“There are some great restaurants in town, but so many of them close early or have really limited hours,” adds Erin.

That realization was the genesis for Erin and Kalindi’s new venture, Agogo.

Erin and Kalindi envision Agogo as a mobile vegetarian-sushi eatery — a healthy alternative to the ever-popular taco truck. You can find their mobile eatery tucked behind Recycled Youth at G and 16th streets. They offer both ready-made meals and customizable rolls using seaweed, seasoned rice, nut butters, and fresh, local ingredients. They’re even considering providing a sushi-at-your-doorstep style delivery service.

Without a fixed address, the two budding restaurateurs have followed demand and taken their sushi straight to the street. It’s a product that’s tailor made for workers on lunch break, hungry college students, and the bar-hopping, movie-going diners who often face “closed” signs in downtown Arcata once the sun goes down.

At first blush, vegetarian sushi may not sound appealing to every consumer. Isn’t sushi supposed to have fish in it? And who’d buy it on the street? Kalindi and Erin, however, are confident in their product’s potential.

“Humboldt State students and staff are a big part of our target market, so we’ve been product testing our rolls and sauces with students and professors for a couple years now,” explains Kalindi. “Our menu is full of items that have proven really popular over time.”

An inside out roll is one of the many creations you can find at Sushi Agogo, an enterprise that got its start thanks, in part, to the Economic Fuel business competition. Photo Credit: HSU Marketing & Communications.

An example? “One of our favorites,” says Erin, “is our spicy peanut roll. It’s made with spicy peanut butter, cilantro and jalapeño — the flavor combination is so startling and so fulfilling — it’s been a consistent knock out. We’re ready to go.”

Indeed, Agogo’s biggest potential hurdle — securing their sushi house on wheels, is a hurdle no more. Just weeks after graduating from HSU, Erin and Kalindi used part of their $25,000 Economic Fuel award to buy their rolling kitchen. They’re also starting business armed with important lessons they’ve gleaned from more experienced entrepreneurs.

“Economic Fuel gave us the chance to meet all these people in the community who have gone through this same start-up process themselves,” says Kalindi. “Their advice was a huge help, because we can’t afford to take make mistakes or take a trial-and-error approach to this business. We couldn’t have launched like this without the people we met—their advice was invaluable.”

Born in Pasadena, educated in Glendora in the San Gabriel Valley, Bazard fondly recalls childhood rock and mineral hunts in the desert, his earth science teacher serving as a formative boyhood hero.

And rock hounding with his grandparents—that was a key influence as well.

Another was a coastal vacation trip at age 12 with his older sister and a friend, including a stop at Humboldt State University. Bazard fell for the landscapes of northern California and on graduating from high school in 1976, he headed straight to Arcata.

That was the year the Tangshan earthquake obliterated Tangshan, China, killing almost 243,000 people. But Bazard arrived at HSU with forestry on his mind, not faults and quakes. He put in two years, including a couple of summers in forestry work, mainly timber production. Gradually, he realized it wasn’t holding his interest.

“One day, a friend in the Geology Department told me how great it was there, and I wandered over and talked with Don Garlick,” a much-admired professor at HSU from 1969 to 2000, and now a columnist with one of Arcata’s weekly newspapers, the North Coast Journal.

“What impressed me was that Don spent 45 minutes one-on-one, asking me question after question about whether I really wanted to be a geology major,” Bazard remembers. “It was very obvious that he was interested in student needs and his personal touch impressed me. Later I discovered that was true of the many other excellent faculty in the department.”

After earning his geology degree, Bazard gained invaluable experience in the private sector. He put in several years as a staff geologist with a San Francisco geologic engineering company. It had a major impact on his teaching style at nearby College of the Redwoods, where he joined the faculty in 1995, and as an adjunct professor at Humboldt State. In the classroom, Bazard instills the importance of critical thinking and excellent writing when working for a commercial company. A working geologist, he says, must be able to write scientific reports in clear, understandable prose, as well as speak articulately and persuasively.

