Latest Achievements

2016 Kieval Scholarships Awarded

This year's awardees are Jeremy Johnson and Molly Severdia. This scholarship was established in 1983 by the late Harry Kieval, HSU Mathematics Professor Emeritus. This is awarded to outstanding seniors-to-be mathematics majors.

Mathematics Students Participate in COMAP. Student teams of Alden Bradley, Caleb Hill, Cameron Trujillo, Leo Munoz, Karlie Elliott and Matthew Hall, with faculty advisor, Kamila Larripa received a designation of Successful Participant in the 2016 Mathematical Contest in Modeling administered by the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP). It challenges teams of students to clarify, analyze, and propose solutions to open-ended problems. The contest attracts diverse students and faculty advisors from over 900 institutions around the world.

Student team of Charlotte Olsen, Gabriela Martinez, and Jeremy Johnson, with faculty advisor, Kamila Larripa received an Honorable Mention in the 2016 Mathematical Contest in Modeling administered by the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP). It challenges teams of students to clarify, analyze, and propose solutions to open-ended problems. The contest attracts diverse students and faculty advisors from over 900 institutions around the world.

Eight HSU students represented HSU at the 30th Annual California State University Student Research Competition, April 29 and 30, at CSU Bakersfield. This annual statewide competition brought together outstanding student researchers from all 23 CSU campuses to compete for research awards in discipline-based categories. Judges included experts from corporations, foundations, public agencies, and colleges and universities.

HSU can be proud of our students’ accomplishments and of how they represented HSU. “They exemplify the excellence of HSU students by being prepared, professional, and passionate about their topics,” said Rhea Williamson, Dean of Humboldt State’s Office of Research, Economic and Community Development (ORECD).

Williamson also lauded the students’ advisors. “They take an interest in integrating research into undergraduate and graduate education. They’re also dedicated to student mentorship and guidance.”

Susan Brater, Administrative Support Coordinator for Dean Williamson, not only provided for all the logistics related to the event but also attended the competition. She noted, “It was an outstanding group of students who bonded and supported each other throughout the competition.”

The students who represented HSU at the 30th Annual CSU Student Research competition were:

*Nina Carson*
Graduate candidate in Kinesiology & Recreation Administration
_“The Effect of Lean on Running Kinematics and Metabolics”_
Faculty advisor: Justus Ortega, Associate Professor, Kinesiology & Recreation Administration

*Christopher De Alba*
Undergraduate in Chemistry
_“Demonstration of Lead Binding for Bioremediation in Engineered RsaA S-Layer Proteins on C. vibrioides”_
Faculty advisor: Jenny Cappuccio, Assistant Professor, Chemistry

*Lee Hecker*
Graduate candidate in Biological Sciences
_“Habitat Suitability of Northern Pacific Rattlesnakes (Crotalus Oreganus Oreganus) at Multiple Scales”_
Faculty advisor: Sharyn Marks, Professor, Biological Sciences

*Manal Hosawi*
Graduate candidate in Biological Sciences
_“The JNK/c-Jun Pathway Regulates Potency and OCT4 Expression in Murine Embryonic Stem Cells”_
Faculty advisor: Amy Sprowles, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences

*Lori Jones*
Undergraduate in Environmental Resources Engineering
_“Hybrid Osmotically-Driven Desalination Systems to Achieve Water Sustainability: Evaluation with a Computational Fluid Dynamics Model”_
Faculty advisor: Andrea Achilli, Assistant Professor, Environmental Resources Engineering

*Joshua Massey*
Undergraduate in Chemistry
_“Nanodiscs Stabilize Anabaena Sensory Rhodopsin for Transcriptional Regulation Studies”_
Faculty advisor: Jenny Cappuccio, Assistant Professor, Chemistry

*Gil Spitz*
Graduate candidate in Kinesiology & Recreation Administration
_“Physical Fitness Characteristics of Local Firefighters and Law Enforcement on the Northern Coast of California”_
Faculty advisor: Young Sub Kwon, Assistant Professor, Kinesiology & Recreation Administration

*Anna Welch*
Graduate candidate in Kinesiology & Recreation Administration
_“Physical Fitness Characteristics of Local Firefighters and Law Enforcement on the Northern Coast of California”_
Faculty advisor: Young Sub Kwon, Assistant Professor, Kinesiology & Recreation Administration

Jayne McGuire, Associate Professor of Recreation Administration, was recently awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for the Spring 2017 semester, enabling her to work with the University of West Indies, St. Augustine campus in Trinidad and Tobago. Her project will include research on faculty attitudes regarding students who experience disabilities, faculty development and support focused on creating inclusive curriculum and the development of recreation opportunities for youth of all abilities. The Fulbright Program is an international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.

