as of 26 September 2005

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GSA Korean BBQ

The Geography Student Association is going on a cultural night out featuring Korean BBQ. The date is Friday, 30 September, 6:30 p.m. - ???. The price is $14.99 for all the food you can eat (drinks and tip are extra). Plot complication: You have to cook your own meat, which you do at these little BBQ grills that are on each table. The place is Manna Korean BBQ at 3377 West Olympic Blvd., up in Koreatown, just west of Downtown Los Angeles. The plan is to meet at the Willow Blue Line Station (Willow and Long Beach Blvd.) around 5 p.m. The gang will ride up the Blue Line and then transfer downtown to the Red Line and get off at Wilshire/Western. For more information, please contact Messrs. Luke Ortega (lortega2@csulb.edu) or Jeff Marotta (jeffmarotta@hotmail.com). You can also telephone (805) 451-3062. If you just can't wean yourself from the Los Angeles automobile lifestyle, or are fashionably late to the Willow Street Station, or are coming from somewhere other than Long Beach, here's a map to the place. Be there or be hungry!

Graduation Day!

Geography will celebrate Commencement during the College of Liberal Arts second ceremony, which will be held from 1 p.m., Thursday, 26 May. The Department will host a pre-ceremony reception starting at 11 a.m., in LA4-100, with light refreshments (and water for you to hide under your robe for the formal event!). Details may be had at http://www.csulb.edu/projects/commencement/

Advisors for 2005-06

• Undergraduate advising
  • Dr. Paul Laris. Dr. Laris can be reached at plaris@csulb.edu or at (562) 985-1862 or -8432. His office is in LA4-101E.

• Graduate advising
  • Dr. Christopher Lee. Dr. Lee can be reached at clee@csulb.edu or at (562) 985-2358, and his office is in LA4-205.

• GIScience certificate director
  • Dr. Frank Gossette. Dr. Gossette can be reached at gossette@csulb.edu or at (562) 985-7808, and his office is in LA4-206G.

Scholarships and Student Support

Departmental Scholarships

The Department offers scholarships from three different funds for the benefit of different groups of students. Recipients are announced at the Spring Banquet (and on the Department news page.

• The Burton Anderson Scholarship (for continuing undergraduate students)
• The Eileen Johansen Memorial Scholarship (for continuing undergraduate students)
• The Rodney Steiner Award (a stipend for continuing undergraduate or graduate students, in exchange for 50 hours of work in the Department)

In addition, the Geography Students' Association offers a needs-based scholarship.

For more information, please contact Dr. Paul Laris at plaris@csulb.edu or (562) 985-1862 or visit him during his office hours in LA4-101E.

Great Things Students Are Doing

Ms. Denise Behrens Is Fêted

Ms. Denise Behrens has just been inducted into Who's Who among Students in American Colleges and Universities. Congratulations!!!

Dean's List Honorees

The Department is very proud to announce that eight of its undergraduate students have received the College of Liberal Arts Dean's List honor, which is reserved for those students earning a 3.75 GPA. They were fêted at the CLA Distinguished Student Reception on 21 April. Congratulations to the Spring 2005 list of Distinguished Geography Students:

• Ms. Denise Behrens
• Ms. Adrienne Bosler
• Mr. Nicholas Carlson
• Mr. Charles Hungerford
• Mr. Steven Jareb
• Ms. Deirdre Miller
• Ms. Saori Nemoto
• Ms. Joy Turlo

Ms. Julienne Gard and Ms. Lisa Pitts Are on the Graduate Dean's List

Ms. Julienne Gard and Ms. Lisa Pitts, graduate students finishing up their theses, were nominated by the Department for the College of Liberal Arts Graduate Dean's List. The dean has selected both of them for the list, which is quite an honor. Usually, her office only picks about ten graduate students from among the 25 departments in CLA, and it is almost unheard of that a department as small as ours has been distinguished by having two Graduate Dean's List students. Outstanding!

