Congratulations to the 2024 President Alistair McCrone Promising Faculty Scholars Award winners:
- Tawanda Gara, assistant professor, Department of Environmental Science & Management
- Debbie Gonzalez, assistant professor, Department of Social Work
- Kaitlin Reed, associate professor, Department of Native American Studies
Additional congratulations to Matias Solorzano, graduate student in the Academic Research Master’s Program Psychology for winning the Alistair and Judith McCrone Graduate Fellowship Award.
Following are brief biographies of the 2022 McCrone Promising Faculty Scholars and the Alistair & Judith McCrone Graduate Fellowship Award winner.
Tawanda Gara’s (assistant professor, Department of Environmental Science & Management) education and professional training spans three continents. He completed a postdoctoral research position at the University of Maine, School of Forestry Resources. Prior to that, he earned a B.A. and M.Phil. in Geography from the University of Zimbabwe, followed by a M.S. and Ph.D. in Geo-information Science (GIS) and Earth Observation from the University of Twente, Faculty ITC, The Netherlands. Through these diverse training experiences, Gara has become an expert in GIS, remote sensing, and spatial statistics, and their application in natural resources management.
Gara has published more than 35 peer-reviewed papers, including 15 first-author papers, many of which were published in high-impact international journals. He expertly reviews manuscripts for several international journals, including the International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, and the International Journal of Remote Sensing and Remote Sensing (MDPI). He has served as a guest editor for the Journal of Remote Sensing MDPI’s Special Issue, Remote Sensing of Vegetation Function and Traits.
Gara is on the cutting edge of research, including using unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) for precision agriculture and forestry applications. Gara's lab has purchased a multispectral UAV specifically for agricultural research. He has also included UAV content in his classes and plans to expand on this using his research to inform his teaching.
Gara has also actively sought and received funding to support his research endeavors. His project, “Retrieving tree species diversity via leaf functional traits using remote sensing,” was funded in full.
Gara has embraced the teacher-scholar model, and after teaching for less than two years at Cal Poly Humboldt, students in his courses already express gratitude for the way that he brings his own research about geospatial concepts into the classroom.
Debbie Gonzalez (assistant professor, Department of Social Work) has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to enhancing learning and wellbeing in our rural and Indigenous communities.
One of Gonzalez’s most recent and notable achievements is her collaboration with local Tribal communities (Hoopa, Trinidad Rancheria) and the California Tribal Families Coalition (CTFC) on an Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) simulation project. She worked closely with Tribal social service directors, social work supervisors, graduate social work students, and other key stakeholders to better understand where social work students are thriving and/or need improvement when it comes to compliance around ICWA.
Going forward, Gonzalez will be leading a team to develop an additional curriculum focused specifically on engaging Native American fathers in compliance with ICWA.
Another notable achievement is her leadership and organization of an international webinar with the Thematic Network, an international collaboration with social work educators in Arctic nations to support human rights, decolonized social work education and practice, and diverse educational and research cooperation. The webinar offered 90 minutes of academic and practice reflections on social workers' challenges during the pandemic.
Her dedication to community engagement, cultural humility, and educational excellence embodies the spirit of this award and sets a remarkable example for others.
Kaitlin Reed (associate professor, Department of Native American Studies), a member of the Yurok Tribe, published Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California with Washington Press in 2023, along with four peer-reviewed articles from 2019-23, and three book chapters since 2020. Settler Cannabis won the 16th Annual Labriola National American Indian Data Center Book Award. Her research is focused on Tribal land and water rights, extractive capitalism, and settler colonial political economies.
Since coming to Humboldt, Reed has contributed greatly to the Native American Studies' and the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences’ implementation of courses and curriculum in the Place Based Learning Communities, and the inclusion of Indigeneity across departments, classes, and immersion welcome weeks.
As the inaugural TEK Fellow, Reed promotes Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Indigenous Science within the University system as a whole. Alongside her colleagues in Native American Studies, Reed's work helps us envision how a twenty-first-century polytechnic institution, or "Poly-TEK," can be responsive to place, Native Nations, and Indigenous Knowledge.
Reed has also had multi-year leadership as the co-director of the Rou Dalaguur Food Sovereignty Lab & Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute. She has been an active member of the Council of American Indian Faculty and Staff, and has been sought out to lead discussions on land back in the region.
She is passionate about contributing her energy and passion to students, colleagues, and the University. Faculty have commented that they know their students will be better scientists and citizens of the Earth for having Reed as a professor.
Matias Solorzano is a graduate student in the Academic Research Master’s Program in Psychology. He has been honored by the Psychology Department at Cal State East Bay by winning the Student of the Year Award in Spring 2023. He graduated with a B.S. in Psychology, Summa Cum Laude, from Cal State East Bay in May 2023.
As an undergrad, Solorzano collaborated with the Stanford Neurodiversity Project to create a custom employment opportunity in his undergraduate research lab at Cal State East Bay. He was also a participant in a focus group reviewing a curriculum meant for job coaches working with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Additionally, he gave a presentation about his advocacy work at Cal State East Bay to the Neurodiversity Special Interest Group facilitated by Dr. Lawrence Fung, the director of the Stanford Neurodiversity Project.
Solorzano is an autistic self-advocate and autistic researcher researching autism with a high potential to impact our knowledge of biases and perceptions of neurodiversity and inform best practices on how to support neurodivergent individuals. His research—including his thesis, entitled, "The Impacts of Autistic Traits on Student Evaluations of Professors”—highlights an under-researched area in psychology and has far-reaching implications, as those with autism can be equally competent to their neurotypical peers. Despite this, their work performance may not be judged equally, which impacts one’s earning potential and whether they can maintain employment.
Solorzano has led a small team of research assistants on his project and serves as the Cognition Lab’s lab manager, where he communicates with lab members, directs research efforts, and organizes information.
Solorzano continued his advocacy work at Cal Poly Humboldt as a Student Accessibility Fellow with the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (ODEI) where he met with Campus Accessibility Fellows, the Campus Disability & Resource Center, and ODEI to work on accessibility initiatives. At ODEI, Solorzano developed listening circles dedicated to meeting the needs of individuals with disabilities on campus. Currently, Solorzano serves on the Committee for Accessibility and Accommodations Compliance.
He is also a Graduate Student Assistant in the Autism Services Branch at the California Department of Developmental Services (DDS). In this role, he conducts literature reviews to help the branch develop content for autism trainings and complete qualitative coding tasks to categorize resources appearing on the DDS Autism Resource Hub, and participates in professional development opportunities as a Graduate Student Assistant.
He is currently applying to several Ph.D. programs, and aspires to lead a team in a state agency working to make a better place for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.