Again this winter, the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications (COMAP) sponsored the annual Mathematical Modeling Contest (MCM) and Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM). Student teams from the HSU Environmental Resources Engineering (ERE) department have participated in this four day long contest for the last 15 years, and did so again this year. Competing against over 12,000 teams from thousands of universities, each team produced a report summarizing their solution to one of six possible problems.

This year, three ERE student teams entered in the competition that began on Thursday evening, January 28, and ended on Monday evening, February 1. The team consisting of Emily Klee, Aaron Kent, and Jake Coniglione, and the team consisting of Daniel Burgett, Heidi Otten, and Jason McMack, selected a problem that required understanding the drivers of water scarcity as they created intervention strategies for a region of the world to mitigate the water crisis. Both teams' reports were awarded the score of Meritorious Winners. Only 9 (0.3%) of the 3,209 teams working on this problem scored higher, and 83% of the teams received lower scores.

The team consisting of Patrick Hasset, Jax Gill, and Jake Burns selected a problem that required they build a mathematical model to determine an effective strategy for a person taking a bath to add heated water to raise the temperature back to near starting levels while minimizing the overall use of water. Patrick, Jax, and Jake competed against 4,094 teams and were awarded a ranking of Meritorious Winners, awarded to only 8% of the entries. Only 13 teams received a higher score.

Congratulations to the members of all three teams for their high achievement in this event. We appreciate your efforts, which bring recognition to the Environmental Resources Engineering Department and to Humboldt State University.

Brittany Stuckey, Communications and Art double major, won a Tom Knight Award in the Art Graduates 2016 exhibition for her digital print, "The Mythos of Memory: Tracy." Ms. Stuckey also designed the ideaFest 2016 posters for December Comm. graduates, Anna Malia G. Barker ("A Preliminary Network Analysis...Food Issues") and Karissa Valine ("The Feminist Pedestal: Ronda Rousey and the Representation of Female Athletes").

Mary Ann Creadon of the English Department presented a paper, entitled "From 'Airy Nothing' to Knowledge: English as Uberdiscipline," for a peer-reviewed panel at the national College English Association meeting, March 30-April 2 in Denver.

Leena Dallasheh, Assistant Professor of History, recently published an article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Palestine Studies. The article, entitled "Persevering through Colonial Transition: Nazareth’s Palestinian Residents after 1948" reexamines the ambivalent relationship between Nazareth’s political leadership and the newly established State of Israel to argue that the Palestinian citizens of Israel were neither traitors and collaborators, on the one hand, nor passively quiescent, on the other. Rather, as a new national minority, Palestinians overcame myriad forms of control as they negotiated the structural obstacles placed before them by their new overlords.

Jonah Platt and Alexis Hernandez were named the first- and second-place recipients, respectively, of the Kalb-Haston Awards, whose cash prizes totaled $1,250. These awards are funded by HSU alumnus David Kalb and Bruce Haston, a former HSU political science professor. They recognize students who have demonstrated personal commitment and leadership by taking an active role in student government, particularly through the Office of Associated Students.

History major Adam Holt is the 2016 recipient of the $500 William R. Tanner History Scholarship. The scholarship was established in memory of William R. Tanner, professor of history at Humboldt State University, 1970 to 1999; founder of History Day at the university; and author of “A View from the Hill,” a history of Humboldt State University.

History major Alexander Garcia was selected by History Department faculty as the 2016 recipient of the Dr. John Hennessy Award, which honors a graduating history major who has demonstrated academic excellence in the study of history. The award was established in memory of Dr. John Hennessy, a professor of History and department chair at Humboldt State University who, after his retirement from the History Department, provided many years of service to the university.

