Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center
N e w s l e t t e r | S e p t / O c t 2 0 2 1
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What a fantastic start to the school year! Although a lot of things remain virtual, it is so refreshing to see the library full of students again, quietly studying alone or with their peers. As you can imagine, we’ve been quite busy here at UROC as we dive into another semester. Thanks to grants received from the U.S. Department of Education and the Koret Foundation, UROC was able to provide research funding to nearly 60 students, half of whom are continuing their research from this past summer. In part thanks to another U.S. Department of Education grant, the Mentorship and Equity in Transitions to Achieve Student Success (METAS), Natasha Oehlman, UROC Professional Writing and Communication Associate, facilitated a 5-part workshop series in which she walked students through the entire process of applying to graduate school, breaking down each step along the way. Meanwhile, Corin White, UROC Curriculum Associate, has resumed some in-person classes allowing for some much-needed face-to-face interactions. More importantly, her biweekly Fort Ord hikes for Scholars have been invaluable as we continue building our undergraduate research community.
Lastly, recruitment is underway for some of our programs. Over the past few months, we have been working with several of our campus partners to recruit for the next cohort of UROC Scholars/McNair Scholars. The UROC Scholars competitive two-year academic program provides students with intensive research experience and graduate school preparation across all disciplines. Scholars enroll in a four-semester research seminar series and work closely with a CSUMB faculty mentor throughout the year before embarking on more intensive research experiences in the summertime. UROC provides professional, academic, and financial support to students, with an emphasis on building educational ownership, scholarly identity, and community. We’re also actively recruiting for our LSAMP Rising Researchers program. This consecutive three term program provides incoming transfer students who are CSU-LSAMP participants at CSUMB some wonderful opportunities to engage in funded research placements with CSUMB faculty mentors on individual research projects. If you know of any qualified students, please don’t hesitate to send them our way!
John “Buck” Banks, Ph.D.
Director of UROC
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2021 Fall Research Competition |
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This year’s judges panel will consist of returning faculty Dr. Jenny (Meng-Hsien) Lin, College of Business, Dr. Kelly Medina-Lopez, School of Humanities and Communication, Dr. Erin Ramirez, Department of Education and Leadership, and Dr. JP Dundore-Arias, Department of Biology and Chemistry. And joining us this year as our guest judge will be the Mayor of the City of Capitola, Yvette Lopez-Brooks.
The Fall Competition will take place on Thursday, November 18, from 3-6 pm at the CSUMB Alumni & Visitors Center (AVC). Masks are required for all in attendance, except for the person presenting. Please RSVP if you plan to attend remotely. We look forward to seeing you there!
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Jocelyn Chavez-Diaz
- BILINGUAL HERITAGE SPEAKERS AND THEIR FORMED IDENTITY IN THE UNITED STATES
- Mentor: Dr. Kelly Medina-Lopez, School of Humanities and Communication
Korina Mckinley & Lily Amador
- LOCATION OF HISTORY AND CIVICS IN SALINAS ETHNIC STUDIES CLASSROOMS
- Mentor: Dr. Chrissy Hernandez, Service Learning Institute
Erika Hernandez-Gonzalez
- GREEN SKEPTICISM: EXAMINING THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS ON CONSUMER ATTITUDES TOWARDS GREEN BRANDS
- Mentor: Dr. Jenny Lin, College of Business
Charles Scrivner
- DISCRIMINATING GREEN, BENTHIC ENDMEMBERS IN COASTAL SYSTEMS USING NOVEL HYPERSPECTRAL SATELLITE IMAGERY
- Mentor: Dr. Sherry Palacios, Department of Marine Science
Spencer Hart Winter
- ADULTS NEUROGENESIS IN THE FISH MODEL SPECKLED SANDDAB
- Mentor: Dr. Zurine De Miguel, Psychology Department
Avalon Surratt
- BIOREMEDIATION OF PESTICIDES: APPLYING MOLECULAR GENOMIC TECHNIQUES TO UNCOVER EFFICIENT, ECO-FRIENDLY METHODS OF CLEANING TOXIC AGRICULTURAL WASTE
- Mentor: Dr. Nathaniel Jue, Department of Biology & Chemistry
Alma Leon
- OBSERVING BEAKED WHALE FORAGING BEHAVIOR WITH ACOUSTIC LOCALIZATION
- Mentor: Eric Snyder, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD
Saray Garcia
- BUSINESS FOR 2030: A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF FIRM’S STATEMENTS ON THE UN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDG)
- Mentor: Ishva Minefee, Gies College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Alicia Del Toro
- POPULATION DENSITIES OF BLACK ABALONE ALONG THE MONTEREY PENINSULA
- Mentor: Dr. Alison Haupt, Department of Marine Science
Morgan Raimondo
- CHARACTERIZING THE COMPOSITION AND FUNCTION OF SOILBORNE STREPTOMYCES FROM THE SALINAS VALLEY
- Mentor: Dr. JP Dundore-Arias, Department of Biology & Chemistry
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A Look Back: The Making of a Researcher |
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Before the pandemic, UROC hosted a dozen students from community colleges across the state to participate in the Community College Apprentice Research Experience program (CCARE). Funded by the Hispanic Service Initiatives (HSI) STEM grant from the U.S. Department of Education, these students engaged in authentic research projects under the mentorship of a CSUMB faculty member alongside peer UROC Researchers and Scholars, in a 9-week program with the aim of stimulating participants' interest in pursuing 4-year STEM degrees.
Yimin Gu, a 2019 CCARE participant from the College of Alameda, graduated spring 2021 from UCLA with departmental honors and has been accepted to the Chemical Engineering Graduate program at UCLA this fall.
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What inspired you to apply for the CCARE Program in 2019?
