The California State University, Northridge community expressed gratitude for researchers and scholars at the 2017 Principal Investigators Recognition Event on May 11 at the Valley Performing Arts Center.

The recognition event served as a thank you to more than 190 CSUN faculty and staff members who are conducting research as principal investigators in fields ranging from biology to psychology, and from management to child development.

The principal investigators being recognized were CSUN faculty and staff members who bring external funding to their research and provide students with opportunities to do work outside the classroom.

The event kicked off with a reception where principal investigators enjoyed refreshments and had a chance to speak with one another. CSUN Provost Yi Li delivered a welcoming address in which he thanked them on behalf of himself and CSUN President Dianne F. Harrison for their hard work and dedication.

“I want to say ‘thank you’ for the work you do and the recognition you bring to the university,” Li said. “Without you, CSUN wouldn’t have been named a Top 25 Rising Star Institution for Research in North America.”

Just hours after the last graduates crossed the stage in front of the Delmar T. Oviatt Library to accept their diplomas on May 22, California State University, Northridge’s top professors crossed another stage to accept high honors and shake hands with President Dianne F. Harrison.

The president, Provost Yi Li and the CSUN Foundation hosted the annual Honored Faculty Reception, which included the awarding of emeritus status to 29 veteran professors. Hundreds of colleagues, students, relatives and administrators gathered in the Grand Salon of the University Student Union to pay tribute to the award recipients.

“As we have launched our new graduates, it is a great time to reflect on the contributions of our faculty and recognize the commitment of faculty who have been here for 20, 30 and 40 years,” Harrison noted. “I want to thank you all for your commitment to our students and our university, creating the kind of environment where our students learn best.”

Harrison presented psychology professor Ellie Kazemi with the afternoon’s highest honor, the Outstanding Faculty Award. Kazemi has demonstrated ongoing commitment to the community, including her work as a mentor in CSUN’s BUILD PODER undergraduate research training program, the president said.

“Since 2008, Ellie has provided significant contributions in teaching, research and mentoring in the Department of Psychology,” she said. Harrison noted that in a letter of recommendation, “one of her students wrote, ‘Everyone idolizes her.’ Pretty good testimony.”

Philosophy professor and Faculty President Adam Swenson, who served as master of ceremonies for the reception, presented the Distinguished Teaching, Counseling or Librarianship Awards to sociology professor Moshoula Capous-Desyllas, history professor Jeffrey Kaja and mathematics professor Mark Schilling.

Robert Gunsalus, vice president for University Advancement and president of the CSUN Foundation, presented the Extraordinary Service Award to psychology professor Debra Berry Malmberg, the Preeminent Scholarly Publications Award to English professor Iswari Pandy and the Exceptional Creative Accomplishments Award to psychology professor Luciana Lagana. The CSUN Foundation sponsors all of these awards, including the Outstanding Faculty Award.

Elizabeth Adams, associate vice president for student success, presented the Visionary Community Service-Learning Award to communication studies professor Jeanine Mingé. Adams spoke about Mingé’s long commitment to community partnerships between CSUN students, faculty and nonprofits such as R.U.T.H. (Resilience, Unity, Transformation, Hope) YouthBuild in Canoga Park, and the CSUN Performance Ensemble. This particular faculty award was sponsored by a grant from the California governor’s office.

Li thanked all of the honorees for their service.

“Your loyalty, professionalism and commitment to student success have not gone unnoticed,” Li said. “Thank you for your ongoing dedication to CSUN.”

Adams presented the 29 professors who had been awarded emeritus status by the president and the university, and the group assembled on the stage at the front of the Grand Salon. Esther Lin, daughter of mechanical engineering professor CT Lin, accepted on behalf of her father, who passed away on April 28.

The 2017 emeritus faculty are:

Karen Anderson, Library – Research, Instruction and Outreach Services

Michael Barrett, Library – Collection Access and Management Services

Don Brownlee, Communication Studies

Brian Castronovo, Modern Languages and Literatures

Deborah Chen, Special Education

Mary Curren, Marketing

Marilynn Filbeck, Family and Consumer Sciences

Timothy Fox, Mechanical Engineering

Adele Gottfried, Educational Psychology and Counseling

Jerry Ann Harrel-Smith, Family and Consumer Sciences

Catherine Jeppson, Accounting and Information Systems

Robert Kladifko, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

CT Lin, Mechanical Engineering (posthumous)

