Latest Achievements

During finals week, the Opera Workshop class took Bear Hug, a children's opera, on tour to Morris Elementary,  Winship Middle , Alice Birney Elementary , Redwood Montessori, and Pacific Union Elementary schools.  Professor Elisabeth Harrington led students Ash Quintana (Theatre Arts, '24), Dominic Trezza (Biology, '25), Jei Farmer (Chemistry '28), and Savanna River (Environmental Science, '27) and staff pianist Avery Alexander (Music, '20) in performances that were enthusiastically received by the children.  One Alice Birney 3rd grader said "I liked the Spanish Brown Bear because he's hyper like me!  And he held the spider."

The Lumberjack nabbed three national awards from the Associated Collegiate Press in November. LJ fall editor-in-chief Griffin Mancuso placed second in the nationwide best illustration category. Investigative reporter Brad Butterfield earned an honorable mention as one of the nation's Reporters of the Year. Spring 2024 co-editor Dezmond Remington won a national honorable mention for his column writing.

ACP Individual Awards honor the nation’s best collegiate journalism. There are 53 contests in eight divisions representing the best of the best from Ivy League schools to scrappy state polytechnics in Northern California.

Dr. Ray joined grief scholars and movement leaders Breeshia Wade, Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz, Myrtle Sodhi, Jennifer England and host Viyda Shah on the podcast, Hospicing Leadership. This episode focused on questions such as "How do leaders create a vision for hospicing grief in the midst of crisis?" You can listen here: https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading/podcast-episodes/hospicing-leadershi…

Ecological forecasts can be used to predict changes in ecosystems and subsequent impacts on communities. Scientists at the Ecological Forecasting Initiative are working to advance the field through a process that enables them to continually update model predictions with observed data in order to improve our ability to foresee what may happen in the future. Through a recently published paper in Nature Climate Change Dr. Nievita Bueno Watts, in conjunction with researchers at @eco4cast are calling for greater investment in ecological forecasting to mitigate climate change. Learn more by reading the press release or the Nature Climate Change paper. 

In December 2024, Noelani Anderson, Alanna Armstrong-Penney, Maryanne Casas-Perez, Justin Crittenden, Maya Davis, Nauselle Gleglaud, Liam Hodgson, Em Madrid, Nicholas Nielsen, Katy Pate, Marisabel Perez Moreno, Alex Votaw, and Desmond West-Hedlund fulfilled the College Reading and Learning Association (CRLA) International Tutor Training Program Certification requirements and are now Level I Certified Tutors. Achieving certification means that tutors and writing consultants have met CRLA’s high standards for participation in training, direct peer support, and evaluation in the Learning Center’s tutoring and writing assistance programs. The Learning Center has been a CRLA-certified program since 1999. 

Israel de Souza has recently published a co-authored book, Moral and Intellectual Virtues in Practices: Through the Eyes of Scientists and Musicians, and a co-authored piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Institutions Must Do More to Accommodate Those with Long Covid." She also wrote a policy brief for the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, based on previously funded research, entitled "Learning from Rio's Failed Pacification Initiative."

Michelle Newhart and her coauthor, Nicholas Athey published an article, “Cultivating Choice: Determinants of Home Cannabis Growing Among Legal Users in the United States,” that examines factors influencing the decision to grow cannabis at home by cannabis-consuming residents in legal states. Drawing on a survey of recent cannabis users in cannabis-legal states, they explore four potential explanations for home cultivation: legal access, needs-based motivations, resource-based factors, and identity-based reasons. Their analysis reveals that home growers differ significantly from non-growers across multiple dimensions. 

Graduate student Caleb Chen was awarded an $25,000 Agricultural Research Institute (ARI) NEXTGEN Fellowship to support his groundbreaking research on changes in cannabis genetics for his MA in Public Sociology.

Dr. Meenal Rana, along with her colleagues from Virginia State University and the University of Nevada, co-authored the article titled, "Transnational Families in the COVID-19 Era: Health and Well-being of South Asian Older Parents with Adult Children Abroad". Using the backdrop of the global pandemic, globalization, and immigration, the paper focused on the health outcomes of older parents in transnational families. The study used autoethnographic data from the three authors to examine the cultural perception of care, sense of familism, care reciprocity, gendering of care, use of technology, and economic factors relevant to health and wellbeing in transnational families. 