These skills are highly sought after in the job market, he emphasizes, and they are equally important in the field. Accurate note taking, often under harsh conditions, is essential. “HSU got me ready for that. We went out rain or shine. Sometimes it was pouring or there were heavy winds on the beach, but HSU professors went out anyway. They gave me a can-do attitude to succeed in this kind of job. And that isn’t just gathering information accurately, it’s all the logistics—travel arrangements, map reading, navigation, collecting samples, and being on the alert for the risks that tough field conditions can present.”

Bent on teaching, Bazard left private industry to earn a master’s in geology/geophysics from Western Washington University, and then a doctorate in the same subject from the University of Arizona. At both schools, he taught as a graduate research assistant or assistant professor. Upon completion of his doctorate, he became an associate professor in geology at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, in the northern part of the state.

In addition to his post at College of the Redwoods, Dr. Dave Bazard is also an adjunct professor at Humboldt State University and visiting assistant professor with University of Arizona.

He enjoyed his four-year stay there, teaching being his first love. His literary interests also flourished. He is a fan of William Faulkner (1897-1962), the Nobel prize-winning author whose novels of rural northern Mississippi were among the greats of 20th century American literature. Bazard enjoys the subject, a liking he acquired at HSU while taking a minor (emphasis phase) in modern lit, and developed further during his teaching and research in Mississippi.

A man of the earth in every sense, Bazard made a point of visiting Faulkner’s grave in Oxford, reflecting the love of fine writing he seeks to imbue in his students at Humboldt State and at College of the Redwoods, where the Academic Senate named him Faculty of the Year in 2007.

His efforts at HSU include talks, field trips and a partnership with College of the Redwoods and Friends of the Pleistocene, a geologic society devoted to studying earth processes that occurred 10,000 years to 1.8 million years ago. Trips have taken them to western Nevada and the Sierra Nevada in California. He teaches students to evaluate scientific findings critically, based on close observation. They also take part in local investigations, like the erosion of McKinleyville’s Mad River Bluffs or remediation of Eureka’s Balloon Track (or Tract, depending on personal preference.)

What does Bazard enjoy most about teaching? “Helping my students develop a more complete view of the natural world,” he replies. “Sometimes they haven’t thought much about the earth around them. We go to the beaches at Trinidad and often they’ve been there for recreation, but they haven’t really looked at the rocks there, or the layering or what they are made of, the different rock types and the different structures within them, their geologic origins. They haven’t thought about these things and now you see this new awareness coming over them. Or we’ll tour the hills around here, Humboldt Hill, Fickle Hill, and the students will say, ‘Gosh, I never thought about why there are hills in Arcata.’ They catch on to the folding and faulting that created them. The geologic record is an eye-opener for students.”

Bazard’s teaching hinges on personal mentoring and field experience, a long-time HSU tradition. He discovered the depth of it when he took his first post right after wrapping up his bachelor’s degree in 1982. “When I went to work for this fairly large consulting company in San Francisco, one of the senior geologists found out I attended HSU, and he burst out, ‘Hey! That’s one of the best undergrad programs in the country! You get lots of hands-on experience up there and that’s what this company needs, and what we all need, in the working world.”

The association is honoring Richard Cuneo (B.A. 1962), Terry Grosz (B.S. 1964, M.S. 1966), Lyle Laverty (B.S. 1965) and Robert Thomas (B.S. 1985).

The Distinguished Alumni Awards are the Alumni Association’s highest honor, with a history of nearly half a century.

Richard Cuneo, Chairman of the Board of Sebastiani Vineyards and Winery, is widely recognized for his career in the wine industry. He earned a degree in Business Administration from Humboldt State, and he has since held several positions within the Sebastiani company. He is credited with helping rebuild its image and with making the Sebastiani name synonymous with Sonoma County’s fine wines. Cuneo is a recipient of the California State Fair Lifetime Achievement Award and has been honored by the government of Italy as a Cavaliere (Knight) Officiale.