Robert Lingard, Computer Science

Jack Lopez, English

Richard MacDonald, Family and Consumer Sciences

James Macklin, Accounting and Information Systems

Elena Marchisotto, Mathematics

Eva Margarita Nieto, Chicana/o Studies

Vicki Pedone, Geological Sciences

Kyriakos Pontikis, Family and Consumer Sciences (posthumous)

Cynthia Rawitch, Journalism

William Roberts, Economics

Maureen Rubin, Journalism

Kenneth Sakatani, Art

Diane Schwartz, Computer Science

Johnie Scott, Africana Studies

Ronald Stone, Accounting and Information Systems

Nayereh Tohidi, Gender and Women’s Studies

For more information about the accomplishments and outstanding contributions of these newest emeritus faculty members, visit http://www.csun.edu/faculty-senate/emeriti-faculty.

At the reception, university leaders also honored faculty who were marking major milestones in their service to the university. The honorees were:

25 Years of Service:

Carlos Guerrero, Chicana/o Studies

Evelyn McClave, Linguistics Program

William Whiting, Kinesiology

30 Years of Service:

John Dye, Mathematics

Matthew Harris, Music

Nicholas Kioussis, Physics and Astronomy

Alexis Krasilovsky, Cinema and Television Arts

Linda Lam-Easton, Religious Studies

CT Lin, Mechanical Engineering (posthumous)

Laurel Long, Art

Richard Lorentz, Computer Science

Steven Loy, Kinesiology

Takashi Yagisawa, Philosophy

40 Years of Service:

Maria-Isabel Herrera, Chicana/o Studies

CSUN theatre professor Hillary Miller

California State University, Northridge theatre professor Hillary Miller will be honored by the American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS) with its 2017 John W. Frick Book Award for her monograph titled “Drop Dead: Performance in Crisis, 1970s New York.”

She will receive the award at the annual Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) conference on Aug. 5, at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Miller’s book analyzes the performing arts through the historical movements of the 1960s and 1970s, when economic pressure forced innovative responses within the arts community to survive a fiscal crisis and resulting austerity measures.

“Many theater artists built their own institutions because their voices were not being heard in the larger, more centralized arts institutions,” Miller said. “Theater was imperative to communicate the social passions and political issues stirred up through the 1960’s. Artists, inspired by the many civil rights movements of the time, soon turned to the question of how they could sustain and support their art in the midst of enforced austerity. This became essential, as they were often engaged in the communities most hurt by the budget cuts.”

Capturing the elements that diversified the arts in the 1970s was one of the many tasks Miller accepted when compiling her narrative.

“As my students discover, writing theater history can be very challenging because theater is ephemeral,” she said. “Unless you’re researching a well-funded theater with extensive archives, it’s difficult to stitch the pieces together to show its rich diversity. But it’s those hard-to-research theaters, like street theaters, that often articulate something unique about the city,” she continued.

Miller’s book is one selection in a series from her publisher, Northwestern University Press, which put together a list of books “focused in particular on the material conditions in which performance acts are staged, and to which performance itself might contribute,” according to Northwestern’s website.

“The series looks at how theater and performance lives in the material world,” Miller said. “The topics include immigration, citizenship, national identity, and, as in my book, austerity. It’s an exciting series to be a part of.”

Miller says her book should appeal to an audience interested in cities in general, while focusing on how the arts helped to shape the constructive identity of a municipality constricted by staunch monetary regulation.

“Someone reading my book will gain an understanding of the theater’s surprising role during a very turbulent time in a city that sees itself as the capital of culture in the U.S.,” she articulated. “Funding priorities shifted, as did the way we think about the accessibility of theater, sometimes to the detriment and occasionally to the benefit of the city’s theaters.”

Theater critic Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote that in today’s period of uncertainty for the funding of arts and culture, “our current predicament makes “Drop Dead: Performance in Crisis, 1970s New York” an especially fascinating read.”

“The fiscal crisis affected mainstream theaters on Broadway along with smaller, grassroots theaters, so the book should give people some questions to think about,” Miller said. “What is the relationship of the theater, be it grassroots or commercial, to our communities? How do the performing arts affect the economic and cultural health of struggling neighborhoods, as well as tourist meccas? These questions are relevant to every city today.”

“Drop Dead” is available at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena, and other book retailers.

Dan Hosken, CSUN’s new dean of the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication.

Dan Hosken, former associate dean of the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication at California State University, Northridge, has been named dean of the college.

