Lou Jacobson

Jacobson will receive the 2009 Robert Dentler Award for Outstanding Student Achievement for his master’s thesis: “Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Mitigation: The Social Barriers to the Diffusion of the Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb.” The $200 award is given by the American Sociological Association Section on Sociological Practice and Public Sociology.

Jacobson’s study explored the barriers to HSU student use of CFL bulbs, which offer a cost effective way to mitigate human-generated greenhouse gas through reducing net electricity use. His study used an online survey model reaching a randomly selected sample of 916 students.

“As in other studies, HSU students reported that product factors like cost, toxicity, compatibility, flickering, humming, brightness and color quality were deterrents to CFL use,” Jacobson said. “Many of these actually were problems of early CFL technology. Yet even though we’ve improved the CFL, the beliefs still hold back people from giving it a try.”

Among his findings about beliefs: spiritual, atheist and agnostic students were more likely to adopt CFLs than Christian and Protestant students. Politically liberal students were more likely to use CFLs than those who defined themselves as more conservative.

Jacobson researched factors other than quality and cost, including shopping patterns, opinion leadership, risk perception, meaning association and gender. “These need more study,” he said. “I’m particularly interested in understanding why male students were more likely to adopt the CFL than female students.”

Before graduation in 2008, Jacobson had already accepted a position with the RCEA. According to Dana Boudreau, RCEA operations manager, “As Lou interviewed alongside the usual environmental and engineering candidates, we realized that his sociology background and mindset could be a powerful addition to our organization. Risk perception, peer involvement and worldview had been subjectively and haphazardly considered before Lou’s arrival, but now we can explicitly build this capacity into our analysis and decision-making process.”

Boudreau added, “With a passion for social well-being and a pragmatic focus on sustainable practices, Lou Jacobson ensures that we keep our priorities straight and follow a well-reasoned path towards success.”

Augie Diana, chair of the ASA Section Awards Committee, said, “Lou’s work is unique in that it integrates more complex sociological concepts like ‘worldview’ in building an adoption model. We were all impressed by his ability to link sociological theory so artfully with a very real and pressing problem like understanding energy choices.”

Jacobson will receive his award Monday, August 10, at the annual association meeting, hosted this year in San Francisco. His thesis is available through the Humboldt Digital Scholar at http://library.humboldt.edu/.

John Rivera performing at Keoki’s Paradise in Koloa, Hawaii. Submitted Photo

Rivera (’02, Native American Studies) came to Humboldt after his football coaches at Shasta Junior College urged him to explore the Arcata campus. Rivera was one of the first recipients of the Jacks Forever Football Program scholarship and immediately saw that he could make a big impact with the Lumberjacks. He would go on to spend most of his time on the gridiron or working at the former Café Tomo night club.

But the Hawaiian native found a way to connect his home to HSU, whether it was through lasting connections he forged at the MultiCultural Center or Humboldt’s own version of the island spirit. “Aloha is in Humboldt in many different ways. A lot of it was the big awareness of what’s going on on campus. Humboldt in general cares about a lot of these things and they make it known, whether it’s redwood trees or global politics,” said Rivera.

“You know how you know that the aloha spirit is alive and well in Humboldt? It’s the community bike program. It’s based on honesty and trust. Put that same system in L.A. and it would never work.”

Rivera, who grew up in a plantation home in Kauai, spent his years after graduating from HSU first as a substance abuse counselor and then working with the Boys and Girls Club before answering the call that had been ringing for years—namely that of music.

These days it’s not unusual for Rivera to play seven nights a week, while also managing to find time to work behind the scenes with his full-service production company, Torch Light Productions. For Rivera, it’s an opportunity pass on a little of the aloha spirit. “When I think about my purpose, it could be boiled down to making sure the aloha spirit still exists,” said Rivera.

Rivera’s instrument of choice is the ukulele, something he was able to master with relative ease, he says. Today Rivera has a collection of these mini-guitars, worth anything from $400 to $1300. Asked whether he considers any of them especially close to his heart, Rivera found a utilitarian answer.

“The one in the pictures is special because it can handle a lot of abuse. And if it’s going to be my ukulele it’s got to handle the heat and the cold. It’s going to be on the beach and in the salt air and still work when I plug it in,” says Rivera who performs on a catamaran every week.

“There is a particular spirit that is aloha, and to let it be known is my whole mission in life—that’s what I want to do. And I’m one of the few people who have found the vehicle to accomplish exactly what they want to do in life. That’s why I play music, in a nutshell.”

And how does a native Hawaiian define the aloha spirit?

“It’s taking a step back in time and understanding what it is to be family- and community-oriented. People take care of each other no matter what. I think the aloha spirit is complicated, yet simple. It’s just a good way of living.”

