SoCal Minds

Of pow wows, antiquities, Mesoamerica, Hawaii

From CSULB, CSULA, the Huntington & the Japanese American National Museum

With the promise of a dry, sunny and increasingly warm weekend, there's lots to get out to see and learn about, including:

• In Long Beach, Native Americans will gather Saturday and Sunday for the 40th annual Pow Wow, which also will help commemorate 41 years of American Indian studies at the school, which asserts it has the oldest such scholarly program west of the Mississippi. There will be feasting, art and craft sales, dancing and competitions at the free, public event.

40th annual Long Beach Pow Wow also marks 41 years of Native American studies

Click here for more Pow Wow information

• In San Marino, scholars from across the country will gather to examine 19th Century Americans' fascination with ruins -- from Native American cultures, Egypt and Cyprus, among other spots. Why and how did the fledgling nation need its real and imagined ties with long lost civilizations and how did those earlier experiences shape contemporary U.S. life? There is a fee and registration required for the program that begins this (fri) morning and runs through Saturday. Click on the link contained in the brief blurb describing the program for the registration form and speaker list.

Session scrutinizes 19th Century Americans' fascination with ruins, antiquities 

• In East LA, experts on Mesoamerica will gather Sunday for their free, public conference at which they will take up such topics as the Maya, caves and ancient warfare, new views on Aztec human sacrifice and the ancient peoples' religious practices and gender ideologies. Refreshments will be provided and reservations are recommended.

A springtime exploration of all things Mesoamerican

• In Little Tokyo, it's worth catching up with 'Textured Lives,' an exhibit of painstakingly collected textiles that illuminate the unique connections between Japanese immigrants and their new lives in their new world -- the plantations of Hawaii. Some of the newcomers made use of their knowledge of fabric, sewing and design to create clothes to protect them in the fields, garments that melded Japanese, Portuguese and Chinese styles; others carried to their new American lives treasures of their Japanese heritage in fine kimono and other stylish clothing or textiles.

'Textured Lives' tells tale in fabric of ties between Japanese immigrants, life in Hawaii  

Ahoy, a new way to train marine terminal chiefs

From CSULB

With some of the nation's busiest ports nearby to provide expertise and maybe even future employment opportunity, the folks in Long Beach have launched a smart new program to train front-line managers and those interested in the operations of marine terminals. Such jobs exist globally and when they come open, there's not a huge supply of applicants, the school says. With reason, perhaps. The operations that marine terminal managers oversee grow more complicated by the day, with increasing knowledge demanded about technology, regulation and management issues, including labor and interpersonal relations and conflict resolution. While most terminal managers now learn and hone their skills on the job, the new academic program offers another option to those working in the industry and looking for a way up.

Program to offer alternative to traditional, on the job training of managers in key port post

There's no whiling away this wet weekend

From Claremont McKenna College, the Keck Graduate Institute, UCLA, CSULB, CalArts, the Huntington

Yup, lots more goes on in Southern California than just the capacity to make a right turn on red (see old Woody Allen jibe).

Just a reminder of the variety of intellectual activity occurring in the area: While some scholars from across the country today and Saturday will be considering the influence of Christianity in Modern East Asia, others will be assessing what science knows about 'dark matter' in the universe and how it gets detected, while still others will be learning how to persuade the FDA they have a drug to deal with a rare disease.

And, of course, those who fancy Japanese gardens and kimono could always sneak away for a program combining the two topics or they could join in for either a Bonsai-a-thon or a recounting of a noted, century-old Japanese-inspired garden. Or maybe on a rainy weekend with the kids getting a little crazy and making their parents that way, too, it will be time to slip downtown for an international children's film festival at Redcat? Or quick, this will be the last chance to catch that play that captures the quirky life of a pioneering rocket scientist with a dark, eccentric personal life, um, maybe what could be called a Pasadena Babalon?