Hosken, an electronic music composer and author, had been serving as the college’s interim dean for the past two years, following the retirement of Jay Kvapil.

“I’m really very excited,” Hosken said. “This is a great opportunity to start looking out toward the future of the college in longer distances — looking many years in the future, rather than just a few months.”

CSUN’s Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication has more than 4,800 undergraduate and 220 graduate students in myriad programs that span the arts and fields of communication. The college’s faculty, staff and students are inspired by the shared belief that arts are community, community is art, and art and communication are essential pillars for building and maintaining community. Its programs — in art, music, theatre, cinema and television arts, communication studies and journalism — have an international reputation for graduating skilled professionals who succeed in their respective fields.

Hosken said his time as interim dean has given him insight into the strengths and goals of the college’s six departments and its more than 360 tenured and tenure-track faculty members and lecturers.

He said he would like to strengthen and expand the college’s already-existing ties with local industries, such as the entertainment industry, and include the departments in his college, as well as links to “strong programs found all across the campus.”

“If an entertainment company needs accountants, we have amazing accountants coming out of the [David Nazarian College of Business and Economics]. If they need engineers, CSUN’s College of Engineering [and Computer Science] can help them,” he said. “This campus has a broad array of disciplines that can support the entertainment industry in all areas, and I would like to see CSUN’s reputation in the industry grow even stronger.”

He also would like to strengthen the Curb College’s ties with the community, Hosken said.

“The impact that we can have in the community, across all of our disciplines, is strong, but it can be even more coordinated and more visible,” he continued. “By working together collaboratively, we create great opportunities for our students and have a positive impact on the community and related fields in the arts, communications and media.”

Hosken noted that the way people share and tell their stories — whether through journalism, film, television, music or other means of communication — has changed dramatically over the past few years.

“Faculty in the Curb College have been at the forefront of many of these changes,” he said. “It’s an exciting time to be leading the college.”

Hosken, a native of Michigan, came to CSUN in 1999 as faculty in the Department of Music with an expertise in music technology. During his tenure at CSUN, he has served as assistant chair of the music department and as a member of the board of directors of The University Corporation. As a composer, his music has been performed in major cities around the world and has been featured at prominent festivals of electronic music.

He has a doctorate in music composition from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a master’s degree in composition with academic honors from the New England Conservatory of Music and a bachelor’s degree in humanities and science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

California State University, Northridge’s new Extended University Commons (EUC) building has joined the campus’s Student Recreation Center and Valley Performing Arts Center in sustainable design achievements. In early May, the U.S. Green Building Council awarded the EUC a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold Certification, which is the second-highest certification the offered by the organization.

Catherine R. Kniazewycz, director of design and construction for CSUN’s Department of Facilities Planning Design and Construction, said that it’s good for CSUN to obtain LEED certification as LEED is a “widely recognized and respected standard.”

“To achieve LEED certification verifiably demonstrates the commitment of the building owner to sustainability and sustainable buildings,” she added.

Kniazewycz also said that LEED Certification is difficult to win.

“Obtaining LEED certification is very rigorous,” Kniazewycz said. “The process starts early in design. You need to decide what level of certification you are going to attempt, because it’s really hard to go back if you don’t make the right choices early on.”

Kniazewycz also noted that the process is time consuming. She said CSUN registered the building for LEED Certification in August 2013, meaning it took almost four years to secure the certification.

The process is tough, in part, because there are seven categories involved in LEED scoring. A total of 40 to 49 points earns a building LEED Certification, 50 to 59 earns Silver, 60 to 79 earns Gold, and a score of 80 or more earns Platinum.

CSUN’s EUC building received 17 of 26 points for sustainable sites, 5 of 10 for water efficiency, 31 of 35 for energy and atmosphere, 4 of 14 for materials and resources, 11 of 15 for indoor environmental quality, 4 of 6 innovation in design and 2 of 2 for regional priority credits for a grand total of 74 points.

The university opened the new building in early August 2016 on the west side of campus to provide students, faculty and staff with extended support, space and technical resources.

The building is located at the southeast corner of Darby Avenue and Vincennes Street. The EUC primarily houses the Tseng College, which previously had been located in the campus bookstore complex but had outgrown the space due to the rapid growth of programs and services for working adults, their employers, CSUN’s regional partners and international students over the past decade.

The Johnson family, along with the College of Science and Mathematics, recently hosted a reception honoring the fifth annual awarding of the Mack I. Johnson Research Award for Outstanding Graduate Student at the Orange Grove Bistro on California State University, Northridge’s campus.