Drs. Jeff Kane and Pascal Berrill received a $144,000 grant from the USDA Forest Service to support a study that will examine the effectiveness of variable tree thinning and prescribed burn treatments to promote fire and forest resilience in mixed-conifer forests of California. Research has consistently shown thinned tree stands to be more resilient to drought and wildfires, however, much remains to be learned about tree regeneration and growth in landscapes experiencing frequent low-to-moderate severity fires. This work will help to fill information gaps on interrelationships between prescribed fire dynamics, forest structural diversity, fuels, and vegetation response.

Dr. Meenal Rana and Dr. Mona Abo-Zena completed the special issue of Religions, “Focusing on the Elusive: Centering on Religious and Spiritual Influences within Contexts of Child and Young Adulthood Development” in the fall of 2024. The issue includes 11 articles representing a diversity of sociocultural and religious groups representing different countries of residence (e.g., El Salvador, India, Pakistan, USA), immigrant countries of origin (e.g., Nepal), ethnic and racial groups (e.g., Latinx, Asian, white European/Danish), and religious groups (e.g., Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic, Later Day Saints, Hindu) on topics such as sexual violence, parent-child relationships, death, LGBTQIA+, and mental health.

Dr. Joshua Frye was recently solicited by the executive leadership of the National Communication Association in Washington D.C. to submit a Case Study for the Association's website. Dr. Frye's Case Study provides public education and advocacy for Communication Departments around the United States who are currently facing or may face in the future, threats to the integrity of the public speaking course at institutions of higher learning.

Child Development and Psychology students, three of whom were part of Dr. Rana's Children & Stress class in fall 2023 co-authored a peer-reviewed article, titled, "Building Resilience during Compassion Fatigue: Autoethnographic Accounts of College Students and Faculty in Education Sciences. The student authors are Riley N Nelson, Amanda Johnson Bertucci, Sara Swenson, and Angel Seguine. Utilizing an autoethnographic approach, this study covers a breadth of compassion fatigue, from predisposition to onset and recovery, and considers alternative strategies for coping, including creating meaning from difficult experiences.

Dr. Gabi Kirk has a new peer-reviewed article out in The Journal of Political Ecology. Titled "'A fairly good crop for white men:' The political ecology of agricultural science and settler colonialism between the US and Palestine," it details the connections between the agricultural colonization of California and Zionist agricultural settlement in Mandatory Palestine. This article was the basis of her talk given as part of the Decolonizing Sustainability Speaker Series in the Native American Forum on October 24. It is available free through open access. 

Rachel Samet, Conductor of the Cal Poly Humboldt Choirs, has been selected as the 24/25 Music Educator of the Year by the North Coast chapter of the California Music Educators Association.  Rachel will receive her award at the All-State Music Educators Conference in January.  

Paintings by Assistant Professor Eliseo Casiano are now on view at the Morris Graves Museum Museum of Art in Eureka.  The exhibition - How to Draw Fire - will be open until December 15th. The Morris Graves is open Wednesday- Sunday 12:00 pm- 5:00 pm. 

Vincent Biondo presented his paper "Baseball Religion in the United States" at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting in San Diego on November 23, 2024.

Rose Francia has secured funding to expand on an ongoing, three-year partnership with Blue Lake Rancheria Tribal Education through the Hoopa Pathmakers project. This initiative fosters a college-going culture within schools and between peers by providing direct mentoring and early college experiences.  The project has already shown success in helping Hoopa Valley High School (HVHS) students earn early college credits. The new Modern Youth Internship Academies Program will expand direct services and access to paid internships to high school-aged youth in the Humboldt Coast, Del Norte, and the Hoopa Valley, specifically first-generation college-bound students or those from financially under-resourced backgrounds. 

The NSF funded ACOSUS project has received another peer reviewed acceptance to present their findings in Phoenix Arizona at the  Decision Sciences Institute Annual Conference. This publication includes Kay Vargas, a recent CS graduate now pursuing a PhD at University of California, Santa Cruz and research assistant of  Dr. Sherrene Bogle.

The citation is below:
Standfast*, J., Franco*, J.,  Carabello*, R., Vargas*, K., Wan, Y.,  Wang, X., Bogle, S., Aggarwal, P., &  Rayana, S., (2024) Deciding on a College Transfer: Uncovering Transition Queries and Concerns via Reddit Topic Modeling, DSI Annual Conference November 2024 Status = ACCEPTED

Paintings by Art + Film Lecturer Gina Tuzzi and Assistant Professor Eliseo Casiano are now on view at Lake Tahoe Community College's Haldan Gallery. The exhibition "Troubadours" will be open through December 7th. Go check out these amazing works if you happen to be in the South Lake Tahoe area!