History major Joshua Buck received $500 for first place in the 2016 Charles R. Barnum History Contest. The Barnum History Awards celebrate original historical research of Humboldt County. The awards were established in 1952 by a grant from Charles Barnum, a realtor and insurance broker in Eureka who was a member of the Humboldt State College Advisory Board from 1946 to his death in 1953.

History major Rodney McKinnon is the 2016 recipient of the $1,000 Johnston-Aronoff History Scholarship, which is awarded to a History major with an emphasis in the study of California and/or the western United States. The award was established by Guy Aronoff, a lecturer in the HSU History Department, and his wife, Judy Johnston, in memory of Guy’s father, David Aronoff, and Judy’s mother, Aldy Johnston.

Environmental Resources Engineering Department students' recently competed in the Mid-Pacific Student Conference’s (Mid-PAC) Water Treatment Competition. At the competition, Humboldt State took first place overall competing against Fresno State, San Jose State, Tongi University, University of the Pacific, UC Berkeley, Chico State, UC Davis, Universite Laval, University of Nevada, and Sacramento State. HSU students also took first place in the construction category, second in water quality, and third in presentation. Students who competed include: Josue Candelario, Kelly Fuentes, Jacob Hurd, Tony Mitchell III, Joshua Martinez, Noe Martinez, Cristina Olivares, Yaad Rana, Raymond Rios, David Rivera, and Eunice Romero. The conference and competition is sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

"Mid-PAC is an international competition with multiple categories, such as: steel bridge competition (teams have to construct a 20' bridge), concrete canoe (teams must design and race a canoe), and waste water treatment that we participated in this year. Humboldt has historically been involved with the waste water filter competition and is now tied for most wins in this competition with UC Berkeley, and Reno,” says Yaad Rana, a ERE student who participated in the competition.

“The competition started in 1998 as part of the conference, and as an environmental engineering school we always expect to do great in the water treatment field as other schools focus on other civil engineering topics,” says Rana. “The design for the competition at HSU starts with small groups of students creating filters and testing them at a local competition held by the local chapter of ASCE members. After this period we join together to try and create the most effective design to take to the international competition. The local competition is really just to get ideas out there from the students who are willing to participate from HSU. When we are all together we hashed out the final design and continued testing and preparing the design report and presentation,” says Rana.

The team this year consisted of four poster presenters (Noe Martinez, Cristina Olivares, Josue Candelario, and Kelly Fuentes), twp PowerPoint presenters (Eunice Romero and Josh Martinez), two operators (Yaad Rana, Ray Rios, David Rivera, and Tony Mitchel III), and one construction manager (Jacob Hurd). So everyone had the opportunity to be involved. Rana was the team Chair, along with Co-Chairs were Josh Martinez and Eunice Romero.

This year we won the following awards: 3rd place presentation, 2nd place water quality, 1st place construction, and 1st place overall.

“We all worked really hard and had a blast doing it. I am also relieved because I am confident that next year's team will be in good hands, since this will be my last time participating. The younger students now have the passion for the competition, and that is key for HSU's continual success at Mid-PAC,” says Rana. “We represented Humboldt really well (at one point Josh was separating recycling at the competition as the other schools didn't seem to care that they were making a huge mess overflowing a trash can), and we brought home the trophy which was actually created at Humboldt (a wooden toilet bowl mounted on a redwood stump)!"

Here is a Google Drive link to photos from the competition that may be used in Humboldt State publications:
https://drive.google.com/a/humboldt.edu/folderview?id=0B-AEKEKoaMHxRHVv…

Benjamin Funke, HSU Art Department lecturer has been selected to exhibit his artwork in a group show at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art Museum located just outside Seoul, South Korea. The exhibit will feature 3 of his projected video works. The exhibit opens on 4/20/16.

Physics majors Jeremy Johnson and Gabriela Martinez presented at the national April meeting of the American Physical Society, held in Salt Lake City, UT from April 15th-19th. The presentations concerning their work on tests of short-range gravity generated considerable interest from a broad range of physicists in attendance. Congratulations!