Ms. Julienne Gard Appears in the Los Angeles Times

Ms. Julienne Gard, graduate student in Geography, published a short commentary in the Los Angeles Times on the passing of jazz great Artie Shaw, in which she related an amusing anecdote about a backstage visit she had with him back in 1998. She had been a swing music radio host in L.A. at the time (a side of Ms. Gard she has kept hidden from us!). He complained about how the Wiltern Theatre concert he'd just given had mussed up his nightly habit of reading in bed but then added, "But it's a good business if you have to pick one." The commentary appeared on 2 January 2005 on p. B12

Doreen Jeffrey and Jeff Marotta Win LAGS Scholarships!

Ms. Doreen Jeffrey and Mr. Jeff Marotta have earned the Richard Logan Scholarship from the Los Angeles Geographical Society for May 2004. The merit-based Logan Award confers a $500 scholarship. Congratulations!!!

Sigma Xi Inductees

Mesdames Leslie Edwards, Doreen Jeffrey, and Zoe Schumacher have been inducted into the Sigma Xi scientific honor society in May 2004. Sigma Xi honors active scientists and students in the sciences. Students become eligible on the basis of their academic records and presentation of their research to a professional conference. Leslie and Doreen were nominated following their presentation of their work on the Oakland Firestorm of 1991 to the Southern California Conference on Undergraduate Education and Zoe upon presentation of her work on marine mammal strandings along the Southern California Bight to the California Geographical Society. Congratulations!

California Geographical Society Presentation and Award

Ms. Zoe Schumacher won a second-place Joe Beaton Award for outstanding Posters, which conferred a $75 prize, during the Spring 2004 meeting. Felicitations!!!

CSULB Women and Philanthropy Scholarships

Zoe Schumacher and Doreen Jeffrey, two of our undergraduate students, were selected for a CSULB Women and Philanthropy scholarship in the amount of $1,000! They were fêted in a Women and Philanthropy meeting on the 12th of January of 2003. The awards were written up in a Long Beach Press Telegram story, too. Congratulations!!!

Mr. Dan Hofer

Mr. Hofer is a graduate student, who now works for the Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA). His thesis is on the application of GIS to the creation of the Silverado Fire Plan, and it entails the creation of beaucoup maps in an ESRI software environment. ESRI, meanwhile, was interested in applying for a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Homeland Security Grant. It sought a partner among local planning agencies to go in with it on this proposal, and Dan's thesis maps became the deciding point leading to ESRI's choice to go with OCFA! And the grant proposal was successful, to the tune of $21 million!!! As Battalion Chief Mike Rohde described it, "ESRI could have pick a different agency but OCFA has the best contemporary looking Fire plan out there ... Aka Dan's maps." Whew!

Ms. Julienne Gard

Ms. Gard, graduate student, is serving as Vice-President of the Los Angeles Geographical Society, a public outreach organization that has been promoting geography to the interested lay public for over five decades. The LAGS offers scholarships to geography students in the Southland.

Graduate Students in GDEP

Mr. Brian Sims and Mr. Aziz Bakkoury served as Graduate Assistants in the Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Project in summer 2003. Mr. Bakkoury and Ms. Zoe Schumacher served in summer 2004. They taught GDEP student and faculty teams from local community colleges and high schools how to georectify remotely sensed imagery, showed them how to use GPS for data collection and field mapping, and organized field work in Charmlee Park, the Topanga Creek Watershed, and the South Coast Wilderness.

Graduate Students at the City of Pasadena

Messrs. Brian Sims and Aziz Bakkoury, formerly of the NASA RESAC in our department, have been working for the City of Pasadena. Mr. Sims started there first, working as a GIS Analyst, and they must have been impressed, because the next thing we knew, Mr. Bakkoury was there, too!

Graduate Student at Caltech

Mr. Shaun Healy, formerly of the NASA RESAC in our department, began working at Caltech in spring 2003. He is now staff in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science, where he draws on his skills in GIS and remote sensing. In July 2003, he gave a presentation on remote sensing to the GDEP summer research team. This presentation included internship possibilities at Caltech, which Ms. Zoe Schumacher and Mr. Jinho Kang followed up on.

Graduate Student in Disaster Preparedness Position

Ms. Jan O. Olsen is Mitigation Lead, Disaster Emergency Services for the Orange County Red Cross. She is now listed as a member of the Orange County Red Cross Disaster Preparedness Academy.

