S U M M E R 2 0 2 5

N e w s l e t t e r

Greetings! We hope you had a terrific summer, and are settling into the fall semester nicely. At UROC, we are celebrating the continued/renewed funding of our McNair and Koret Scholars programs. In this edition of our newsletter, we celebrate students who conducted research over the summer and presented their results at our campus regional summer research symposium. We also celebrate a bevy of UROC students who recently were recipients of the CSU Pre-Doctoral Sally Casanova Award. Furthermore, we highlight some new connections with partners near (TJ Owens Gilroy Early College Academy) and far (Bridge Builders Foundation). Finally, we’re all looking forward to the Fall Research Competition in November, which will feature students from a variety of disciplines presenting their research and scholarly activities. We hope to see you there – and best wishes for a healthy and productive rest of the semester!

John “Buck” Banks, Ph.D.

UROC Director

*pictures of Buck and Eric playing table hockey

UROC Mentor of the Year

Congratulations to Dr. Arun K. Sharma, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, for being awarded the UROC Mentor of the Year Award! Dr. Sharma leads a multidisciplinary research group focused on quantum chemistry, molecular simulations, and machine learning for chemical systems. His research addresses challenges ranging from ion partitioning in aerosols to asphaltene aggregation and catalysis for biofuel production, supported by external funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), United States Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, American Chemical Society, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Learn more about Dr. Sharma’s accomplishments and his contributions to CSUMB. 

The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center (UROC) offers the UROC Undergraduate Research Mentor Award to recognize and honor the practice of mentoring undergraduate research and scholarship at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB). This award is intended to recognize demonstrated excellence in supporting undergraduate researchers, to encourage mentoring relationships with undergraduate students, and to convey the campus' high regard for such contributions made by the academic and research community at CSUMB and other regional research institutions.

Summer Research Symposium 2025

Special thanks to everyone who joined us for the 11th annual Summer Research Symposium in August, our biggest symposium ever: 141 students presented their research projects representing 8-10 weeks of faculty mentored summer research.  Projects ranged from humanities, marine sciences, psychology, biology, agricultural and soil science, and education. Students gave both oral (19) and research poster (96) presentations. 

This year, 12-14 different grant-funded programs were represented, including the Nurturing Relationships To Harvest Success: Leveraging Social Capital For Training The Next Generation Of Diverse Agricultural Leaders Program managed by Dr. JP Dundore-Arias and the National Institutes Of Health (Nih) Genome Research Experiences To Attract Talented Undergraduates Into The Genomics Field To Enhance Diversity (Great) Scholars Program managed by Dr. Nathaniel Jue and Dr. Shahidul Islam.

Students participating in the research poster gallery were all evaluated by a diverse group of judges for an opportunity to earn an Outstanding Research Poster Award. Congratulations to the 10 winners!

• Maria Ugaz, Mapping Transposable Element Expression Across Hydra Cell Types Using Single Cell Transcriptomics
• Sergio Zavala, Developing a Mapping Tool for Gene and Transcript Annotations Through a Pangenome Graph
• Joshua Williams & Cable Bronte, AI-Enabled Collaborative Robot for Fruit Harvesting Applications
• Denisse Emeterio, Optimizing RNA Quality for Next Generation Sequencing (NGS): Evaluating DNase Treatment and Column Purification of RNA from Bioremediating Bacteria
• Jesus Jimenez, Mass Spectrometry Approaches to Investigate Squid-Vibrio Symbiosis
• Leanne Miron, Strengthening the “M” in STEM
• April Buckley, Matthew Dorsey, & Chris Loy, How Piling Types Influence Marine Community Structures and Invasive Species
• Reina Yorba-Rico, Planting Seeds for Pedagogical Change: Equity Conjectures for Organizational Learning in Academic Department
• Tyler Busby, Abiotic Effects on Mid-Intertidal Epibionts in the Monterey Bay Area
• Stephanie Martinez Flores, Improving Observation Impact Diagnostics for COAMPS

Enjoy pictures from our 11th Annual Summer Research Symposium!

CSU Pre-Doctoral Sally Casanova Award Recipients

Congratulations to McNair Scholars, Melanie Abarca (Psychology), Reina Yorba-Rico (Psychology), Heaven Smith, (Psychology); UROC Scholar, Abraham Porras-Vargas (Biology); and Ava Besecker (Master’s in Marine Science) who have been named as 2025-2026 Sally Casanova Pre-Doctoral Scholars. Each will each receive an award of $5,000 to support graduate school and professional development activities for the upcoming school year. This year also matches the 2024-2025 cycle as the largest class of Sally Casanova Scholars  in CSUMB history. 

McNair Scholar, Nancy Espitia (Psychology) and UROC Scholar Skye Cardoza (Marine Science) received Honorable Mentions. 

McNair Scholar Alum, Jissel Antonio (‘24), graduate student at San José State University, was also named as a 2025-2026 Sally Casanova Pre-Doctoral Scholar. 

