada mountains. Great Gray Owls nest in those locations, where voles are the birds’ primary prey.
LaManna’s thesis proposal promptly attracted the interest and support of various state and federal agencies. He is active in the University’s Wildlife Graduate Student Society.