Graduate Students and the Science Olympiad

Two graduate students have captained events in the Statewide Science Olympiad trials held at CSULB over the last three years:

Aziz Bakkoury
Shaun Healy

Our Own Steve Newberg Wins the CSULB "Battle of the Minds"

The Department is proud to announce that Mr. Steven Newberg, graduate student, won the CSULB "Battle of the Minds" chess championship on in November 2002! There were 25-30 competitors battling for some pretty significant prizes. Steve won a computer multimedia system (and he's already a web terror without this!), a dinner for two at Marrakesh in Newport Beach, and a car wash gift certificate. There is a quid pro quo, however: He has to represent CSULB in the upcoming intercollegiate chess championships (January 2002). Our students are doing all sorts of surprising stuff around campus! Congratulations! And good luck, too!

Jorge Quintero

Geography grad student, Jorge Quintero, stopped by for graduate advising and happened to mention that, after the HTML boot camp of Geography 600 a couple of years ago, he wound up the webmaster for the Long Beach Group of the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club! Check out his elegant artistry at: http://angeles.sierraclub.org/longbch/! Way to GO, Monsieur Quintero!!!

CSULB Geography Students Win ESRI Mapping Honors!!!

Graduate students, Mike Jenkins and Shaun Healy, and recent graduate, Caroline Kolb, were fêted at the ESRI International User Conference 2001 by earning second prize in the Map Gallery Best Cartographic Publication entry was the City Street Map they had done for the City of Lakewood. Thanks to Dr. Frank Gossette for this news item, who remarked, "Map On!!!" We are way proud of your achievement, folks! For more details, check out http://www.esri.com/events/uc/results/map_gallery_results.html.

Steve Newberg

The Department learned that one of our graduate students, Mr. Steve Newberg, has been working as a GIS technician for the Port of Long Beach. He says that it's a lot of fun applying GIS and the working environment is very nice and stimulating. Way to go, mountain lion webmeister! <G>

Christiane Candelaria

Earth Science Associates, a small petroleum research/software development firm in Long Beach sought a part-time undergraduate or graduate student in geography or geology for administrative and research work. ESA specializes in quantitative analysis in oil and gas exploration and development, GIS, and creation of spatial analysis tools. Projects range from model development through building add-on tools for spatial analysis to empirical, site-specific projects for clients. ESA's clients are mainly major oil and gas companies, but they also include other consulting firms and government agencies.

The Department is delighted to learn that our own Ms. Christiane Candelaria was the student chosen for this challenging position! Congratulations!

Student Research Activities

Los Angeles Geographical Society Invited Student Research Papers are a special venue each May, in which students who have presented their research at professional conferences or thesis defenses are invited to re-present them to the LAGS. The following students presented at the 6 May 2005 symposium:

Ms. Alma Vargas will be presenting her thesis, "Implementing Modern Geographic Technology in the Trucking Industry: A Case Study"

Ms. Wanjiru Njuguna will be presenting her thesis, "Water Perception and Consumption Patterns Among Latinos and Whites in Whittier, CA"

Mr. Terry Lumati will dislay the poster, "The use of digital elevation models (DEMs) in managing natural habitats in the South Coast Wilderness" (originally presented at the Southern California Conference on Undergraduate Research)

Ms. Denise Behrens will display the poster, "The Lost Constellations of European Celestial Cartography" (originally presented at the Association of American Geographers)

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Thesis Proposal Defenses: Four students presented their thesis proposal defenses on 29 April 2005.

Ms. Bridget Cooney, "The impact of policy upon refugee spatialities: Resettlement policies and the Hmong of Southeast Asia"

Ms. Wanjiru Ngujuna, "Water perception and consumption patterns among Latinos and whites in Whittier, CA"

Ms. Lisa Wilkindon, "The nature of Atascadero, 1915-2005"

Ms. Jennifer Cochran, "Using GIS to assess non-point source pollution in the Lake Barbara watershed"

Three graduate students are making presentations or workshops at the California Geographical Society annual conference in Yosemite in April 2005:

Mr. Mike McDaniel, JD, "Persistence of culture: Remnants of the Mexican land tenure system in Los Angeles and Orange County."