For the 2025-26 year, 75 scholars, both undergraduate and graduate students, were selected from 247 applicants across the CSU.

The CSU PreDoctoral program is designed to increase the pool of potential faculty by supporting the doctoral aspirations of California State University students. The program places a special emphasis on increasing the number of CSU students who enter doctoral programs at one of the University of California institutions. 

Interested in learning more about this scholarship–or the new Health Professionals Scholars track? Pop into an information session; check out MyRaft to sign up. The 2026-27 scholarship application cycle opens December 2025.

California Pre Doctoral Program

Health Professions Scholars Initiative

Koret Scholars Renewed

UROC is thrilled to report that the Koret Scholars Program will continue for another two years! Thanks to a generous grant from the Koret Foundation, the Koret Scholars program offers CSUMB undergraduates an opportunity to be engaged in robust interdisciplinary social science research facilitated by CSUMB faculty mentors, with a goal to disseminate research regionally and nationally at conferences. The program just completed its 5th year of funding and the continued support will allow us to continue providing the much needed resources to students who aspire to pursue graduate studies. 

Since its inception, nearly 40 students have participated in the program, all of whom have presented at the Research, Scholarship, and Create Activity Spring Showcase and the Summer Research Symposium. Research team Kyle Parker and Maria Navarro, Paul Stephens, Erika Hernandez-Gonzalez, Korina McKinley, Melissa-Ann Lagunas, and Darchelle Burnett all participated in the Fall Research Competition with Lagunas and Burnett placing 2nd and 3rd, respectively, at the 2020 Fall Research Competition. 

In 2021, Lagunas was awarded the Provost’s Award for Exemplary Academic Achievement. A soccer scholarship brought Lagunas to CSUMB to begin with, but chose to focus more on her academics. That decision would eventually lead to a number of academic accomplishments that resulted in accepting an offer to Seattle Pacific University to pursue a doctoral degree in clinical psychology. Today, Lagunas is a doctoral candidate while interning as a Clinical Psychology Doctoral Intern at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in West Los Angeles. 

In addition to Lagunas, a number of students have continued on to graduate school. Meg Dearie is a doctoral student in social psychology at New Mexico State University; Jennifer Berberian, Korina McKinley, and Priscilla Amao all graduated from CSUMB Master’s of Social Work program; Hana Jacinto is wrapping up her Master’s in Teaching Asian Languages at UCLA; Monica Urias is a doctoral student in ecology at UC Davis. With a focus on graduate school preparation, the Koret Scholars program has proven to be an important resource for aspiring graduate students. 

Thank you, Koret Foundation, for your continued support!

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Creating Connections with High School Students

Over the last year, UROC has collaborated with local high schools in an effort to increase students’ scholarly identity, a pillar of UROC’s mission. This has provided high school students with opportunities to not only learn about all the great programs that UROC has to offer, but also to seriously consider CSUMB for their undergraduate campus of choice. Partnerships with the two local high schools is an effort to increase student’s scholarly identity, a pillar of UROC’s mission.

This past summer, we once again worked with the Bridge Builders Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles that helps design and develop supportive programs to supplement existing resources and address delivery deficits in the Black community and other communities of color. 

Nearly 30 students from throughout inner-city Los Angeles joined us for a weeklong, immersive experience focused on marine science. We helped build a robust program with regional partners in which students visited Hopkins Marine Station, snorkeled Hopkins Beach, engaged with Education staff from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and spent their morning learning about research taking place at Moss Landing Marine Labs and the Elkhorn Slough. Participants later spent their evenings with UROC students and staff, engaging in low-stakes, but meaningful activities, where they learned more about the college experience and careers in STEM. Dr. Jessica Bautista, Research Associate, sat in a panel where she shared her experiences as a woman of color pursuing a doctorate in plant biology. See image.

In October, UROC hosted nearly 70 students from Dr. TJ Owens Gilroy Early College Academy in Gilroy for a half-day experience. Students were introduced to undergraduate research across the disciplines, participated in a research ethics workshop, and heard from 11 UROC students about their experiences as first-generation college students, life as an undergraduate researcher, and home culture intersecting with the university experience. Students rated the event really highly (4.56 on a 5-point scale) while also having a better understanding of what undergraduate research looks like (4.76 on a 5-point scale).

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Celebrating Publishing

Congratulations to the following newly published UROC alumni and their research faculty!

• C. Mazariegos, Koret Scholar, Kyle Parker, Koret Scholar, Renne Penalver, Assistant Professor, Psychology, and Jennifer Dyer-Seymour, Professor, Psychology. 2025. Assessing Student Writing in an Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Course. Society for the Teaching of Psychology

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11th Annual Fall Research Competition

Join us for the 11th Annual Fall Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity Competition on Thursday, November 13th, from 2:30-6pm at the Alumni & Visitors Center. 10 students from across the disciplines will be participating across a panel of judges representing the disciplines. We hope to see you there!