Brandon Browne and Raul Becerra ('16) presented research at the Geological Society of America Cordilleran Section meeting in Ontario, California April 5-7. Their research project focused on understanding the origin and eruption of volcanoes on the Kern Plateau in the southern Sierra Nevada.

Kerri J. Malloy, Lecturer in Native American Studies, has been selected as one of the 19 fellows for The European Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization in July at the Royal Holloway campus of the University of London. The institute is sponsored by the Holocaust Educational Foundation in Northwestern University and the Holocaust Research Centre at Royal Holloway, University of London, with the support from the Pears Foundation.

Benjamin Funke, HSU Art Department lecturer has been awarded the Beverly Faben Artist Fund from the Humboldt Arts Council. The Beverly Faben Artist Fund provides support for emerging artists to show their work in established venues.

Nikola Hobbel, English professor was recently elected Secretary of the California Chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME). The California Chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education is a group of teacher educators, teachers, students, parents, community activists, and others with a strong interest in creating socially just and equitable learning communities in California schools and classrooms.

Tessa Pitré and Nikola Hobbel presented a paper at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Washington, D.C. The paper, entitled "'Minor Injuries were Reported: Sexualized Violence, Power, and Teaching" was part of a peer-reviewed panel presentation, "Race and Gender in Higher Education."

Steve Martin and former graduate student Jessica Blackwell ('15) published a peer-reviewed article in the April issue of International Journal of Wilderness -- Personal Locator Beacons--Influences on Wilderness Visitor Behavior.

Armeda Reitzel has been selected as the subject area chair for Midwestern Culture for the Midwest Popular Culture Association. She will serve as subject area chair from 2016 through 2018.

HSU Music Department Professor Dr. Gil Cline (2nd year, FERP) recently made two unusual performance appearances. On April 2 and 3 he was featured on the Renaissance cornetto—the rare brass and woodwind hybrid—with Jefferson Baroque, based in Ashland, Ore. The concerts were of the famous, sonorous Venetian polychoral music in which the audience is almost surrounded by musicians including voices, strings, keyboards, and the historic brass including cornetto and sackbut (trombone). On April 9 he appeared on Alcatraz Island for a Living History Day with other US Civil War re-enactors. Cline performed on an historic 1860s rotary-valve soprano cornet with an 18-member brass band, in Federal uniforms, performing historic American music and portraying the US 3rd Artillery Band stationed there and at the Presidio in those days.

English faculty member Janelle Adsit and English major Jade Mejia are collaborating on a project titled "Rhetoric and Poetics: Investigating Activist-Oriented Arguments in Poetry," which has been selected for an award from the Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Program (RSCA) AY 15/16.

Janelle Adsit recently presented at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Los Angeles and chaired a panel at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Houston. The panels engaged questions of identity and offered insights on sustaining relationships with community partners.

Dr. Joshua Frye, Associate Professor of Communication, and his co-author Dr. Craig Engstrom, Assistant Professor of Communication at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, have published a textbook, entitled "Qualitative Communication Consulting: Stories and Lessons from the Field." The book includes 15 original narrative essays with each telling a story that captures the rewards and challenges of consulting through qualitative lenses. The book offers eclectic perspectives from communication faculty working in various regions of the country and with diverse types of clients and organizations.

Maral Attallah, lecturer in Critical Race, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, has been awarded the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) 2016 Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar Follow-Up Grant. The grant provides a fully funded research fellowship at the Mandel Center and Museum in Washington, D.C. The USHMM Fellowship will be the 2nd of two 2016 summer fellowships she has been awarded for her work in genocide studies, and her third fellowship of the year. The USHMM Fellowship will run immediately following her fellowship with the Institute on Genocide Studies and Prevention at Keene State College.

A large contingent of HSU faculty, students, and alumni recently attended the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in San Francisco. A record 9,000+ attendees from over 80 countries created an intellectual tour-de-force on topics from climate change, to human migration, natural resource exploitation, regional conflicts, the mapping sciences, and much more.

HSU Faculty presenters included:
* Matt Derrick: W(h)ither Post-Soviet Islam?
* Amy Rock: Citizen Participation and Public Funding in Ohio
* Erin Kelly: Re-shaping a regional market: Marijuana cultivation in far northern California at the precipice of legalization
* Laurie Richmond: It's a Trust Thing: Exploring the disconnect between fishermen's perceptions of and impacts from the California North Coast Marine Protected Area Network
* Stephen Cunha: Perestroika to Parkland: Evolving Land Protection in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan.