Terry Grosz began his 32-year career in wildlife law enforcement with the California Department of Fish and Game soon after his graduation from Humboldt State in 1966 with a degree in Wildlife Management. He went on to join the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, moving into positions with increasing responsibility and larger jurisdictions, culminating in his last post as the Fish and Wildlife Service Senior Special Agent. Grosz was responsible for writing regulations, policies, and procedures, responding to congressional inquiries, and travelling throughout Asia to assist foreign governments in curtailing the smuggling of wildlife and establishing cooperative international law enforcement programs. After retiring in 1998, he began a second career as an author. He writes both fiction and non-fiction and has won multiple awards. His stories have been turned into TV specials on Animal Planet.

Lyle Laverty was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2007 as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks. After graduating from HSU in 1965 with a degree in Forest Management, he began a 30-year career with the U. S. Forest Service, serving at the local, regional, national and international levels. He subsequently left his position as Associate Deputy Chief of the Forest Service to be Director of Colorado State Parks. Under his leadership, two new state parks were created and two more are in the planning stage. Park attendance increased, and special programs were established expanding opportunities for economically disadvantaged youths from urban settings. As Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Laverty oversees policy for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service.

Rob Thomas’s childhood summer trips to national parks ignited his passion for geology, which eventually became his profession. He is a professor at University of Montana Western, where he has helped the campus evolve from a traditional school into an experiential learning university. He teaches most of his classes outdoors in the natural laboratory of southwestern Montana. He is dedicated to public outreach and was awarded the Geological Society of America Distinguished Service Award for his 10 “Geo Venture” field trips. They have enabled both scientists and non-scientists to explore and learn about exceptional places, including Grand Teton National Park and the Canadian Rockies.

HSU’s Alumni Association began recognizing exceptional achievement when it launched its annual Who’s Who Award in 1960. Honorees are acknowledged leaders in their fields or outstanding contributors to their communities, the nation or Humboldt State.

The annual event includes the 2008 Distinguished Alumni Speaker Series on Thursday, April 17 and Friday, April 18, when each honoree will make an on-campus presentation to students in his field of expertise.

The Distinguished Alumni evening April 18 will start with cocktails at 5:30 p.m., followed by dinner at 6:30 p.m. and the program and award presentation. For more information or to reserve seats, contact Alumni Relations at alumni@humboldt.edu or 707/826-3132. Tickets are $65.00 per person.

“Yeah, well, Bono may have been drinking when he said that,” admits Tony Potts, Humboldt State journalism grad (’87) and Access Hollywood weekend co-anchor.

For the past 20 years Tony Potts has earned his keep as a broadcast journalist — starting as a college intern at KVIQ Channel 6 in Eureka (“It was one of the best jobs of my life. I got to do everything there. I learned so much,” says Potts) and working his way up to his current position at Access Hollywood. Along the way, he’s won an Emmy Award for feature reporting, two Associated Press Awards and one Society of Professional Journalists Award.

Potts’ newsbeat runs the gamut—he’s done the red carpet deal at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and Emmys. He’s covered the Sundance, Venice and Cannes Film Festivals. He’s performed the play-by-play for the Super Bowl, World Series and the NBA Finals. He’s also a regular contributor to NBC’s Today show.

A single week in Potts’ life can find him covering the Grammy’s in Los Angeles, appearing on Larry King Live in Miami, chasing down a story in the Bahamas and playing in the NBA All Star Celebrity game in Las Vegas (where he, incidentally, earned Most Valuable Player honors).

Potts leads life at breakneck speed and yet somewhere between all the red-eye flights and interviews, he also finds the time to run his own production company, act (his credits include CSI Miami and the Mel Gibson movie Ransom), and balance the hectic Hollywood schedule with the daily rigors of being a husband and father—diaper changes, soccer games, parent-teacher conferences… the whole paternal enchilada.

