SoCal Minds

As fire season rages, historians document Santiago blaze

From Cal State Fullerton

While no sooner did an unseasonably cool summer move forward a few days in the calendar and sweep in a series of wildfires that claimed more than two dozen homes in the Inland Empire than did indelible memories of past seasons of bad blazes burn anew in Southern Californians' minds. While it might seem incomprehensible now, it would only be human, however, for an inferno like the 2007 Santiago fire to slip slowly from consciousness. But those who lived through it have shared their experiences now and combined these with the historical expertise of scholars in Fullerton. The result is a new oral history project recording some of the toll of the arsonist-started calamity that scorched more than 28,000 acres, destroyed 14 homes in Modjeska Canyon and lasted for almost three weeks before it was contained. Residents of Modjeska and Silverado canyons recall their vivid, frightening memories of their lives before, during and after the blaze for the 'Gone Through Fire' documentary.

Residents of Modjeska, Silverado canyons offer oral history in documentary on '07 inferno

Click here to access online fire history archive

From Northridge to Fullerton, a focus on the environment

From USC, UCLA, CSUN & Cal State Fullerton

It will be interesting to see whether the considerable efforts in academia to be foward looking and environmentally conscious will spread into society at large, especially via students as next-generation leaders. So what kinds of green stuff are schools from Northridge to Fullerton taking on:

• In Exposition Park, a Trojan expert has joined with colleagues at Johns Hopkins to push for new policies on greenhouse gas emissions, which, if put in place, they argue, could create as many as 2.5 million jobs and lead to $134 billion in economic activity. The researchers based their findings on an analysis of and projections from existing greenhouse gas regulations in 16 states, which they praised for their transparent, consistent and formal procedures to quantify and measure their actions and policies in keeping with peer reviewable and accepted methods. The experts call for plans to develop greener power sources for heat and power, greater energy efficiency in business, smarter transit and land use, farm and wild area conservation and more recycling and waste energy recovery.

16 state models for a national greenhouse gas policy to create jobs, boost economy

• Legal scholars who are both Bruins and Bears say that local communities must bear down on their thinking and planning about land use if the state ever has any hope to reduce global warming and environmental pollution related to unnecessary travel by energy guzzling cars, trucks, buses and other carbon fuel-burning vehicles. Experts from Berkeley and Westwood, in the latest part of their joint studies on climate change's effects on the economy, argue for new efforts to create sustainable development in California communities through vastly improved land-use planning, most importantly at the local level but with regional cooperation and cost-effective resource-sharing, particularly in the services of professional planners. If state residents increasingy could live nearer to where they work, shop and play, such housing and development could help curb global warming and environmental pollution more effectively than can even major breakthroughs in vehicle and fuel efficiency or other green efforts involving transportation, the legal scholars say.

How sustainable development in state could curb climate change, environmental pollution

• In Northridge, faculty, students and staff have rushed to take part in the vegetable part of a 'carrot-and-stick' kind of plan for healthier living. Really. Advocates say they have recorded swift, significant demand for a program that calls for fresh produce -- vegetables and fruits sufficient, for example, for a week for a family of four -- to be delivered in boxes that can be picked up on campus near the bookstore at scheduled times and for a reasonable fee. The seasonal produce will vary due to growing conditions and farming circumstance. But proponents say the good foods from the Underwood Family Farms will be good for the Matadors consuming it -- far better, say, than a diet of junk or fast foods typically downed by collegians -- while at the same time allowing a community, the university, that is, to support local agriculture. That large box, aimed at a family of four, costs $20 a week, by the way.

How a university community can support local agriculture, and eat healthier, too 

Click here for more information on Underwood Family Farms' community supported ag

• In Fullerton, as the university gets set to rev up a new, greener system that will generate half the power needed on campus, school officials have posted online a roundup of pieces on smarter energy research and applications and sustainable environmental practices. The Titans take note of their experts cooperating with researchers in Anaheim on energy efficiency and with others out in the Mojave to question the construction of heedless renewable energy resources. As for that new campus power system, it will employ high-pressure natural gas, waste heat and water to generate sufficient juice to power 4,000 homes.