In addition, HSU student Emma Lundberg presented: Using Q-methodology to Understand Social Conflict in Wilderness Fisheries Management of Northern California.

HSU alumni attending included Professors Shannon Cram (Univ. Washington-Bothell) and Aquila Flowers (Western Washington), along with Nathanial Kelso (Mapzen), Kevin Flaherty (PGE), and doctoral students Aghaghia Rahimzadeh (UC Berkeley), and Joel Correia (Fulbright-Hayes Scholar, CU Boulder), among others.

Librarians Sarah Fay Philips and Carly Marino received a Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Program Award to hire undergraduate and graduate interns for summer 2016. Students will help process and promote the Lucille Vinyard and Susie Van Kirk Collections, and support the academic and creative programming offered through the Library Lifelong Learning Lounge (L4HSU).

Lori Jones, a senior student in Environmental Resources Engineering and Applied Mathematics received a 2016 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). This fellowship will support her plan to assess the environmental impacts of tidal energy conversion arrays. Jones will be comparing the natural variations in the sedimentary environment and sea-floor characteristics of test sites with the changes that would be caused by a tidal energy converter array. She will use a three-dimensional hybrid modeling approach, validated with a small-scale physical model, capturing near and far field effects of the flow regime and sediment transport.

HSU graduate students Ian Kelmartin and Jay Staton presented posters at the COAST-WRPI Student Research Poster Reception at the Chancellor's Office on March 8, 2016. COAST is the CSU system-wide affinity group for marine and coastal related activities.

Dr. Armeda Reitzel and three Communication majors - Joseph Chatham, Rory Eschenbach, and Tania Meijia - presented their academic papers at the Popular Culture Association Conference in Seattle, WA March 22-25, 2016. The papers were:
Joseph Chatham: A global village complete with global gamers; Rory Eschenbach: Riot Boys: Gendering space in League of Legends;
Tania Mejia: Yoga marketing; Dr. Armeda Reitzel: Power, privilege, and popularity all tied up--in the necktie!

On April 23 at San Jose State, Environmental Studies Program undergraduates Noemi Pacheco and Ivan Soto will be attending the California Forum for Diversity in Graduate Education, which brings together approximately 1,000 pre-selected, high-achieving undergraduate and master's students from underrepresented communities to explore graduate opportunities and resources.

Dr. Ray received a Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Program Award in part to hire undergraduate research assistants (ENST majors Drew Andrew and Ciera Townsley McCormick) to work with her on a book project, Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: A Reader, which has been accepted for publication by University of Nebraska Press, slated for printing in Spring 2017.

HSU’s Connie Stewart, who runs the California Center for Rural Policy, was a featured speaker on state initiatives needed to close the digital divide in rural communities at CENIC’s (Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California) annual conference at UC Davis March 21st. CENIC connects California to the world and provides broadband to the California K-12 system, California Community Colleges, the California State University system, California’s Public Libraries, the University of California system, Stanford, Caltech, and USC.

Melanie Michalak, Assistant Professor of Geology, recently published a paper with co-authors in the peer-reviewed, Geological Society of America journal "Lithosphere." The paper, entitled "(U-Th)/He thermochronology records late Miocene accelerated cooling in the north-central Peruvian Andes," investigates the relationship between large-scale tectonics and long-term climate changes reflected in the morphology and rock uplift of the Peruvian Andes Mountains. doi:10.1130/L485.1

Wildlife graduate student Shannon Murphy won best overall student presentation for her talk "Parental care behaviors in Brandt's cormorant (Phalacrocorax pencillatus): effects on reproductive success and use as indicators of the marine environment" at The Wildlife Society - Western Section meeting in Pomona, California, with co-authors Stephanie Schneider, Richard Golightly, and Daniel Barton.