Say what? Value put on schools' polyglot strengths

CSULB, CSUN, Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Dominguez Hills

In a riven world full of challenges and potential threats, Southern California can play a unique role based on its polyglot population -- a reality recognized in new congressional legislation that would boost the aid for specialized programs in area schools that teach strategically key languages. The Cal State campuses each have a particular focus tongue and interconnected programs to emphasize not just the given language but also linked majors of high value, such as in math, computer sciences or communications. The added $2.88 million in defnee funding pressed by Sen. Barbara Boxer would help teach: Mandarin in Long Beach, Farsi in Fullerton, Korean in Los Angeles, Russian in Northridge and Arabic in Dominguez Hills and San Bernardino.

Federal funding would boost efforts to teach 'strategic' languages

A timely jobs summit; data on gays in military

From CSULB & UCLA

Since President Obama put the topics on the table with his nationally televised State of the Union address, here's two timely developments from area schools on the topics of jobs, infrastructure, higher education and gays and lesbians in the military:

• In Long Beach, an array of experts will gather early next week for a summit to consider whether the region and nation can meet the demands for the highly skilled workers who will design, build and run the transportation infrastructure of tomorrow. Can California colleges and universities, in particular, look past their current fiscal nightmares to think about how they will produce, say, the transportation engineers who not only are savvy about the latest construction thinking but also broad concerns like their work's effect on global warming? The Golden State's demands will be particularly acute with demographics driving big changes -- the retirement of the Baby Boom generation, en masse, will drain many public and government agencies dealing with transportation of their expertise and experience, experts say. There is a fee to attend and registration is required. for the sessions, which will occur even as the Obama administration announces that California will get billions of dollars in stimulus aid to plan a high-speed rail system from Anaheim to San Francisco.

Summit set on state's huge needs for tomorrow's transporation experts

Click here for registration, more information on transportation summit

• In Westwood, Bruin experts provided swift data in response to the president's call for his administration, Congress and the military to end the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy affecting gays and lesbians in the U.S. armed forces. They estimate that 66,000 gays and lesbians, including 13,000 in active duty and 53,000 in the National Guard and reserve, now serve in the military, struggling under the Clinton era compromise policy that constrains LGBT personnel. If that policy were reversed, the researchers estimate that almost 37,000 gays and lesbians would join active duty service and 12,000 would become part of the guard and reserves. They cite others' estimates that the current policy has cost a half billion dollars to enforce and say there would be significant budget savings if "Don't Ask" was repealed. 

What might happen if 'Dont' Ask, Don't Tell' policy went away?

Trojans rank No. 1 for international students

From USC

There's no doubt in the global view about where to go for an American higher education: It's Southern California, most especially to become a Trojan or maybe a Bruin, according to a new study. The report says that the Trojans are the No. 1 school in the U.S. for enrolling international students, 7,482 of them, with almost 1 in four of all students on campus from distant shores. The school says that India (1,623 students) and China (1,428 students) rank nos. 1 and 2 among the 110 nations that send the most of its young people to Exhibition Park for study. Seventy-percent of the international scholars are graduate students, with the highest numbers enrolled in the engineering school. The Bruins, by the way, show up as No. 8 in the international student rankings, 5,590 foreign scholars in a student body of 38,263. Examining the rankings of schools with more than 1,000 international students, other Southern California schools add to the regional tally: Santa Monica College shows up as No. 34 with 3,147 scholars from overseas, CSULB is No. 51 with 2,508, CSUN's No. 61 with 2,222, UCI is No. 77 with 1,891 and Fullerton is No. 87 with 1,749. Nationally, the Trojans are trailed by NYU, Columbia, Illinois, Purdue, Michigan, UT Austin, BU, the Bruins, and MSU-Harvard tied at No. 10. A few other points of note from the report on international study: more Americans are going abroad, with increasing numbers to places like China, India, Japan and Latin America -- though European destinations, especially Britain, France, Germany and Italy, still the most popular; the schools that host the most international scholars (professors, researchers etc) also happen to be the elite campuses in this country; the international students will help their nations eat America's lunch one day with their expertise from studying in technical, scientific, mathematical, engineering and business areas. 