A spotlight on campus energy awareness, saving and sustainability

A feather in Fullerton nursing cap: status as full-fledged school

From Cal State Fullerton

It might seem to be just a simple name change, an academic fillip, perhaps. Considering that the institution as recently as a decade ago considered abolishing the program, it's quite a turn-around for the folks in Fullerton to decide to boost their burgeoning nursing education efforts from departmental status to a full-blown new school. The switch reflects more than semantics, as the number of student majors has grown by more than 1,200% between 1989 and 2009, part of a campus response to a serious and growing national and statewide need and demand for more nurses; by 2020 the national shortfall is estimated to hit 800,000 and in the Golden State that deficit could be 50,000 more nurses needed by 2015. The school say it already offers 10 different paths for student aspirants to become nurses, with legislative action pending to include a doctoral program. Donors have supported the rise of nursing at Fullerton, which now has the second largest such program in the Cal State system. But to compete more effectively for funding and resources, advocates say, the elevation of nursing to school status was needed and welcome.

Burgeoning program, once headed to dissolution, earned elevation in status

For the 4th, exhibits, concerts, reading lists, feasting

From CalArts, Zocalo, UCI, the Getty, UCLA & Cal State Fullerton

Hope a safe, sane and fun Fourth weekend's on tap for one and all. With a legal holiday for many, the three-day weekend will allow for lots of intellectual exploring, feasting, reading and taking in stuff around the town. If anyone is left out there reading this, for example:

• The folks from Valencia, even with their ultra-cool downtown L.A. toe-hold at REDCAT, will be invading the city with L.A. Record 100, an array of concerts and events -- including many throughout the holiday weekend to benefit the community arts partnership program, as well as with 'Box Scheme,' the 2010 MFA graduates' exhibit that will take over space in multiple galleries in the old Chinatown.

• If graphics and fabrics grab certain artistic fancies for some people, they may be making their way to Fullerton for 'Love Me, Tees Me,' a summer showcase of T-shirt art, including some silk-screening demos today (7-3).

• Since the 4th marks the true start of Southern California summer, when, perhaps, the gloom lifts most everywhere, including on the Westside and the coast, well, it must be time to get out those beach reading lists, including one from the downtown literary and public affairs crowd or maybe try this batch from some literary minded folks in Irvine.

• Of course, what's a long holiday without lots of eating. Consider feasting as the Aztecs once did, or maybe while fretting about the cruelty of the eats or perhaps there will be moments to consider that meal's olfactory significance, as occurs if someone simply mentions the word 'curry.'

• And hate to be a serious-minded, gloomy gus. But this is supposed to be a time to consider freedom, independence, democracy and the kind of government we the people accept. As in, don't think there's any escape from the state budget crisis. The partisan, paralyzing divide in Sacramento and across the Golden State has left us all in societal penury. Meaning? Well, among other effects will be a two-week, cost-saving shutdown of a Westside public museum.

Life-changing summer underway for science-, tech-talented teens

From CSULB, CSUN, Cal State Fullerton & Caltech

Send up a celebratory rocket or two this weekend to take note of programs across the Southland to keep this nation at the fore of science, technology and the changing 21st Century, all through some forward-thinking investment in a crucial commodity of American society: our smart and diverse kids. The programs go by some different names: in Northridge, one effort is called MARC U*GRAD or MARC U-STAR. In Long Beach, it's an effort aimed at 'Engineering Girls.' In Fullerton, advocates call it TEST: UP. And in Pasadena, it's known as YESS. These programs vary in their exact content and focus; they all are getting funding support. They aim to give teens a memorable summer, learning and working in science, technical and technological fields where some groups are traditionally underrepresented and good folks hope to ease these disparities.

For Orange County academics, peak experiences

From Cal State Fullerton & Chapman

There must be something going on behind that Orange Curtain, because they just can't seem to stay away from those peak experiences. In Fullerton, an alum and lecturer afflicted with partial blindness and a rare disease has returned from scaling to the summit of 29,029-foot Mt. Everest. Cindy Abbott, (shown at right in Bill Allen photo at the summit) a 51-year-old experienced climber, wanted to clamber up the world's highest peak before Wegener’s Granulomatosis -- a rare disease that causes inflammation of blood vessels, restricts blood flow and damages kidneys, lungs and other organs -- restricts her life further beyond the vision loss she already has undergone. Meantime, from Orange, come periodic reports from university president Jim Doti, who is spending his summer vacation with his son, Adam, trying to scale 20,320-foot Mt. McKinley in Alaska, the highest summit in North America; they previously have climbed four of the Seven Summits.