Check out John Rivera’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, part of our 2009 Commencement Slide show »

For more on John Rivera, visit his web site.

This occurrence is unprecedented, in that there may never have been a time in the history of HSU’s Journalism & Mass Communication Department that two graduates have won broadcasting’s highest award while working together, on the same newscast.

“We submitted a newscast from a day on which Tibetan protesters unfurled a large banner on the golden gate bridge, in advance of the Olympic torch run through San Francisco—its only North American stop. Henry is a free-lance writer for us, and we can always count on his enthusiasm and solid writing skills (thank you to HSU for that). I didn’t really think of the Emmy award as a ‘historic’ event for HSU journalism, but I suppose it may be! I value the skills I acquired at KHSU and The Lumberjack (not to mention photojournalism!) and the academic courses I took all those years ago, and I am grateful for the education I received at HSU. Keep up the good work,” said Green.

The Emmy award listing was as follows:
Newscast – Evening – Larger Markets: ABC 7 News at 6, KGO ABC 7, San Francisco. Bob Goldberger, Executive Producer; Bill Green, Producer; Dan Ashley, Carolyn Johnson, Anchors; Mitch Turner, Director; Henry Mulak, Writer; David Louie, Reporter.

The listing of all the Emmys handed out can be found online

Cooper’s current exhibition at the Haunch Venison Gallery in London features black and white photography from the artist’s research into some of world’s remotest locations as part of his “Atlantic Basin Project.” Cooper, who traces some of the same routes traveled by turn-of-the-century polar explorers, uses a 19th century Agfa camera to develop gelatin silver prints. It was purchased in Humboldt County during his time as a student. “Lugging this heavy old camera really makes me appreciate how good those old guys were,” says Cooper.

Though his work takes him to some of the most treacherous places on the Atlantic coast, Cooper emphasizes that the nature of his work is conveying a story, not exploring uncharted territory. “I’m not an explorer and I’m not an adventurer, it happens that I have to do both to do my work. I’m a picture maker and an artist and a story teller. I’m interested in how stories of and about land and perhaps becoming clear and useful and even touch people who haven’t become familiar with such places.”

During his time at Humboldt State Cooper studied under the tutelage of Professor Thomas Knight, who founded the fine art photography program at HSU in the 1950s. Knight, along with professors Mel Schuler, Max Butler, Glen Berry and Reese Bullen, all faculty members of the Art Department, were influential in helping Cooper develop his personal aesthetic.

“The early and founding members of HSU’s extraordinary art department were all wonderful, exceptional and inspirational teachers to me. The professors were profound in their positive effect in bringing both the requirements for the craft the purpose of an artist fully and clearly into my youthful and not very experienced life at the time,” says Cooper.

“They were all ‘hard work’ as teachers but their clarity, generosity and deep understanding of what art could be remains with me to this day.”

The Guggenheim Foundation was established in 1925 by former U.S. Senator and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their late son, John Simon Guggenheim. In his initial Letter of Gift, Sen. Guggenheim wrote that the purpose of the foundation is to seek “to add to the educational, literary, artistic, and scientific power of this country, and also provide for the cause of better international understanding,”

Since 1925 $273 million in Fellowships have been awarded to nearly 16,700 individuals. Scores of Nobel, Pulitzer, and other prizewinners grace the roll of Fellows, including Ansel Adams, W. H. Auden, Aaron Copland, Martha Graham, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Vladimir Nabokov and many more.

Fellows are appointed on the basis of achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment.

The cocktail hour is scheduled at 6:00 p.m. in the Karshner Lounge, University Center, followed by dinner at 7:00 p.m. in the adjoining Kate Buchanan Room, where the awards presentation will take place.

Tickets are $65.00 per person and the RSVP date is April 10. Seating is limited.

Details are available at 707/826-3132 and alumni@humboldt.edu.

Del Waters (Right) is congratulated by Mike Chrisman, head of California Natural Resources. / Submitted Photo

Walters, from Redding, earned a bachelor’s of science degree in forest resource management from HSU’s College of Natural Resources and Sciences.

“I’d always heard Humboldt State was a great school,” Walters said in an interview. “I arrived in 1974, and two of my best professors were Theron O’Dell, who taught dendrology and regional silviculture [the cultivation of trees], and Jerry Partain, who taught economics.”

Born in Hollister and raised in King City, Walters has been with Cal Fire for 33 years. He had been executive officer since 2008 and prior to that was assistant region chief and staff chief of operations for Cal Fire’s northern region.

From 2000 to 2003 he was deputy chief of the Shasta-Trinity Unit and the Shasta County Fire Department.

Walters and his wife Janet have two adult children.