CRGS assistant professor Dr. Paul Michael Leonardo Atienza publishes “Feeling Failure: Appnography and Its Affective Ties to the Ethnographer’s Life" in a special issue of Ethnoscripts. The special issue considers the impact of dating apps beyond dating, moving past the narrow milieu of intimacy to interrogate their impact across other spheres. Atienza reflects on their research among queer Filipino men in Manila and Los Angeles to examine how feelings of failure permeate various aspects of the researcher’s life, influencing writing, thinking, and self-perception, and his study underscores the enduring nature of these emotions. Open Access at https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/ethnoscripts/issue/view/116 

Paintings by Assistant Professor Eliseo Casiano are now on view at the Morris Graves Museum Museum of Art in Eureka. Casiano's exhibition "How to Draw Fire" will be on display until December 15th. The Morris Graves is open Wednesday- Sunday 12:00 pm- 5:00 pm. 

Two former undergraduate research students, now both in the U. S. Coast Guard, Hanna D. Hobbs and Lowen M. Hobbs, have published a peer-reviewed research article with Professor Emeritus Robert W. Zoellner entitled "The limits of copper oxidation states from density functional theory computations:  Fluoro-copper complexes, [CuFn]x+, where n = 1 through 6 and x = 3+ through 5-".  The citation is Hanna D. Hobbs, Lowen M. Hobbs, Robert W. Zoellner, Computational and Theoretical Chemistry 2024, 1242, 114942 (12 pages), to be published in December 2024.

Dr. Frye was solicited by the leadership of the National Communication Association in Washington D.C. to provide a case study for the preservation and protection of the foundational course in oral communication in the context of the recent structural and political challenges in California and the CSU for the GE subarea A1 course in the Golden Four statewide requirements. The case study is based on the experience and strategic responses of the Department of Communication at Cal Poly Humboldt and is available on the NCA website as an advocacy resource for disciplinary colleagues across the U.S. facing similar challenges.

Research from Cal Poly Humboldt graduate Gabriel Irribarren and Fisheries Biology Professor José R. Marin Jarrin was recently published in the California Fish and Wildlife Scientific Journal. Their research focuses on using empty shells to study Pacific razor clam populations at Clam Beach in Humboldt County, and is key to advancing this important research on coastal ecosystems.

Music Alumna, Melody Walker, has received a Best American Roots Song Grammy Nomination for "American Dreaming" written with Sierra Ferrell.  

Dr. Sherrene Bogle and collaborators from CSU Northridge including Dr. Marjan Asadinia and graduate students Desai, M., Rumale, A. will present findings  on their NSF funded research "CISE-MSI : RCBP-ED: CCF-FET : Improving Reliability and Durability in Phase Change Main Memory (PCM)" at the Future Technologies Conference in November 2024.
The work is published with Springer and the citation is below:
WIRE: Write Energy Reduction via Encoding in Phase Change Main Memories (PCM)). In: Arai, K. (eds) Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference (FTC) 2024, Volume 3. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 1156. Springer, Cham.

Cheyenne Ty, a Computer Science Senior/Research Assistant, and Dr Sherrene Bogle and presented findings on their NSF funded research  "CISE-MSI : Building an AI Counseling system for Underrepresented CS transfer students: ACOSUS” at the  Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC) Northwestern Regional Conference in October 2024.
The citation for the published work is below:
Ty*, C., Vargas*, Wan, Y.,  K.,  Wang, X., Aggarwal, P.,  Rayana, S., & Bogle, S., (2024), Investigation of Computing Transfer Students Success, CCSC Northwestern Regional Conference 2024. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges 20(1)

Dr. Sherrene Bogle and collaborators from CSU Northridge including Dr Marjan Asadinia and graduate students Desai, M., Rumale, A. will present findings on their NSF-funded research "Improving Reliability and Durability in Phase Change Main Memory (PCM)" at the Future Technologies Conference in November 2024. The work is published in Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference (FTC) 2024, Volume 3. FTC 2024. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 1156. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-73125-9_38

The NSF funded ACOSUS project has also received another peer reviewed acceptance to present their findings Saturday 11/23 in Phoenix Arizona at the Decision Sciences Institute Annual Conference. This publication includes Kay Vargas recent CS graduate and Dr. Bogle