How does he manage it all?

“I have two things working for me: I have a wonderful wife who’s also a senior producer in this business, so she understands the demands of the job; and I have a boss who has kids, so he understands my need for family time. That helps me balance things. I also try to un-plug from work every day, otherwise it’s just all-consuming. We have a five-minute rule at home—you can talk about work for five minutes and that’s it. That rule, right there, could save a lot of marriages.”

Though Potts’ Hollywood life seems far removed from his beginnings at Humboldt State, he remembers his time at HSU fondly. “The thing I remember best about Humboldt State is the professors. Their doors were always open: that’s one of the reasons I went to Humboldt. I’d been looking at the University of Washington, but there were something like 45,000 kids there. Classes with 300 other kids? How do you connect with your professors in that kind of environment?”

The learning curve, Potts admits, was steep. “The professors were very good. Mark Larson, Pete Wilson and Maclyn McClary? Those guys were tough, old bastards—and it was exactly what I needed. I remember my first paper came back and it looked like Jason from Friday the 13th had stabbed it to death, there were so many red marks on it. I thought, ‘‘Oh lord, I need to go into some other field because I suck as a writer. But through my professors’ guidance and their understanding of how a writer needs to evolve, I learned to get to the core of me—to really express what I was thinking.”

A marine geology and ocean technology expert and a specialist in seafloor mapping, he will manage the Scripps fleet.

Appelgate joins Scripps from the University of Hawaii’s Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, where he served most recently as an associate research specialist and director of the Ocean Technology Group in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.

Scripps is known for its expeditionary oceanographic research. “My job is to make sure the Scripps research fleet continues to provide scientists with the best possible access to the sea,” Appelgate said.

He will oversee four research vessels, which comprise one of the largest academic fleets in the world. He also will administer the Scripps Nimitz Marine Facility, the support and management center for the Scripps fleet in San Diego’s Point Loma community.

The HSU alumnus earned his bachelor’s degree in geology at the Arcata campus in 1985.

On Friday November 16th Dr. Underhill will present aspects of his research from 4:00 to 5:00 in Science B, room 135. Photo Credit: HSU Marketing & Communications

When Dr. Peter Underhill goes to work each day, he brings humanity one step closer to understanding its past. Underhill is a senior research scientist at Stanford University’s Department of Genetics.

“Basically, we’re reconstructing the story of human history,” Underhill explains. “Our research is like the laboratory equivalent of going back in history with a time machine.”

The time machine, in this case, is the Y chromosome. Every man has one. It’s only recently, however, that the Y chromosome has been used to map human evolution. It took Peter Underhill to make that happen. In the late `90s the Humboldt alumnus pioneered a research method that revealed the Y chromosome’s story-telling potential.

“The interesting thing about the Y chromosome,” explains Underhill, “is that it is passed down identically from father to son to grandson to great grandson and so on. The rest of the genome recombines with each generation. That makes it hard to look at certain segments of someone’s DNA and accurately trace back their lineage. The Y chromosome, however, provides a clear trace. Because it doesn’t recombine, the Y has become a relatively simple and elegant metaphor for human evolution.”

Underhill and his associates patented a process of quickly comparing the 60 million base pairs of nucleotides on one Y chromosome with the 60 million pairs on other men’s Y chromosomes. The process is known as Denaturing High Performance Liquid Chromatography and until he popularized it, finding mutations was, as Underhill puts it, “…a lot like moving a mountain with a teaspoon.”

Detecting these mutations, however, is the key to unraveling humanity’s tangled history. Each mutation reveals another branch on a man’s paternal family tree—going back tens of thousands of years. When mutations from a large number of men are assembled together, these genetic markers form a much larger family tree that maps the history of human evolution—from our beginnings in Africa, to our migrations across Europe, Asia and the Americas.

