Research

Peter Johnstone and Kristen Radecsky set out before dusk everyday for a month to walk through Kenya’s marketplaces. The two Environmental Systems graduate students were busy collecting data on kerosene lamps and collaborating with Kenyans on a safer, more economical alternative.

Champ Ferguson is such an intriguing Civil War character—guerrilla, slave owner, cold-blooded killer—it’s hard to believe he’s been nearly forgotten by history. A new book by Professor Thomas Mays, a historian at Humboldt State University, looks to breathe life back into a story that once gripped the nation’s attention.

There’s no question about it: Sue Woodstra knows volleyball. Woodstra, Humboldt State head coach and assistant coach for the U.S. Olympic Women’s Indoor Volleyball Team, recently helped lead Team USA back to the medal stand for the first time in 16 years. The national squad brought home the silver from the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, matching its best-ever finish.

When examining ideas like world ecological degradation and an impending dark age it’s comforting to know there’s still a flickering light of hope at the end of the tunnel.

The Campus Center for Appropriate Technology (CCAT), Humboldt State’s demonstration home for sustainable living, recently sent former co-director, Jeffrey Steuben to accept its award for Best Practices in Student Sustainability Program for the California State University (CSU).

Arcata - Rebecca Menten, a Humboldt State graduate student in the Energy, Environment and Society program, has been awarded a prestigious Switzer Environmental Fellowship worth $15,000.

Arcata — Nearly half of the Redwood Coast's uninsured residents are unable to receive needed health care, reports Humboldt State University’s California Center for Rural Policy (CCRP) in its August Research Brief. The report also notes those with Medi-Cal, California’s state run medical assistance program, are more than twice as likely to seek care in an emergency room than those with private insurance.

Arcata - Summer interns at Humboldt State University give high fives to an intensive computer science design program for bachelor’s candidates. They find it solid ground work for graduate school and the job market.

Arcata - Four area students, all of them Native American, have won 2008 Gates Millennium Scholarships and all but one will attend Humboldt State University this fall.

Arcata — After spending a semester working hand-in-hand with 15 classmates, students from the Journalism & Mass Communications Department's Investigative Reporting class are receiving kudos for the thoughtful and thorough work they did covering an extremely sensitive topic.

More than 20 HSU geography majors, accompanied by department chair Joe Leeper, professors Joy Adams, Stephen Cunha, Dennis Fitzsimons and Chris Hayne, attended the California Geographic Society's 62nd annual Conference. Adams chaired a panel discussion on “Strategies for Mentoring and Supporting Female Students and Faculty,” along with geography students Anna Leeper, Diana Muncy, Corinne Cogger and Angela Crane. Adams was also elected to the CGS board of directors. Leeper presented “Challenges Confronting Humboldt County Agriculture” and Cunha presented “The Changing Face of Vietnam.”

Some of HSU's most outstanding undergraduates, nominated in eight categories of excellence by faculty, staff and fellow students, were recognized at the recent Outstanding Student Awards ceremony in the Kate Buchanan Room on April 30.

Arcata — Students from Humboldt State University’s Service Learning Center organized a collaborative, regional food drive in the months of March and April that raised more than 4,550 pounds of food and an additional $1,665 for Food for People, the Eureka food bank.

Arcata - Humboldt State University undergraduate Rani Ram will receive a $3,000 scholarship as one of 23 winners statewide of the 2008-2009 William Randolph Hearst/California State University (CSU) Trustees Award for Outstanding Achievement.

The Department of Forestry and Wildland Resources celebrated their 10th Annual Spring Banquet in the Kate Buchanan Room on Thursday, May 1. The event was beautifully catered by Twyla Henderson and her staff from University Dining Services.


This spring the Mu Alpha Theta (Mathematics) Contest continued its tradition of posing mathematical questions of varying difficulty to students in the Department of Mathematics.

Winter Santander, a Botany and Zoology double major, was awarded the Best Oral Presentation Award in the Physiology Section of the West Coast Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Conference.

Humboldt State students in the Model United Nations program won four Meritorious Delegation Awards and finished among the top three performers for the second year running at the recent Model United Nations of the Far West Conference in San Francisco. The awards recognize outstanding academic preparation for, and participation in, the conference. HSU International Studies major Jonathan Linton was named Rappateur, or best delegate, in the economic and financial committee.

Arcata – Arcata student and physics major Liam Furniss recently represented Humboldt State University at a national conclave where he introduced results of his experimental research of dark energy in the Gravity Research Laboratory at HSU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Arcata – Humboldt State University’s Natural History Museum has received a $10,000 grant from the Fortuna-based McLean Foundation to buttress the museum’s partnerships with area teachers and schools.

Dr. Kenneth Fulgham, HSU Professor of Rangeland Resources, and D.E. Coultrap, a former HSU graduate student, are among the co-authors of an article about western juniper in the inaugural edition of Invasive Plant Science and Management magazine, published by the Weed Science Society of America under the auspices of the University of California, Davis.

Arcata — Humboldt State's Environmental Resources Engineering students once again lived up to the tradition of academic excellence -- this time in the field of mathematics modeling.

Since 2000, HSU Department of Psychology's students and faculty have given nearly 150 conference presentations.

Think you know more than a 4th grader when it comes to geography? Try this one on for size: Known for its production of alpaca wool, Arequipa is a major commercial and tourist center in what country just south of Ecuador? (Answer at end of story)

Arcata - Dr. Howard B. Stauffer, Professor of Statistics and Chair of Humboldt State University’s Department of Mathematics, has written a new book that introduces natural resource scientists to more current methods of statistical analysis, helping them to enhance their estimates of the probability of specific occurrences in nature.