News & Highlights

Department News

• 2020 CSU graduate Ashley Walker was part of the BlackInChem team awarded the Inclusivity and Diversity Prize by the Royal Society of Chemistry.  Congratulations!  Additionally, her organization Black In Astro is hosting https://www.blackinastro.com/ Week
• Dr. Edmundo Garcia and Dr. Austin Harton, with collaborators from Domincan University, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to map archaeological pyramid structures in Mexico using muon detection. Symmetry Magazine has published an article entitled "Seeing Through Walls and Breaking Down Barriers" outlining their new project."  
• Dr. Valerie Goss, Dr. Kristy Mardis, and Dr. Archie Peters participated in a 4 week intensive online course through the Gardner Institute "High-Impact Online Teaching and Learning Practices for Faculty at HBCUs"
• Dr. Mel Sabella and Dr. Van Duzor with colleagues through the Learning Assistant Alliance published a paper in the Journal of Chemical Education on utilizing LAs in remote learning
• The students in the  PREP/NSBE, Jr. Program created a website about their program: csunsbe.weebly.com   A STEAM Program designed to educate, motivate and encourage pre-college students into selecting careers in engineering.
• Physics Professor Mel Sabella was selected as a 2019 Fellow of the American Physical Society.
• Chemistry major Candace Young was featured in an article on Project SYNCERE which seeks to encourage underrepresented Chicago youth into engineering.
• Recent Physics alumnae Felicia Davenport, who is currently a doctoral student Georgia Institute of Technology, was featured in the Chicago's Black Women in STEAM Series at Adler Planetarium.
• Ashley Walker, chemistry major with a focus on astro-chemistry, has also been profiled in the STEAM Series at Adler Planetarium. 

 

Felicia Davenport (pictured) and Prof. Mel Sabella were appointed to the nine member Learning Assistant Alliance Leadership Council, which includes faculty and staff from colleges and universities around the country. In November, they attended 2017 International Learning Assistant Conference at the University of Colorado Boulder.  Felicia served on two panels at the conference, co-presented a session on LA Weekly Preparation, presented a poster at the conference, and met with the Alliance NSF Grant Advisory Board.

 

Drs. Pittman, Harton, Peters, Sabella, and Akujieze were awarded a National Science Foundation grant for their project

Connecting Physics and Engineering through a Modernization of the Advanced Laboratory Curriculum.The grant will provide $298,727.00 to implement student-centered experiments and activities that integrate physics and engineering.

(Students in the introductory physics sequence using PhET simulations.)

Dr. Sabella, Dr. Van Duzor, and physics major Felicia Davenport  received a Notable Paper award from the Physics Education Leadership Organizing Council for the 2016 Physics Education Research Conference (PERC) Proceedings. Only four of the 98 proceeding papers were awarded the title notable. The paper titled "Leveraging the expertise of the urban STEM student in developing an effective LA Program: LA and Instructor Partnerships" was recognized for its characterization of the relationships between Learning Assistants and faculty, and was cited as an important contribution to understanding the factors that promote effective LA programs.