“Basically, in this lab, we look for differentiation patterns on the Y chromosome within global populations. “We could take any man in the world and now that we’ve identified many of these Y chromosome mutations or “markers,” we could place his Y chromosome on that global family tree.”

To date, five hundred Y chromosome mutations have been discovered. Underhill’s own lab has played a major role in finding many of the genetic markers, which is one reason his own name is commonly cited in genetics text books and journals.

“It’s gratifying to see our findings used in forensics kits, or genealogy projects, or being discussed on the Discovery Channel,” says Underhill. “It’s been a fun ride and I’ve been exceptionally fortunate to have experienced it.”

When he graduated from Humboldt State with a bachelor’s degree in oceanography, Underhill’s passion was plankton. Human evolution, he admits, has a bit more public appeal.

“There’s just something hard wired in our species that makes us ask, ‘Who are we? Where are we from? Who are we related to?’ What we’re doing here is helping to answer those questions.”

Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Bob Snyder, Photo Credit: Jarad Petroske / Humboldt State Marketing & Communications

At the moment, Snyder is consulting with key players and constituencies, including most recently the Academic Senate, to build consensus, first of all, within Academic Affairs.

In a wide ranging interview, he spelled out what he has in mind for his trio of governing objectives, starting with the budget. He sought to dispel faculty confusion about whether a crisis exists. “The university posted a modest surplus last year, but Academic Affairs ran a deficit,” he said. “Faculty are asking, ‘Are we really going to be held to eliminate the deficit, or are we going to get some reprieve?’ The message I want to convey is that we are not going to look outside of Academic Affairs to solve our current budget problems. We will solve them internally. And we have to do so in a way that allows us to provide quality programs.”

Snyder will press for narrow, targeted cuts. “There is no question about that,” he asserted. In his judgment, across-the-board reductions are counterproductive because they weaken all programs alike: they are undiscriminating and therefore self-defeating.

His objective is to restructure the OAA’s budget so that about one-third of academic programs grow, the middle third stays the same and the last third shrinks or is phased out. “My goal is to carry out the cuts in ways that are sustainable, so that we can focus new money on growth and infrastructure” he said, adding, “We cannot afford to do all the things we have done in the past. That means we have to make some difficult choices. In the context of strategic planning, if we are looking at additional funds from enrollment growth, then we should have a plan about how to spend that money.”

Accordingly, he is going to develop a strategic plan that is OAA-wide. “In the past, OAA planning has not been coordinated. Every unit has had a plan, and things just sort of percolated up. The result has been a kind of broadly distributed laissez-faire competition that has not always functioned in the best interests of the University. I want something much more structured.”

He believes structural cuts are crucial because otherwise they are not sustainable. “You don’t add students to all your classes, you pick some classes that you enlarge, you leave others the same and you consider other, inefficient programs for elimination and put the freed-up resources elsewhere.”

Snyder defines strategic planning as “deciding how we want to grow and how we want to shrink, concurrently.” Reviews of academic programs and allocation of available resources must go hand-in-hand. This is not his mandate, Snyder underscores, it is a WASC requirement dating to 1990 that Humboldt State has failed to meet. He cited a key paragraph in the WASC Team’s report of that year: “HSU should develop an effective, campus-wide planning process that begins with a clear sense of what the campus should be like in the next decade . . . Campus planning should be linked to resource allocations and to the outcomes of program review and curricular assessments.”

Snyder noted the WASC’s insistence on campus-wide linkage of academic programs and budget allocations. He would like to see that happen, but for now he will be content if he can institute an OAA-wide plan. “We haven’t done it, we’re still not doing it, but we will do it,” he said.

He intends to set a new, cooperative example at Academic Affairs. Even if he believes the OAA deserves more resources, he will be non-partisan. “We’re going to do fewer things, but we are going to do them well, and that’s the only way we can do things. Strategic planning will assure us we’re spending our money reasonably. And we’re not going to engage in brawls anymore over the budget—it’s a bad business.”