Ms. Lisa A. Pitts, "Geography back in high school? Assessing GIS and technology for teaching geography. Case study: West Covina High School."

Ms. Zoe Schumacher, "Garmin GPS and geoCaching workshop."

Thesis Proposal Defenses: Four students presented their thesis proposal defenses on 11 March 2005.

Ms. Josi Jenneskens, "Bobcat habitat characterization in the North Irvine Ranch Land Reserve"

Mr. Greg Bishop, "Development of a groundwater monitoring reporting and analysis system"

Ms. Colette Simonds, "Exotic plant species pattern in selected areas of Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks"

Ms. Alma Vargas, "Implementing modern geographic technology in the trucking industry: A case study."

Four students are making presentations at the Association of American Geographers annual national conference in Denver in April 2005. The AAG conference is the flagship conference in geography, so this is a very prestigious accomplishment. Here are the presentations:

Ms. Denise Behrens (undergraduate student), "The lost constellations of European celestial cartography."

Dr. Frank Gossette, Ms. Maribel Enriquez (graduate student), and Mr. James A. Woods, "Long Beach, California: America's most diverse city?"

Ms. Julienne Gard (graduate student), "Creating health in a Native American sweat lodge: The production of an alternative healing space."

Ms. Lisa A. Pitts (graduate student), "Geography back in high school? Assessing GIS and technology for teaching geography. Case study: West Covina High School."

Mr. Terry Lumati, now an undergraduate student in Geography at CSULB, was the first and presenting author of a paper at the Southern California Conference on Undergraduate Research in Whittier in November 2004. His co-authors were Messrs. Carlos Takashima (El Camino College) and Simeon Haynes (Cabrillo High School). The paper reported on a GDEP project mentored by Dr. Suzanne P. Wechsler. Its title was:

"The Use of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) in Managing Natural Habitats in the South Coast Wilderness."

Ms. Lisa Pitts, graduate student, is co-presenter with Prof. Gregory Lee of Pasadena City College of a presentation at the Los Angeles Geographical Society. The talk will be on Friday, April 1st, at Los Angeles City College:

Gregory Lee and Lisa A. Pitts, "Geographers of the future: Teaching geography and GIS to K-12 students."

Ms. Lisa Pitts, graduate student, has a co-authored refereeed paper out with Dr. Suzanne Wechsler. Congratulations! The reference is:

Wechsler, Suzanne P. and Pitts, Lisa A. 2004. "GIS in high school integrates geography with technology: A case study." The California Geographer 44: 37-54.

Ms. Julienne Gard, graduate student, presented a paper at the Los Angeles Geographical Society. The talk was held on February 4th at Los Angeles City College and discussed the phenomenon of sweat lodges run by or inspired by Native American practices:

"A report on graduate research in medical geography."

California Geographical Society Presentation and Award

Ms. Zoe Schumacher presented her research on "Using Remote Sensing and GIS to Monitor the Marine Mammal Strandings along the Southern California Bight." This poster resulted in a Joe Beaton student poster award.

This paper was re-presented by invitation at the Los Angeles Geographical Society on 7 May 2004.

Association of American Geographers

Ms. Julienne Gard presented "Dengue Fever Among Australia's Aboriginals: Traditional versus Western Prevention and Response Methods."

This paper was re-presented by invitation at the Los Angeles Geographical Society on 7 May 2004.

Thesis Proposal Defenses: Four students presented their thesis proposal defenses on 30 April 2004.

Mr. Travis Brooks, "Processes that shape the distributional pattern of native perennial grasses (bunchgrass) in central Orange County, California"

Ms. Seri McClendon, "Analysis of industrial ecology, cradle-to-cradle principles, and an alternative packaging delivery system (APDS)"

Ms. Sarah Powers, "Vulnerability to toxic dust pollution in the Owens Valley, California."