The award was established by Gail Johnson to honor the legacy of her husband, Mack I. Johnson, associate vice president of Graduate Studies, Research, and International Programs and professor of biology. Johnson worked at CSUN for 25 years and was an ardent supporter of research excellence and friend of the College of Science and Mathematics. He was best known for his compassion for students, his many accomplishments in academic administration and his commitment to supporting student and faculty researchers.

The Mack I. Johnson Research Award for Outstanding Graduate Student is the most prestigious award given to a graduate student in the College of Science and Mathematics.  It is presented annually to an outstanding graduate student who has excelled academically, demonstrated extraordinary research abilities and has been accepted into a Ph.D. program in the sciences or mathematics.

In the history of the award, there have been only two years in which there were two recipients. This year was one of them. Special Assistant to the Dean and biology professor Robert Espinoza said that the committee couldn’t decide between the applicants because they were both outstanding.

“All of them were saying ‘[this is my choice], but I could be swayed the other way.’ There wasn’t a clear consensus,” Espinoza said. “This year, both applicants were very strong, so we went to Gail and she said we should give the award to both of them.”

One co-recipient of this year’s award is Malachia Hoover ’14 (Cell and Molecular Biology), who earned her M.S. in Biology this year. Hoover said that winning this award serves as validation of all of her hard work.

“I’ve been [at CSUN] for a long time,” Hoover shared. “It feels good to be honored by faculty and staff as I graduate and start the next chapter of my life.”

This fall, Hoover will pursue her Ph.D.in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University with all costs covered by a scholarship.

The other co-recipient is graduate student Maria Akopyan, a Matador who completed her M.S. in Biology with a perfect 4.0 GPA. Akopyan said this award reminds her of the friends and family she’s made at CSUN.

“It’s more than just monetary,” Akopyan said. “Receiving this award reminds me that I belong to the CSUN community — that I have people who support me.”

Akopyan will begin a Ph.D. program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University in the fall on a full scholarship.
Past recipients of the award are now pursuing doctoral degrees at University of Pennsylvania, University of Memphis, Rutgers University, Yale University, and the University of California, Davis.

Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics, Jerry N. Stinner, said that “the Mack I. Johnson Memorial Research Award for Outstanding Graduate Student is the perfect tribute to everything Mack stood for. To have such a big impact on the lives of students is exactly what he would have wanted.”

In April, U.S. Department of Defense officials presented California State University, Northridge sociology professor David Boyns and Associate Vice President of Academic Resources and Planning Diane Stephens with the Patriot Award. Government officials recognized Boyns and Stephens for their support of Danielle de Asis, a CSUN employee of the Institute for Community Health and Wellbeing who serves with the U.S. Army National Guard.

The Patriot Award was established by the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve and is given to employers who support citizen warriors through measures including flexible schedules, time off before and after deployment, and granting leaves of absence if needed.

De Asis, who nominated Boyns and Stephens, said they deserved the award for the accommodations they made and the support they offered when she had to take a three-month leave from the university in 2015 for bootcamp and a two-month leave in 2016 to complete her advanced individual training.

“I’m the only full-time staff here at the [Institute for Community Health and Wellbeing], so when I’m gone, that means they’re out their administrative coordinator,” de Asis said. “David has been very supportive. Aside from allowing me to leave, he would also stay in touch by sending mail.”

The award came as a complete surprise to Boyns and Stephens. De Asis, who has access to Boyns’ calendar, had penciled in the ceremony as a department meeting at Santa Susana Hall on campus. A representative from the U.S. Department of Defense presented the award to Boyns and Stephens. Boyns said he was moved by de Asis’ nomination.

“I was very honored and very touched to be recognized,” Boyns said. “I feel like we have a responsibility to support our employees, but also to support our servicemen and women. For me, it wasn’t anything special that we did. It was just very natural, but [receiving the award] gave me an awareness that it was very special.”

Stephens knew that Boyns was getting the award and headed over to Santa Susana Hall to attend the ceremony. She said she was shocked when she was given the second Patriot Award of the day.

Patriot Awards are presented to individual supervisors, not to an entire staff or institution, but Stephens said that the many other CSUN colleagues who helped de Asis also deserve credit.

“The most important thing that’s going on here is that the university is supportive of its employees,” Stephens said. “I really haven’t done anything.