Snyder said his strength as a leader is his ability to sense where other people stand and see things from their perspectives. “I’m not very partisan, I always try to take a larger view, I’m holistic,” he said. “That’s probably the main thing folks need to know about me, and I’m going to ask all of us to cooperate and work toward a shared vision of what the University should be like.”

Student volunteers tend to the vegetable and herb gardens that surround the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology. Others work on a gray water system that will recycle water from the house to nourish fruit trees planned for the yard. Inside, the smell of cinnamon and fruit fills the air as students can locally grown organic peaches, apples and pears to preserve them for future meals.

Myles Danforth, CCAT Maintenance Employee, uses salvaged materials to help finish up the CCAT remodel. CCAT, as a demonstration home, uses a mix of creative solutions to decrease their resource consumption and increase energy efficiency. Photo Credit: Jarad Petroske / Humboldt State Marketing & Communications

In other words, it’s just another day as usual at CCAT, Humboldt State University’s hands-on environmental learning center and demonstration home for sustainability projects. “This place is awesome,” says senior wildlife biology major Sarah Marnick, showing off jars of apple sauce she has just prepared. “It’s great to have this opportunity here on campus to learn these skills that other schools don’t provide.”

From a distance, CCAT looks like an ordinary house, but the humble clapboard home with solar panels on the roof is in the midst of a major rebuilding effort after being moved to make way for the new Behavioral and Social Sciences building. And, while the CCAT house may lack the architectural grandeur of the BSS building (the most environmentally advanced classroom facility in the Cal State University system), it serves an equally ambitious mission: take knowledge learned in the classroom and apply it in a real-world setting.

A variety of university courses spend classroom time at CCAT, where students learn about everything from renewable energy to organic agriculture to green construction and design. Marnick, for instance, cans fruit in the kitchen as part of a class called The Lost Arts of Living while, in the living room, engineering students review plans for the soon-to-be-built gray water system. The goal is to teach students how to tread lightly on the planet, and to provide the wider community with an example of sustainable living.

“It’s a living classroom,” says Sam Hart, one of three co-directors who reside at CCAT and oversee its operations. For Hart, a senior geography major who first got involved with CCAT as a freshman, working and volunteering at the house is among the most valuable experiences of his academic career.

Hart guides visitors on a tour of the house to illustrate the philosophy behind appropriate technology, or AT. “Everybody has a slightly different definition of AT,” Hart says. In general, the term means providing affordable solutions for human needs with minimal environmental impact. Examples include everything from the home’s pedal-powered television to a portable solar oven to the photovoltaic panels to a soon-to-be-installed composting toilet that breaks down human waste and turns it into soil for the gardens.

Hart touches the painted walls in the hallway. The home’s interior is decorated with colorful paints made of non-toxic ingredients—flour, mica, clay and natural pigments. Appropriate technology also means using donated and recycled materials. In the bathroom, Hart points to the floor tiles obtained for free from a building supplies business. He pulls back the shower curtain to show road signs that have been glued to the walls. Retrieved from a salvage yard, the waterproof signs serve as a colorful shower stall. “A lot of this stuff would have ended up in a dump,” Hart says. “We put it to use.”

Little by little, workers are reshaping the yard into a miniature eco-topia. “We joke that this is our little patch of South America or Southeast Asia,” Hart says, standing in the terraced gardens behind the home. The area used to be a bramble patch of invasive plants and weeds. As well as common fruits and vegetables, the garden includes edible native plants, herbs and wildflowers.

CCAT was founded in 1978, when a group of students, faculty, administrators and community members decided to save a dilapidated house and convert it from an eyesore into a model of green living. It was a novel concept at the time, and it has since spawned similar projects elsewhere, helping to cement HSU’s reputation as an environmental leader among colleges and universities nationwide.

“I want to bring this concept back to Florida,” says Jenn Dyer, a junior exchange student from New College who frequently visits the CCAT house to participate in the many on-going construction projects. “I’ve been talking with friends back home about this place and they are very excited about the idea.”