In Fullerton, a successful clamber up Mt. Everest for alum-lecturer with rare illness

Click here to read 'Reaching Beyond the Clouds,' Titan prof's blog

In Orange, a presidential update on a summer trek up Mt. McKinley

Track the Doti trip here or online here

How parental income carries lifelong effect on kids

From UCI & the Cal States

As politicians and policy-makers slash and burn social programs in their effort to stanch the flow of government red-ink, especially in Sacramento, an education professor in Irvine has some noteworthy research they might consider. He has examined the deep, sweeping data from a study that has followed more than 9,000 U.S. families and individuals for more than four decades. And, with colleagues, the researcher asked what would happen to kids younger than 5 if their parents got more annual income but nothing else changed in the picture -- mom and dad don't get more education, they don't alter their parenting practices, the family structure remains the same and genetic factors don't shift a whit. Well, look down the road and those youngsters show higher incomes and less use of food stamps (social programs) when they become adults, the researchers found, arguing for the importance of governmental efforts, if necessary, to supplement the incomes of families with youngsters to break a long cycle of potential poverty.

A key insight into breaking the cycle of poverty

And speaking of funding arguments, the Cal State system, like its powerful siblings in the UC network, has been lobbying furiously to try to stem the budgetary bloodletting now under way in public higher education in California. Part of the latest campaign aims to show the economic impact of the various CSU campuses, and, finally, there are detailed, online break-outs on the hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs that can be linked to each of the institutions.

Click here for online look at Cal States' economic impact

As spring graduations roll on, 3 stories of accomplishment

From Cal State Fullerton, UCR & UCLA

Maybe it's just the inspiring and always endless Elgar soundtrack that makes every valedictorian seem so much more valorous or every salutatorian that much more salutary for society. Still, with graduation and commencement exercises going hard and fast on campuses around the region, it's hard to keep up with all the meritorious human interest stories, though a few have stuckin mind  already. Like?

• How about the Polish native who, at age 8, lived on the streets and off garbage after the Nazis killed or enslaved his parents? He survived the Holocaust by shuttling on trains, through orphanages and in constant flight, which eventually took him to France, then to Israel and a farming career, then to New York where he earned a computer engineering degree at CCNY before he spent a lifetime in Fullerton. Among the highlights on his time in the OC, he began giving motivational talks to deeply troubled youngsters, telling his own story and urging them to never give up. And though he retired in 1990, underwent bypass surgery in 1999, he kept going to school. Ralph Montview, 79, just earned his master's degree in civil and environmental engineering in Fullerton.   

• He was an undistinguished, unmotivated student in his high school years, though he found his way at age 17 to military service, and, while training as a medic at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, he had his 'aha' moment during an emergency mass casualty drill. He did battlefield duty in Iraq, returned to Southern California where this seventh of nine children -- six of them boys and four of them who served in the armed forces -- decided to study neurosciences because, he says, he hoped to better understand the post-traumatic stress disorder than can bother him on occasion. Whatever challenges he might have carried home from war, however, they never distracted him from his academics, as he earned close to a 3.9 GPA. And now his parents, who never finished high school and count among their children one physician and students who have attended  Harvard, Princeton, MIT and UCI, will put him into a stellar class of his own. That's because Sergio Alfaro, on finishing in Riverside, will be choosing among eight top medical schools as to where he will study next -- at Harvard, Duke, Stanford, USC, UCSF, UCI or maybe in the UCR graduate school?   