“The real credit goes to the staff, students and faculty [at CSUN’s Institute for Community Health and Wellbeing] for handling things in Danielle’s absence,” she added. “A lot of people really stepped up to cover the functions there. But, you know, it’s typical of Northridge — we all pitch in when we need to.”

Dr. Rosa Rivera Furumoto (Chicana/o Studies) has received $17,702 in supplemental funding from the College of the Canyons Faculty Association, in support of a project entitled “It Takes a Barrio (ITaB).”

Sue Sears (Special Education) has received $7,500 from the Napa County Office of Education, in support of a project entitled “California Adolescent Literacy Initiative (CALI).”

Michelle Best and Joong-won Lee (Recreation & Tourism Management) have received $51,300 from the Lily Academy of Japan.

Shari Tarver-Behring (Educational Psychology and Counseling) has received $27,230 from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, as supplemental support of a project entitled “CalOES RAPE CRISIS PROGRAM NW16.”

Shari Tarver-Behring (Educational Psychology and Counseling) has received $48,884 from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, as supplemental support of a project entitled “CalOES RAPE CRISIS PROGRAM VN16”

A team of five California State University, Northridge students beat 15 teams from other schools including Cal State Fullerton, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine and USC. The team — known as the “Mean Squares” — won Best Insight and Best Overall at the 2017 American Statistical Association DataFest, held in April at Chapman University.

DataFest is a “celebration” of data in which teams of undergraduate students work around the clock to find and share meaning in a large, rich and complex data set. It’s also a chance for students to show their abilities to examine data, said Wayne Smith, lecturer in the CSUN Department of Management and faculty advisor for the Mean Squares.

“DataFest is a regional, intensive event where student teams from many universities analyze a large dataset and present their findings to a set of esteemed judges,” Smith said. “These students are very much pioneers. What they accomplished is extraordinary,” because CSUN doesn’t have a statistics major and the students devoted countless hours outside of class to learn how to analyze data, he added.

The judges at this year’s DataFest were senior faculty and industry executives who said CSUN’s team did an “incredible” job.

Teams were judged on four categories: best use of external data, best visualization, best insight and best use of statistical models.

“For this particular DataFest, the students analyzed corporate-level ‘big data’ from the travel site Expedia,” Smith said. “The dataset contained approximately 10 million data points with information related to clicks, searches and bookings.”

Leading the Mean Squares was computer engineering student Seyed Sajjadi. Three factors set CSUN’s Mean Squares apart from the other teams, Sajjadi said.

“[We had] team collaboration. We understood each other and let everybody talk,” Sajjadi said. “[We also had] preparation. We prepared for this for more than a month and met on a weekly basis, which glued all of us together as teammates. And we had an art major on our team — that was something no other team had.”

Jamie Decker was that art major. Decker said being an art student allowed her to use color as a way to present the information.

“Many students overlook what impact color can have on a presentation,” Decker said. “Color can control where you want your audience to focus, and which information you want them to retain.”

For more information about the Mean Squares and how to join the Mean Squares, please email seyed.sajjadi.947@my.csun.edu.

Katherine Stevenson (Mathematics) and Cathy Gaspard (Secondary Education) have received $10,876 from the LA Unified School District, in support of a project entitled “TCMS Training Proposal to LAUSD from CSUN.”

Julian Lozos (Geological Sciences) has received $23,352 from the US Geological Survey, in support of a project entitled “Dynamic rupture modeling on the Hayward Fault, northern California – estimating coseismic and postseismic hazards of partially creeping faults. Collaborative research: California State University, Northridge, and University of California, Riverside.”

Shari Tarver-Behring (Educational Psychology and Counseling) has received $78,627 from the LA County Department of Children and Family Services, as supplemental support of a project entitled “Family Preservation Program Santa Clarita”.

Cindy Malone (Biology) has received $2,770,000 from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, in support of a project entitled “CSUN-UCLA Stem Cell Scientist Training Program.”

MariaElena Zavala (Biology) has received $449,218 from the National Institutes of Health, in continuing support of a project entitled “MARC U-STAR at CSUN: Preparing Scientists Holistically.”

Dayanthie Weeraratne (Geological Sciences) has received $9,000 from the National Science Foundation, as supplemental support of a project entitled “REU Support 2017 for CAREER: Geodynamic Study of Earth’s Mantle.”

Xiaolong Han (Mathematics) has received $42,000 from the Simons Foundation, in support of a project entitled “Collaboration Grants for Mathematicians.”