HSU student Siray Rodgers, left, and HSU graduate Thomas Tucker perform along side HSU student Natasha Harrell in a scene from John Oluwole ADEkoje’s Jagun Fly / Humboldt State University

It is the featured production of the HSU New Plays Season—a national competition held every three years.

An African-American family in an unnamed city is in crisis: the absent father (played by Thomas Tucker), the alcoholic mother (Natasha Harrell) and the teenage son whose life is on the streets (Siray Rodgers). A Yoruba spiritual elder (played by Dion Davis) performs a cleansing ceremony for them, not sure if it will work.

“He is afraid his rituals no longer serve his people who are now spread throughout the world,” said the play’s director, John Heckel. “He’s afraid they’re losing their connection with their African roots of culture, tradition and history. So he’s afraid he will never be able to fly again, because his flying depends on these rituals working.”

With humor and drama, dreams and hard reality, language and rhythms from both Yoruba ritual and contemporary urban America, Jagun Fly is in many senses an African-American play.

Playwright John ADEkoje is a graduate of the HSU Department of Theatre, Film and Dance. He originally came to HSU to study filmmaking, but dramatic writing program director Margaret Thomas Kelso convinced him to try writing plays.

HSU student Siray Rodgers, left, and HSU graduate Thomas Tucker perform in a scene from John Oluwole ADEkoje’s Jagun Fly / Humboldt State University

“So it’s her fault,” he said. 
It seems to be paying off. Now living in Boston, his play Shoeshine Safari is scheduled for production by the Providence Black Repertory Theatre, and his rock musical will be produced next year at the Boston Playwrights Theatre. He is currently an artist in residence at the University of Massachusetts in Boston (where another play is in process) and he teaches playwriting and film at the Boston Arts Academy.



Jagun Fly began as three short plays, one of which ADEkoje wrote while at HSU. “It was called ‘Love Jones,’ about a kid talking to a gun about death.” In two other plays after that, “I kept playing with this idea of a mother, a father and a son who are estranged from each other, where communication is a problem.”



That related to the African Diaspora, with people separated all over the world and not able to communicate with each other. “I used the estranged family to talk about that issue.”
 But it was after watching a play in New York that he realized how to bring all three plays together.

“That play used the Yoruba tradition. I use it in a different way, but I noticed this was something I was doing in all my plays. It dawned on me that there was a connection between them. So I just sat down and tried to combine the three plays into one, with the ritual behind it.”

Having been reminded by director John Heckel that the competition was coming up for the HSU New Plays Season held every three years, he entered this play “and I kind of won,” said ADEkoje.

Jagun Fly is performed Feb. 26 through 28, and March 5 through 7 at 7:30 p.m. in the Gist Hall Theatre on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets are $10 general, $8 student/senior, with a limited number of free seats at each performance for HSU students, from HSU Ticket Office (826-3928.) http://HSUStage.blogspot.com.

Playwright John ADEkoje is in Arcata for the production. He will be meeting with classes and interested groups. Those interested in meeting with him can contact Margaret Thomas Kelso at the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance (mtk3@humboldt.edu). The playwright, and members of the cast doing brief scenes, will be featured on the KHSU program Artwaves at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 24.

Dr. Richard Corsi

Corsi will give a lecture for the Energy, Environment and Society speaker series presented by the Schatz Energy Research Center on Thursday, Feb. 26, 5:30 p.m. in Founders Hall 118. The lecture is titled, Smog and Lemons: American Homes as Chemical Reactors and the Role of Energy Conservation in Reactor ‘Design’.

At UT-Austin Corsi is heading an indoor environmental program that is changing the face of indoor air quality research around the globe. “We have about 20 graduate students who are doing cutting edge research, taking up to eight courses related to the topic, mentoring undergraduate students, engaging in public outreach projects, and winning a lot of national and international awards.”

In the early 1990s Corsi began advising a graduate student on her indoor air quality research. He realized how much more was known about outdoor air quality than indoor and became quite disturbed when he discovered that the average American spends almost 20 times more indoors than outdoors. “I was intrigued by the number of questions that we raised that had never been addressed by anyone and that seemed so important,” said Corsi.

In his lecture Corsi will discuss how American homes have evolved over the past 60 years, “for better or for worse,” illustrating how new products create a wide-range of chemical reactions with disconcerting by-products.

Not being a doom and gloom kind of guy, Dr. Corsi “will offer some potentially effective ways of dealing with the problem—hopefully practical enough to allow people to act immediately.”

He will also provide copies of his quick list of a few dozen things people can do to improve the indoor air quality in their own homes.

This lecture will be an exciting opportunity to learn about a once neglected and now up-and-coming area of research that directly affects all of our lives.

