Alumni Stories

The melody may have sounded like a cacophony of random notes, but to the musicians, it may as well have been Bach. Using rubber mallets and a little imagination, the preschoolers had managed to create a schoolyard symphony.

Humboldt State University’s First Street Gallery will exhibit new paintings by alumna Susanna Bluhm (’98) Oct. 2 to Nov. 4.

Emmy-award winning cinematographer Rick Rosenthal (’67, Zoology) will return to Humboldt State May 1-2 to premiere his latest film about the bluefin tuna.

Local radio DJ Mike Dronkers (’99, Journalism) says that HSU is like a "sandbox." “You can get in, you can get dirty, it’s kind of fun, you can make mistakes, nobody gets hurt, but at the end of the day, you learn what works and what doesn’t,” Dronkers says.

Humboldt State University recognized the year’s distinguished alumni, faculty, students and staff during its first Humboldt State Honors Dinner.

Several of HSU's 2012 Distinguished Alumni Award recipients will be presenting talks across campus on Friday, April 20.

During a recent film shoot in the Anza-Borrego Desert, HSU Film Professor David Scheerer stumbled upon something rarely caught on camera.

Engineers at Humboldt State’s Schatz Energy Research Center (SERC) are using their expertise in sustainable technology to increase clean water access in the developing world.

On Tuesday, Andy Lewis (’08, Recreation Administration) was base-jumping from the Fisher Towers rock formations in Utah, at altitudes of more than 500 feet. Just two days earlier, the adrenaline-junkie was in Indianapolis, Ind., showing off his sport and sharing the stage with pop-icon Madonna at the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show.

Last spring, senior business students formed Humboldt State Business Consulting; a class run like a business, as part of Professor Nancy Vizenor’s Small Business Consulting Class, or BA 417. This fall, the current group of students will work with their first clients.

Two Humboldt State alumni and two students recently teamed up to create a series of videos highlighting the work of the Small Business Development Centers of Northern California, a national program that helps local entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed.

Victory came down to the wire for the HSU Jacks on Thursday, as the team took on the Central Washington Wildcats. The game was nationally televised on CBS Sports Network.

Humboldt State debuted a new commercial on Sept. 8 during the nationally televised football game against Central Washington University.

“Fight! Fight! Fight for Humboldt State!” HSU Jacks and students shouted during the Associated Students Pep Rally, Wednesday night.

A Humboldt State University team in Bhutan has completed the first installation of Smart Grid devices called GridShares with the specific purpose of enabling rural electricity users to stabilize their own electricity grids and curb damaging brownouts.

Five Humboldt State University alumni will join other experts in the waste management field and luncheon presenters Assemblyman Wes Chesbro and Maggie Gainer of Gainer & Associates at a Zero Waste Innovation Forum at noon on Friday, Aug. 19, at Arcata’s D Street Neighborhood Center at 13th & D Streets.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery presents, elastic: emerging alumni artists, on exhibit from July 2nd through August 7th, 2011.

“It’s a puzzle,” says Ariel Gruenthal (’08, Anthropology). But the pieces she’s working with are decayed human remains and the picture she’s trying to build is a snapshot of the deceased’s life before they arrived in the Humboldt County Coroner’s Office.

Steven Smith, an HSU alumnus, has been named Dean of the College of Natural Resources and Sciences (CNRS).

In conjunction with Earth Week, Apr. 17-23, Humboldt State University will host “Encounters in the Open Sea: An evening with Rick Rosenthal,” at the John Van Duzer Theatre, Humboldt State University, Apr. 19, 7-8:30 p.m.

In the old “Yogi Bear” cartoons, you had to be “smarter than the average bear” to steal a camper’s food. But Kate McCurdy (M.S. NRPI, ’06), found that improperly stored food can attract even the average bear to a backpacker’s campsite.

Humboldt State University alum Kathleen Fairchild (’05), a graduate student in the Environment and Community Master of Social Science Program, has received the Community Leader Award from the Redwood Coast Tsunami Work Group for her master’s project to bolster the tsunami readiness of the Big Lagoon community and Big Lagoon Rancheria.

Luke Trout’s interest in archeology began early in life – with Easter eggs. As a child, Trout would ask his family to hide the colored eggs over and over again. When his father began to manage ranch land in Colorado, Trout’s interest in Easter eggs shifted to the arrowheads he discovered there. The rest, he says, is history.

For one HSU alum, a passion for beekeeping has grown not only into a successful academic career, but also recently earned her a $500,000 “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation.

This year, a number of campus projects will be funded through the Humboldt Loyalty Fund, a major way for alumni to contribute to the university.