Ms. Leslie Edwards, Ms. Doreen Jeffrey, Mr. Andrew Huston, and Ms. Leeta Latham presented a paper at the Southern California Conference on Undergraduate Research in Irvine in November 2003:

"Oakland Berkeley Firestorm of 1991."

This paper was re-presented by invitation at the Los Angeles Geographical Society on 7 May 2004.

Mr. Brian Sims, graduate student and research associate in the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center, made a presentation to the 22nd Annual ESRI International User's Conference in San Diego in July 2002:

"Centralizing Corporate Assets with GPS Technology at Southern California Edison."

Mr. Brian Sims, graduate student and research associate in the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center, made a presentation to the Association of American Geographers in New Orleans in March 2003:

"Assessment of Interpolation Methods and Spatial Resolutions on Urban Digital Surface Models Derived from LiDAR."

Mr. Brian Sims, graduate student and research associate in the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center, and Mr. David McCune, undergraduate student and intern in the SCWHR, made a presentation to the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers in San Bernardino in October 2002:

"Diurnal live fuel moisture change in Adenostoma fasciculatum (Chamise) in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California."

Messrs. Brian Sims and Aziz Bakkoury, graduate students and research associates in the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center were co-authors on a Geosciences Diversity Enhancement Project team, whose research was presented by Dr. Suzanne Wechsler at the Association of American Geographers in New Orleans in March 2003:

"Centroid Hunting: The Truth Is out There -- or Is It?."

Mr. Michael McDaniels, graduate student, and Ms. Micaela Lukasser, University of Salzburg exchange student, presented a paper at the Association of American Geographers in New Orleans in March 2003:

"International Cooperation with GIS."

Ms. Valerie Müller, recent graduate alumna, presented a paper at the Association of American Geographers in New Orleans in March 2003:

"Satellites, Census, and the Quality of Life." She was invited to re-present this paper at the Los Angeles Geographical Society's year-end showcase of Southern California student research that had earlier been presented at scientific conferences, and she accepted (May 2003).

Ms. Valerie Müller also presented a paper at the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers in San Bernardino in October 2003:

"Gateway Cities 2000: Visualizing Land Uses in 27 Cities in Los Angeles County."

Ms. Romey Hagen and Mr. Aziz Bakkoury, graduate students and research associates in the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center, and Dr. Christopher Lee, made a presentation to the Association of American Geographers in Los Angeles this March:

"Southern California Wildfire Hazards Center: A Regional Earth Science Applications Center."

Mr. Shaun Healy, graduate student and research associate in the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center, also presented at the AAG:

"Cultural geography: An experiment in hypermedia."

Ms. Valerie Müller went to the Urban Regional Information Systems Association (URISA), Montego Bay, Jamaica in September of 2001 to present:

"Using GIS in Urban Planning -- Updating 27 General Plan Maps in Southern California."

Mr. Thomas Ellrott, a geography graduate student, traveled to the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers in Santa Barbara in September 2001, in order to present:

"Southern California Surf Culture Through the Construction and Deconstruction of Surf-Place Images in Huntington Beach, California."

Ms. Erin Stockenberg, gave a talk with Dr. Suzanne Wechsler to the GIS Expo at Cal Poly in Pomona, May 2001:

"Environmental and Natural Resource Applications of GIS: Course Development."

Mr. Ed Huefe, a graduate student, went to the AAG meeting in New York in March 2001, where he made the following presentation:

"Across the Borderline: U.S.-Mexico Borderlands as Locus of Transformation in North American Popular Music."

A large contingent of graduate students made their way to Portland in early February 2001 for the 5th Annual Western Geography Student Conference. This group, in fact, won the prize for the most highly represented department at the meeting (and thanks to Dr. Chris Lee for supporting the students' travel to this meeting). On top of the general great attendance, students presented two papers, entitled:

"In the Line of Fire: An Investigation into the Relationship between Aspect and Fire History in the Santa Monica Mountains, 1925-1997" by Lewis Francis, Romey Hagen, Shaun Healy, and Steve Newberg.

and

"Using GIS to Update 27 General Plan Maps" by Valerie Müller

Nice job!! The Department is really proud of you! For photographs of the delegation, check out the Portland Files.

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