1 of 4 Trojans is an international student; Indians and Chinese most common

Click here to see annual 'Open Doors' data from the Institute of International Education

SoCal schools pulling in millions in U.S. grants

From USC, CSULA, UCSB, CSULB

Money, money, money. Those federal dollars keep coming in, big time, to Southern California, with the latest an announcement by the Trojans that $16 million for the next five years will bring together doctors, physicists, mathematicians, engineers, biologists and other scientists from several institutions to study and attack cancer in new ways at a Physical Science-Oncology Center. This USC-led consortium -- which includes Caltech, Stanford, Arizona, Arizona State, UT Austin, NYU and Cold Harbor Laboratory -- will aim to develop a single, integrated model of cancer's complexity, from the molecular level to all the ways that tumors attack their hosts. The National Cancer Institute is providing federal funds to a dozen of these new cancer research centers nationwide. The Trojans also are reporting that their medical school, thus far, has won $34 million in stimulus funds, while their engineering school has received $23.6 million. In Santa Barbara, the university says it has received more than 40 grants and another 79 are under federal review. And in East LA, the university says it has won an $8.8 million federal grant for a program to create a residency program for teachers who will hone their skills for a year, working in a detailed, special program with experienced educators at various sites in the LAUSD. In Long Beach, school officials say they have received a $4.7 million U.S. grant to improve minority health and to decrease various conditions that lead minorities to suffer health disparities.

$16 million for new Trojan-led attack on cancer

$34 million in stimulus aid to Keck medical school

$23.6 million in stimulus aid to Viterbi engineering school

In Santa Barbara, 40 stimulus grants received, 70 more under federal review

$8.8 million federal grant to Cal State LA for teacher residency program with LAUSD 

$4.7 million federal grant to better minority health, decrease disparities in care

Minorities get boost for a role in air traffic control

From CSULB

A $5 million grant aims to ensure that minorities will be involved in advances that take into account how people use technology in the future system that controls air traffic in American skies. This work on "human factors engineering" in air control went to the folks in Long Beach and just five other campuses, ahead of many other programs and applicants, because they have an excellent record of recruiting and educating minorities. The money will establish a center in Long Beach to study the best ways to provide simulations and automated training for the new air traffic control system.

New technology will alter way air traffic gets controlled in future

Can Zipcars ease campus traffic, parking woes?

From CSUN, USC, UCLA

Can tens of thousands of students on campuses across the region be persuaded to give up fulltime cars in exchange for low-cost, short-term rentals? That's the hope in Long Beach, downtown and in Westwood, where, to combat chronic parking shortages and campus congestion officials are adding more Zipcars. After completing a registriation and paying a $35 fee, students in Long Beach, for example, will have access to one of five Zipcars (three Honda Insight hybrids and two Toyota Scion xBs,  for as little as $8-an-hour or $66 per day on weekdays; it's $9 and $72 on weekends. Gas, insurance, roadside service and some free miles are included in those charges. The vehicles will be available 24/7. Similar programs are under way for Bruins and Trojans. In Long Beach, where there are 40,000 students, faculty and staff commuting to a campus with 13,000 parking spots, officials already have instituted a transit pass program and they hope to add a bike-share effort.

InLong Beach, 40,000 commuters, 13, 000 parking spots, 5 new Zipcars

Click here for more information on Zipcars on Long Beach campus

City expands Zipcar program around UCLA, USC, LA Times reports

Click here for Westwood, downtown information on Zipcar program

Exhibit brings Berlin Wall in focus, 20 years after

From CSULB

In the heart of Berlin, the district known as Kreuzberg found itself in the unenviable position of being on the fringes after the 1961 construction of the Wall, which surrounded it on three sides and made its lesser housing stock a spot for immigrants and those attracted to an alternative lifestyle. That all changed, of course, two decades ago when the Berlin Wall fell and sleepy Kreuzberg suddenly found itself in the middle of the unified city. A major photographer for top German magazines just happened to catch and chronicle the before and after life of Kreuzberg, which he documented in 1982 and in 2006. And, as part of the commemoration of the fall of the Wall, the German Embassy in Washington, the German Consulate in LA and a German foundation are presenting a free, public exhibit in Long Beach of these telling pictures. It opens today and runs until Oct. 23.

Exhibit documents how life changed after fall of Berlin Wall two decades ago