• He grew up in Boyle Heights, where his family barely got by, and, because of the unjust U.S. internment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II, he was forced to live in a locked camp in the Arizona deserts for three years. He then moved to the tough South Side of Chicago, where he worked as a busboy helping to support his family while considering a career in radio repair. Instead, he started his studies at the U of I Navy Pier, before the West Coast cleared enough so he could return to LA and to transfer for what would become an academic career in Westwood, where he also had to struggle to make ends meet by laboring as a gardender and a handyman who fixed toilets. Though he jokes now about his inability to meet his parents' aspirations for him to become a doctor, he, instead, became a Ph. D. and a world-class expert on organ transplantation, focusing, in particular, on the key procedure of tissue typing that allowed for myriad surgical breakthroughs. Unlike some Japanese Americans, who had to wait for the governor and the Bruins to create a special program to right a historic wrong and finally award degrees denied due to internment in moving ceremonies in Westwood over the weekend, he offered his own spring surprise of sorts. Paul Terasaki has made a $50 million donation to the Bruins, one of the largest ever.

For Latinos, eye woes, degrees, border insights

From USC, Cal State Fullerton & CSULA

For Latinos, developments that might make some say eye-yai-yai on the ophthalmology front but aye-aye in terms of academic accomplishment. And, for those interested in matters Latin American, a noteworthy Los Angeles appearance by a top-notch observer is on tap:

• In Exposition Park, a deep and broad study and a rare journal publication of five papers and an editorial all have served to underscore a serious message about the eye woes that confront Latinos. Based on one of the largest, most comprehensive studies of Latinos and their vision, Trojan researchers found that vision loss and eye diseases are increasing sharply among the 45 million Latinos in the U.S. They developed visual impairments and blindness at a higher rate than any other ethnic group in the country, based on demographic estimates from other U.S. population studies. Latinos have higher rates of developing visual impairment, blindness, diabetic eye disease and cataracts than non-Hispanic whites.

For Latinos, growing concern on visual impairment, blindness, eye diseases

• What's the No. 1 campus in California and No. 5 nationwide for awarding bachelor's degrees to Latinos? The folks in Fullerton, citing annual data compiled by the 'Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education' magazine, say they're pleased to have recorded those rankings, which also found the school, in terms of bachelor's degrees awarded in specific majors to be: No. 1 in communications degrees, No. 6 in business and marketing and No. 7 in education. By the way, for awarding bachelor's degrees, CSUN and CSULB rank Nos. 9 and 10, respectively, followed by CSULA (14), UCLA (16), UCSB (24), Cal Poly Pomona (30), UCR (31) and UCI (34). For master's degrees, it's USC (No. 7), CSULB (8), CSUN (10), CSULA (11), UCLA (14), Azusa Pacific (16), University of LaVerne (21) and Fullerton (29). As for Ph.D.'s, it's USC (No. 2), UCLA (4), UCI (7), UCSB (20), UCR (23), and University of Laverne (32).

On magazine list, Fullerton's No. 1 in California for awarding bachelor's to Latinos

Click here for Top 100 lists by 'Hispanic Outlook'

• In East LA, Tracy Wilkinson, one of the top U.S. foreign correspondents and an international analyst with an especially keen insight on Latin America, will provide her always brilliant insights in a free, public program at 6:30 tonight. Wilkinson, now the Mexico City bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, covered the Central American strife in the 1980s, metropolitan LA in the late '80s and early '90s, then went on to distinguished combat-zone reporting in the Balkans and Iraq. She's written a book on the Vatican's exorcists and has been tracking Mexico's continuing war with its notorious drug czars and narcotics, guns and people traffickers -- all topics about which she will converse with history and Latin American studies Prof. Enrique Ochoa.

In East L.A., a top foreign correspondent in chat on 'Border Knowledges'

On campus, attention to plight of foster kids

From USC, Pepperdine & Fullerton

The grim statistics about their fates after they leave state custody and the grisly headlines about their tragic, sometimes abusive and even fatal treatment while in it give huge pause to anyone who considers what happens to the estimated half-million or more youngsters in foster care almost anyplace in the nation. So it's good to see that: the Trojans will bring together at 6 tonight a panel of experts to ponder why kids get placed in foster care; the folks in Malibu have spotlighted Aaryn Pratt (shown at right), a master's degree holding alum, herself once a child struggling out of foster care, who won a $50,000 grant for her employer, the retailer Gap Inc., to boost the work of court appointed special advocates for foster kids with special e-training; and, finally, that in Fullerton, university President Milton A. Gordon (shown above) has been honored for his advocacy on behalf of foster kids, particularly in pressing for his commitment to the schools unique program to assist such youngsters in earning college degrees.