Alison O'Dowd recently published an article in the journal "Hydrobiologia" entitled, "Do bio-physical attributes of steps and pools differ in high-gradient mountain streams?" The research for this paper was done on three tributaries of the Smith River in Del Norte County. The article can be found by searching the DOI 10.1007/s10750-016-2735-5

Writing Studio Peer Writing Consultants Andrea Calleros (Biology), Laura Gorman (English), Thomas King (English), Amanda Lagasca (Environmental Resources Engineering), and Ciera Townsley-McCormick (Environmental Studies), accompanied by Dr. Jessica Citti (Writing Studio/Learning Center), will be leading a workshop at the Northern California Writing Centers Association Annual Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., on April 1-2, 2016. The workshop, called "Metaphors We Tutor By: Using Metaphors to Increase Writing Self-Efficacy," draws on research and their experiences as peer tutors to examine the benefits and pitfalls of metaphors as teaching tools in writing centers.

Christina Accomando, Professor of English and Critical Race, Gender and Sexuality Studies, recently presented the paper "Troubling the Beat Inevitable: Point of View and Representations of Lynching" in Charleston, SC, at the 30th Annual Conference of MELUS (Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the US), for a panel titled "What kind of poem / Would you make out of that?: Literature and Violence." The paper links literary works by Ellison and Brooks to contemporary efforts to grapple with racial violence, including the recent Equal Justice Initiative report "Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror" (eji.org/lynchinginamerica).

Dr Alison Holmes, International Studies Program Leader, attended the International Studies Association national conference in Atlanta over break and presented a paper: "European State-System split: Three models of diplomacy in a globalizing world". She was also on a professional development round table for Ph.D. students and new faculty talking about the role of service at a teaching institution.

Dr Alison Holmes, International Studies Program Leader, has published a textbook, "Global Diplomacy: Theories, Types and Models," with Westview Press. It was launched at the national International Studies Association Conference in Atlanta last week and was sold out by day two.

Tyler Stumpf, Assistant Professor of Management, recently published a paper entitled “Institutional conformance and tourism performance: An efficiency analysis in developing Pacific Island countries” in the journal "Tourism Planning & Development.” By investigating how conformity mechanisms are related to efficiency in tourism development, the results of this research suggest how destinations may develop sustainable tourism models by achieving the best use of resources based on individual country profiles.

Maral Attallah and Kerri Malloy have been selected as two of 18 faculty from over 60 very well-qualified instructors/scholars from all over the world as fellows in the inaugural 2016 Summer Institute on Genocide Studies and Prevention at Keene State College. Both were selected based their work and their potential to strengthen the capacity to develop additional coursework and curricular programming in genocide studies and prevention.

Attallah is a lecturer in Critical Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies.
Malloy is a lecturer in Native American Studies.

A painting by Marie Campfield, a senior undergraduate student in the Department of Art, was accepted into the Society of Illustrators Student Scholarship Exhibition. The exhibition will be held in the galleries of the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators in New York City. Marie is the first HSU student to have a work accepted into this prestigious competition. Approximately 300 works from over 8700 entries were chosen for inclusion. Her work, Child’s Skull, Kandahar Province, is part of a larger series of paintings and drawings informed by her experiences in Afghanistan while serving as an Air Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician (EOD, military bomb squad).

Rosemary Sherriff, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Geography, published a viewpoint paper with co-authors titled "Toward a more ecologically informed view of severe forest fires" in Ecosphere. February 2016. "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.1255/full":http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.1255/full.

Yuliana, Thien, Laura, and Angelica were invited to present independent research at Washington D.C. at the ERN Conference in STEM (Emerging Researcher's National Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) in late February. Yuliana Rowe was awarded 2nd place in Ecology, Environment, and Earth Sciences for her presentation on "The effects of climate-induced forest disturbances on spiders in Michigan."

Professor Susan Marshall, Forestry & Wildland Resources attended the 2016 Society for Range Management Annual Meeting in Corpus Christi, TX. Susan served as 2015 President of the Range Science Education Council and 2016 Past President. She is also an Associate Editor or the Range Ecology & Management Journal and a member of the SRM Professional Accreditation Committee. While there she attended a special workshop looking at the federal Office of Personnel Management 454-Series for Rangeland Specialists with members of the OPM, RSEC and PAC groups. Susan also serves on the Certification Panel for California Certified Range Management specialist.