The recently installed solar panels should provide all of the home’s electricity, and a solar hot water heating system will not only provide hot tap water but also warm the house in winter by circulating the sun-warmed H2O through radiant concrete floors on the ground level. The concrete floors themselves are a thing of beauty, covered in a swirl of natural pigments made from iron sulfate and coffee topped with a soy-based sealant. The energy efficient home’s walls are filled with blown-in cellulose—made from shredded recycled newspaper—rather than industrial fiberglass.

Future projects include the installation of a rainwater collector to gather and store runoff from the roof, which will be used to quench the gardens. Thanks to volunteer labor, Hart says, the entire rebuilding project, which began in earnest in the spring, should cost only $30,000. This is the amount spent by students to renovate the upstairs of the house since the spring, a much larger sum was spent by the university to physically relocate the house and construct the new lower level, and grade the site.

“This place is a haven outside of academics,” says Matt Peters, a junior with an inter-disciplinary major in earth systems. “Students can come here and explore different concepts and ways of living. It’s a real asset to the campus.”

For more information about the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology. Or stop by any Friday, volunteer day, to participate in the ongoing reconstruction effort.

The exhibit is located in the first floor lobby of the Library and will be on display through October 9th.

Total university enrollment today is 7,781 versus 7,435 in 2006. “That’s turned around a downward trend in enrollment for about three straight years, so that’s a nice increase,” Mike Reilly, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management, reported to the Academic Senate Sept. 25.

The current full-time equivalent student (FTES) count is 7,197, up from 6,876 in 2006.

“We project an annual average resident FTE of 7,200 for 2007-08, up from 6,836 in 2006-07, and we should exceed our annual FTE enrollment target of 7,034 by just over 2%,” Reilly said.

Total FTES represents what the academic departments and faculty use to calculate such factors as teaching loads.

Even stronger than the 8% expansion of HSU’s freshman class is the climb in new transfer students—a 15% increase from 928 to last fall’s 805. Reilly said that, CSU system-wide, transfer growth rates were flat in many instances and a number of institutions saw declines, but HSU defied those trends.

The same thing as happened in other categories. “You may recall that we had a downturn in graduate and post-baccalaureate enrollment last fall, and that’s been turned around, too,” Reilly said. Such enrollment is up by 45 students, to 358 from 302.

“All of our [enrollment] trends have been very positive over the past year,” Reilly told senators. “We are very confident we will meet our enrollment target, I believe for the first time in nine years. That’s very good, and we should exceed it by about 2%.”

Signs of the upward trend abound. For example, the number of transfer students of color grew an extraordinary 25%.

And although overall numbers of HSU freshmen of color grew only slightly, Reilly pointed to an oddity—a major increase in the number of new freshmen who either did not disclose their ethnicity or put themselves in the category of “other.” He said 29% made no disclosure. That is more than double the CSU average and up from 13% of enrolled freshmen in 2003.

“For some reason we have an inordinate number of students [in the category of other]—maybe that’s just something about Humboldt State students and their desire not to be put into a box,” he said. “Also, interestingly, those students enroll at much higher rates than other applicants to Humboldt and they’re also retained at much higher rates.”

Reilly noted that, beginning with Fall Semester 2009, all universities nationwide will have to collect multiple ethnicity data. That is expected to drive down the “other” category considerably, but probably will drive down individual ethnic group categories as well.

The Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) program continues to bolster Humboldt State enrollment. The number of new out-of state freshmen and transfer students rose considerably this fall, to 355 from 249. The WUE is a consortium of 13 western states that enables students to enroll in another state for 150% of in-state fees. Owing to California’s low fees, 150% is still less in-state than in a number of counterparts. “We’ve enrolled far more WUE students than Chico,” Reilly said, and those students count as FTE. States that contribute most to the Humboldt State’s WUE population are Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Hawaii.