When I immigrated from China to the United States at 23, I didn’t know that community colleges existed. I was tired of working minimum wage jobs and decided that I would return to school. I joined the Math Engineering Science Achievement Club and my mentor there passed out flyers for CCARE. That’s when I learned that I can participate in university-level research as a community college student. I didn’t know that was an option for me so I just went for it and luckily, was accepted.
What was your summer research experience like?
We researched habitat associations of ornate shrews in Fort Ord. Dr. Duggan, my mentor, was literally walking me through the research, introducing me to other researchers so I could shadow them and learn the practical from them. That part was exciting for me because I actually got the chance to figure out how to modify the traps to fit the target animal we want and how to prevent them from getting eaten and/or preventing non-target animals from falling into the traps. In fact, that experience is what inspired my interest in engineering, especially after I enrolled at UCLA. But also, that research made me appreciate nature and the many practical skills applied in the field. It made me feel alive and like I can do more.
Tell us about your research mentor.
Dr. Duggan was great and patient with me. Reading literature was intimidating for me because of the language barrier, and I had to Google terms like three times before even finishing the sentence. I would get lost. However, Dr. Duggan would ask me and another UROC student during our weekly meetings about our understanding of the papers she assigned us and walk us through the most important parts of it. She showed me how to find the information I needed to be successful in my research. That helped improve my information gathering skills, which I continue to use even after I switched to chemical engineering. It boosted my confidence.
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Any final thoughts?
This CCARE program walked us through every part of research: I learned how to build up my CV, negotiate with my PI, and most importantly, reach out and learn from fellow researchers when I volunteered in different CCARE/UROC projects. During my shrew project, I encountered so many troubles daily, and I greatly enjoyed solving problems with limited resources in the field; that was the first time I felt that I am good at applied science. (Pictured: Yimin at the 2019 Summer Symposium)
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Congratulations to the following newly published UROC alumni and their research faculty!
Elya Kandahari, CCARE, Emily J. Smith, UROC Scholar, & Dr. John Goeltz, Associate Professor, Biology & Chemistry:
Derek Lilienthal, UROC Researcher & Dr. Elizabeth Gooch, Naval Postgraduate School:
Jacob Green, UROC McNair Scholar, & Dr. Eric Crandall, Penn State:
Trinity Gomez, UROC Researcher, & Dr. Victoria Derr, Associate Professor, Applied Environmental Science:
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The Professor's Corner
by Sara Salazar Hughes, Assistant Professor, Global Studies Program
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Climate change is the crisis of our times. Within this context, “sustainable development” is often framed as a solution – in this framework capitalism, but green, sustainable capitalism, is the answer to the climate catastrophe that capitalism has caused. Many scholars and activists have critiqued this as “greenwashing,” or misrepresenting the sustainability of certain products or industries in an effort to make profit. Our research into Israeli innovations in “green” development, ostensibly aimed at sustainable resource management and climate change mitigation, expands the definition of greenwashing. Our use of ‘greenwashing’ asserts that whether individual technologies are sustainable or not, in Israel’s settler colonial context they further indigenous dispossession and elimination and are therefore incommensurable with long-term socio-ecological resilience. In simple terms, our research asks “Sustainable for who?” when examining so-called sustainable development projects in settler colonial contexts. Newly-minted UROC researchers Seryna Bonacorso and Annie Jones enter this research from an interest in settler colonial and indigenous studies and an interest in environmental studies and environmental justice. This research project, drawing on and contributing to scholarly literature in Comparative Settler Colonial Studies, Political Geography/Geopolitics, and Political Ecology, meets their interdisciplinary research interests and goals – and the goals of our research team in mentoring womxn scholars! Through a discourse and content analysis of Israeli and Palestinian environmental studies and reports, Seryna and Annie will further develop our understanding of greenwashing and the stakes of green development for indigeous communities. We have numerous future plans for disseminating their findings, including developing podcast episodes for the OtterPod and an article submission to Culture, Society, and Praxis.
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Pictured: Dr. Sara Salazar Hughes with her research collaborators on this project, in addition to the UROC researchers, are Stepha Velednitsky and Amelia Arden Green. |
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All UROC events and workshops will be available on MyRaft. While most of our fall offerings will be virtual, several workshops and events will be in-person for the fall. Be sure to register in advance if you’re interested in joining us for any of them.
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October 29, 11 AM - 12 PM
October 29, 2 - 3 PM
November 2, 12:30 - 1:50 PM
November 4, 4 - 5 PM
November 5, 11 AM - 12 PM
November 8, 12 - 1 PM
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November 8, 3 - 4 PM
November 9, 12 - 1 PM
November 9, 4 - 5 PM
December 1, 4 - 5 PM
December 9, 3 - 4PM
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Get Your Master's & Stay in Monterey
If you or anyone you know is looking to get their Master’s and wants to live in one of the most beautiful places in California, let them know that applications are now being accepted for the Environmental Science Master's program at CSU Monterey Bay!
The Environmental Science Master of Science Program is an innovative interdisciplinary program within the Department of Applied Environmental Science offering training in science and technology in the context of environmental policy. Located at the nexus of world class research institutes, state and regional preserves, the Fort Ord National Monument, and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, CSU Monterey Bay is a prime location for studying the interconnection between watershed, terrestrial and marine environments.
Graduates of the ENSCI program consistently report high satisfaction with the program. This program is carefully designed to address the demands of the field, and alumni often find that the skills they acquired through the program provide them with a unique competitive advantage in their job seeking and job performance.
Applications are due February 1, 2022 for Fall 2022 admission. For more details, visit csumb.edu/ensci
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Chat with us!
Want to get involved in research but don't know where to start? Set up a virtual consultation on the UROC website!
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