Standfast*, J., Franco*, J.,  Carabello*, R., Vargas*, K., Wan, Y.,  Wang, X., Bogle, S., Aggarwal, P., &  Rayana, S., (2024) Deciding on a College Transfer: Uncovering Transition Queries and Concerns via Reddit Topic Modeling, DSI Annual Conference November 2024  To be published in  Decision Sciences Institute Annual Conference Conference Proceedings

Cheyenne Ty, a Computer Science Senior/Research Assistant, and Dr Sherrene Bogle and presented findings on their NSF funded research  "CISE-MSI : Building an AI Counseling system for Underrepresented CS transfer students: ACOSUS” at the  Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC) Northwestern Regional Conference in October 2024. The citation for the published work is below:

Ty*, C., Vargas*, Wan, Y.,  K.,  Wang, X., Aggarwal, P.,  Rayana, S., & Bogle, S., (2024), Investigation of Computing Transfer Students Success, CCSC Northwestern Regional Conference 2024. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges 20(1)

Faculty: Rafael Cuevas Uribe and graduate student Brian Donovan, Fisheries Biology presented at the workshop: farmed seaweed science needs in California organized by the California Science Trust in Sacramento on November 1st.

Enoch Hale, Ph.D. is co-presenting at the nation's premier faculty development conference with a colleague from Colgate University, Jeff Nugent, Ph.D.  They use two frameworks to think through the complex landscape of relationships and relationship building that draws on different cultures within the academy and positions them within questions of power and transformation. 

Kamila Larripa and collaborators had their paper accepted to the Springer volume Advances in Data Science.  The article is titled "Randomized Iterative Methods for Tensor Regression Under the t-product" and sets forth novel methods to handle multimodal data.  This publication is the result of their collaborative work initiated at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics.

Paintings by Lecturer Gina Tuzzi and Assistant Professor Eliseo Casiano are now on view at Lake Tahoe Community College in the Haldan Gallery. Through December 7th. Check out these amazing works if you happen to be in the South Lake Tahoe area!

Current NR-Wildlife graduate student Rebeca Becdach led a collaborative effort to publish an exciting article on equity in publishing in the high-impact Journal of Wildlife Management. The article is entitled "A celebration and reflection on the equity trend between women and men in wildlife publishing". Coauthors include several Cal Poly Humboldt Wildlife faculty members, staff, and students including Ho Yi Wan (mentor and graduate committee chair), Micaela Szykman Gunther (faculty), Katherine Larson (graduate student), Kellie Crouch (undergraduate student), Elizabeth Meisman (graduate student), Anna Goldman (staff), and several collaborators from other institutions. 

Former NR-Wildlife graduate student Evelyn Lichwa had her thesis research published in the high-impact Journal of Mammalogy. The article is entitled "Ecological and social drivers of Mexican Wolf home range size across spatiotemporal scales". Coauthors include Cal Poly Humboldt Wildlife faculty members Micaela Szykman Gunther (mentor and graduate committee chair) and Ho Yi Wan (committee member), as well as collaborators from the Mexican Wolf Conservation and Management Program in New Mexico. 

Former NR-Wildlife graduate student Holly Gamblin had her thesis research published in the journal Northwest Science. The article is entitled "Habitat Use and Distribution of a Recently Discovered Population of Humboldt Martens". Advisor Micaela Szykman Gunther is a coauthor. 

Four Soil Science students from Cal Poly Humboldt—Tommy Dachauer, Derek Tremaine, Carter Daniel, and Nicholas Verhey—demonstrated their skills at the Region 6 Soil Judging Competition held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Competing against teams from across the region, the Cal Poly Humboldt team achieved an impressive third-place finish in the team category. Individually, Nick Verhey stood out, securing 7th place among 40 competitors. Their success highlights the dedication and expertise of Cal Poly Humboldt's Soil Science program in preparing students for the field.

David K Jacobs, Andrew Kinziger, Mira Abrecht, W Tyler McCraney, Benjamin A Hà, Brenton T Spies, Elizabeth Heath-Heckman, Mohan P A Marimuhtu, Oanh Nguyen, Colin W Fairbairn, William E Seligmann, Merly Escalona, Courtney Miller, H Bradley Shaffer, Reference genome for the endangered, genetically subdivided, northern tidewater goby, Eucyclogobius newberryi, Journal of Heredity, 2024;, esae053, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhered/esae053

Michael Bruner, Professor Emeritus, Communication, recently published in the Journal of Communication and Media Research the article, "A comparative analysis of public discourse in and outside of Nigeria on the right to water."

