Research

Professor Arne Jacobson works to bring efficient light and solar power to Kenya and Sub-Saharan Africa, where kerosene and fuel lamps pose health and environmental problems, stifle education and economic development.

Bully Magnet—it’s a particularly apt term teens use to describe the unfortunate kids that bear the brunt of schoolyard bullies. Chris Byrne (’80) is intimately acquainted with the phenomenon—in his 22 years as the school psychologist at Sunnybrae Middle School in Arcata, Byrne has seen his fair share of shoving, taunting, groping and the like.

The United States Department of Education has awarded Humboldt State University a five-year, $1.25 million Classic Upward Bound TRIO grant to provide early outreach, encouragement and support to 50 students at six high schools in Humboldt and Trinity Counties: Arcata High, Hoopa High, South Fork High, Trinity High, Hayfork High and Southern Trinity High.

Humboldt State University (HSU), in partnership with Redwood Coast Rural Action (RCRA), has been awarded $500,000 for a prototype project to attract high-speed broadband service to every Redwood Coast community in the four-county region.

It was just a small chirp, modest as sounds go. But when the Humboldt State Wildlife Conclave team identified that little peep as a tiny cricket, they once again proved to be the best in the nation.

Arcata - Drs. Patricia Siering and Mark Wilson of Humboldt State University's Biology Department have won a $1.2 million National Science Foundation grant to study organisms living in some of the most extreme conditions on the planet: the boiling acid pools and hot acidic lakes of Lassen Volcanic National Park, Mineral, CA.

Arcata - The value of Humboldt State University’s Advancement Foundation investment assets has reached more than $21.4 million, a near doubling of the $10.9 million recorded in early 2005, according to an investment performance report by the University’s Advancement Foundation for the period that ended June 30, 2007.

Arcata – Full-time Humboldt State Lecturer Justus Ortega (’97) of the Department of Kinesiology and Recreation Administration has won a $1,000 professional award for his milestone research of the mechanics and energetics of walking in elderly adults. (Energetics is the scientific study of energy and its transformations.)

Arcata - “What I love about soil is how it unifies terrestrial life and scientific disciplines,” wrote Humboldt State University student Rosemary Records in an essay that has won her the $1,000 Paul J. Zinke Memorial Scholarship from the California Forest Soils Council (CFSC).

Arcata – The Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund has awarded $23,600 to Humboldt State University’s Micaela Szykman Gunther, Assistant Professor of Wildlife Management, to conduct genetic research of the critically endangered African wild dog.

Alexander Eaton, a master’s candidate in Environmental Systems at Humboldt State University, has won a $15,000 Fellowship from the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation, Belfast, Maine, in support of his research as Executive Director of the International Renewable Resources Institute (IRRI) in Mexico City.

The Redwood Science Project (RSP) of Humboldt State University and regional K-12 partners have received a four-year, $550,000 federal grant to support secondary science teachers. The project helps alleviate the statewide shortage of science teachers with support for individual faculty and their middle school and high school science departments.

James Kealey, a student from HSU's Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, recently won a "best talk" award (and a $50.00 check) at the West Coast Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Conference (WCBSURC) at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Keeping Humboldt State University in the forefront of United States renewable energy research, President Rollin Richmond presided at a ribbon cutting ceremony Wednesday, May 2, to commission the student-led Solar Radiation Monitoring Station (SoRMS) project, which will gather detailed data about the North Coast's solar energy resource.

Psychology Department students and faculty will present 17 posters and an invited workshop at the Annual Western Psychological Association (WPA) conference in Vancouver, BC, May 3rd -7th . The meeting is the nation’s largest regional psychology conference with 1500-2000 attendees each year.

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 23.

A map created at Humboldt State by Cassandra Hansen, 2006 Geography alumna, has been selected for the 2007 National Geographic Award in Mapping by the Association of American Geographers. According to the head judge, Hansen's “entry was part of the most eclectic and accomplished group of entries in the three years I have been a part of the review process. For the first time, we invited entries from Europe and the United States.” The award comes with a $1200 cash prize.

In its first year, the HSU Department of Government and Politics' Model United Nations program garnered three Meritorious Delegation awards at the 2007 Model United Nations of the Far West conference in San Francisco last weekend. The Meritorious Delegation Award recognizes academic excellence in preparation and participation at the conference. The three awards earned by HSU placed it in the conference’s top three performers.

Stephen C. Sillett, Professor and Kenneth L. Fisher Chair in Redwood Forest Ecology at Humboldt State University, is one of the key figures in The Wild Trees—the latest book by Richard Preston. Preston is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, and is widely considered one of the world's leading science writers.

Humboldt State University Geography Professor Stephen Cunha, Director of the California Geographic Alliance and latter-day Marco Polo of "living geography," has won a prestigious California State University Wang Family Excellence Award of $20,000.

Dr. Steven Steinberg of HSU's Environmental and Natural Resource Science Department has been selected President-Elect of the Northern California Region of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS). The region includes members and chapters in Northern California, Nevada and Hawaii.

Dr. Tasha R. Howe, HSU Associate Professor of Psychology, has won a Fulbright Scholarship, January to June, 2008, in Cyprus to work at the Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies in Nicosia, a non-profit organization. Dr. Howe will train social workers in violence prevention skills, using the American Psychological Association's ACT Against Violence curriculum, for which she is a nationally certified trainer.

Humboldt State University Geography Professor Stephen Cunha was honored with the Hilda Taba Award at the California Council for Social Studies annual meeting in Oakland.

Amber Gaffney, Humboldt State University alumna ('06), was awarded the Western Psychological Association’s 2007 Christina Maslach-Philip Zimbardo Research Award in Social Psychology. Ms. Gaffney, a doctoral student in Social Psychology at the Claremont Graduate University, was recognized for research conducted in a Senior Honor’s Thesis under the direction of Dr. Gregg Gold (HSU Psychology).

HSU Alum Timothy Baroni ('72, '74), an international expert in the field of mycology, has been appointed a Distinguished Professor, one rank above Full Professor, by the State University of New York (SUNY) College at Cortland. It is the highest academic rank in the SUNY.