For more information on the Energy, Environment and Society speaker series visit the Schatz Energy Research Laboratory

Nurit Katz, sustainability coordinator for the University of California, Los Angeles. Submitted Photo

“I grew up in Los Angeles so I wanted to get away a little bit when I went to college. Although it’s still California up in Humboldt, it’s a very different atmosphere,” says Katz, a 2002 HSU alum. “And because I sort of wanted to live out of the city, when I was at HSU I lived in a little cottage in Freshwater [between Eureka and Arcata, Calif.]. It was a really wonderful experience.”

Katz designed her own major in Environmental Education, earning a Liberal Studies degree. She served as co-director of the Environmental Education program sponsored by Youth Educational Services at HSU and worked with the Humboldt Watershed Council.

“At the Watershed Council we were taking a look at what happened with the timber industry with excessive logging,” Katz says. “You have damage not just to the environment, but also to people’s homes with the flooding and to the fisheries because the salmon population was impacted, and timber workers were losing their jobs as mills closed. So, it was impacting all of these different areas and there was no clearer example for me of how important it is to consider social, environmental and economic factors—to really look at the triple bottom line.”

Katz is helping UCLA incorporate the triple bottom line philosophy across campus. After finishing her M.B.A. and Masters of Public Policy at UCLA in spring 2008, she was hired as the campus’s sustainability coordinator in November.

“We’re doing a lot as a campus when it comes to sustainability,” Katz says of UCLA. “We’ve had a very successful variety of transportation demand management programs like van pools, ride share, and subsidized transit passes. And, in combination, those efforts have led to a drive-alone rate of just around 55 percent for campus where Los Angeles as a whole is 75 percent.”

While an M.B.A. student at UCLA, Katz started the Sustainable Resource Center on campus, which facilitates the provision of resources, information and education to the graduate student body, campus and community. In addition, the UC Sustainability Policy set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020 and, as sustainability coordinator, Katz helped the university develop a Climate Action Plan. Thanks to her efforts, the campus will be able to meet the goal by 2012—eight years early.

Her new goal is to complete a campus-wide sustainability assessment using the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System developed by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. Such an assessment would show Katz where UCLA is excelling and where it might need improvement regarding sustainability.

“Other than the campus-wide assessment, I’m really looking into our water conservation efforts,” she says. “We’ve done a lot for water conservation on campus, but I think there’s a lot more we can do and water is always a particularly important topic for California, so that’s where my focus is right now.”

Clowns Shea Freelove, left, and Steven Dimon perform for school children in Kenya’s Mbaranga parish. / Submitted

The expedition spawned from Freelove’s involvement with Clowns Without Borders, an international group dedicated to spreading the irreverence of circus arts to refugee camps, conflict zones and territories with emergency situations.

Freelove began managing the organization’s local chapter in 2005 and since then has performed in South America and Asia. It was on a trip to Singapore that an opportunity to make an independent journey to Africa presented itself.

Upon Freelove’s return from Singapore, he and clowning partner Steven Dimon were making travel arrangements and settling into writing a routine capable of traveling internationally.

“We didn’t know how much (the Kenyans would) understand us if we tried to talk. We later learned that most people speak English and can understand us fairly well. But our goal was to create a show that didn’t need dialogue. That just had interaction with cartoonish creatures that feel pain and can cooperate. The biggest challenge was just figuring what things could travel. We keep it pretty silly,” said Dimon.

With their props—clubs, cigar boxes, balls, chairs and a toy duck—shoved into a traveling case, the duo headed for Kenya.

They performed six shows throughout the Mbaranga parish, took in the sights, experienced plenty of the local flavors and made several stops to the parish’s schools.

“It was really cool to go to the schools since the primary audience was the children. And the teachers really felt that this cultural experience was an important part of their learning,” said Freelove.

Clowns Freelove, left, and Dimon perform for school children in Kenya’s Mbaranga parish. / Submitted

The pair’s international expeditions ultimately grew out of Freelove’s founding of the Humboldt Circus in 2000.

“We just met one day a week and we had maybe less than 10 people the first year but after that it started to pick up. We did shows for Humweek and hooked up with the Marching Lumberjacks in 2002, and there’s been much larger classes since then,” says Freelove.

The club takes a hands-on approach to the circus arts, performing such varieties as big top, burlesque (their favorite) and vaudeville, and boasting skills ranging from juggling and poi spinning to acrobatics, clowning and slack-rope walking.

The Freelove Circus is holding auditions on Saturday, Feb. 21 at Redwood Raks Dance Studio in Arcata in the Old Creamery Building. Dancers are asked to arrive at 3 p.m.; clowns at 4 p.m. and musicians at 5 p.m.

The Freelove Circus’ next performance is in the Kate Buchanan Room on Feb. 24. The event is free, however donations will be accepted to help fund another trip abroad. For more information, visit the “Freelove Circus”: http://www.freelovecircus.com/.