Josh Meisel published an article, "The Cartel Mystique: Race and the Social Construction of the Cannabis Grower," in Sociological Inquiry. In his research, Josh examined emergent themes in the cultural representation of the Emerald Triangle cannabis grower since the early 1970s, with a particular focus on more recent claims of Mexican drug cartel influence in domestic cannabis cultivation. Changing representations of growers helped fuel moral panics about cannabis cultivation that constructed some groups of growers as “folk devils” and others as “folk heroes.”

Drs. Silvia Pavan and Pedro Peloso received a National Science Foundation grant to study the origin and evolutionary history of vertebrates inhabiting different landscapes on Marajó Island, the world's largest fluvial island, in eastern Amazonia. The project will involve field sampling on the island, and the acquisition of genomic data for samples from across mainland eastern Amazonia basin. Data will also be gathered from historical material available at natural history museums. Study findings will elucidate how and when vertebrate species colonized the Marajó island from the mainland, and how their populations are currently structured among different landscapes within the island.

Together with NASA collaborator Dr. Holly Leopardi, Dr. C.D. Hoyle (Physics and Astronomy) received a grant from NASA’s MOSAICS program, whose purpose is to increase research opportunities for undergraduates. Students, trained in Dr. Hoyle’s lab, will spend summer internships in Dr. Leopardi’s QuEST laboratory at Goddard Space Flight Center. This work will focus on developing space-based systems using cold-atom interferometry and atomic clocks to improve the mapping of Earth’s water and ice movement, perform fundamental physics measurements, and improve navigation systems of future spacecraft. Dr. Leopardi is a CPH graduate, recognized as an Outstanding Student of the Year in 2014.

Dr. C.D. Hoyle, in conjunction with the APS Executive Committee, organized and hosted the 2024 American Physical Society Far West Section Meeting that was held at Cal Poly Humboldt on October 25-26th. Attendees from all over the western USA presented over 100 research works in physics, astronomy, and physical/mathematical sciences through oral and poster sessions, including many CPH students and researchers. Invited speakers included scientists from national laboratories, private industry, and large research universities. Corey Gray of LIGO, who graduated with CPH Physics and Applied Mathematics degrees in 1997, gave an engaging after-dinner lecture to over 120 meeting attendees.  

Students Cheyenne Ty and Abigail Fenland presented a research poster at the American Physical Society Far West Conference.  The poster summarized their math model of immune cell and neuron interaction in neurodegenerative diseases. They were advised by Kamila Larripa.

This month, Film Lecturer and Producer Nicola Waugh premiered the narrative feature film Lucky Star (Dir. Gillian McKercher) at two film festivals in Canada: Vancouver International Film Festival, and Calgary International Film Festival. It will be screening at the Windsor Film Festival and Reel Asian Film Festival in November, with a US festival run and wider digital release to follow. The film, starring Terry Chen, Olivia Cheng, and Andrew Phung was produced with Kino Sum Productions and Notable Content and is distributed by Game Theory Films. 

Matias Solorzano, a graduate student in Academic Research in the Psychology Department was awarded the McCrone Graduate Fellowship Award in recognition of his research in neurodivergence in academia. The award not only recognizes Matias' dedication to research but will provide support for his research. Matias will be speaking on his research on Tuesday, November 12th during the McCrone Award Reception at the Plaza Grill from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. 

Dr. Amber Gaffney along with alumni and current lecturer Benny Anjewierden and several other alumni published a paper in Groups Processes and Intergroup Relations. This paper details major theory and methodological developments in a social identity model of social influence. Anjewierden*, B. J., Syfers*, L., Pinto, I. R., Gaffney, A. M., & Hogg, M. A. (2024). Group responses to deviance: Disentangling the motivational roles of collective enhancement and uncertainty reduction. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations.

Justin Luong (FFRM) and colleagues recently published in Nature Ecology and Evolution on the how California grasslands are experiencing rapid shifts in response to climate change, resulting in plant communities that are more thermophillic, or adapted to warmer conditions. Understanding these plant community shifts to climate tolerances can help inform invasive species and conservation management.  A link to the manuscript is here.