2014-2015 Service Learning Grant Recipients

GE Paths Service Learning Course Development Grant

 Amanda Baugh is an Assistant Professor at California State University, Northridge and joined the department in 2012. Dr. Baugh received her PhD from Northwestern University’s Department of Religious Studies in 2012, and holds a MA from Northwestern University and a BA from Hendrix College.

Amanda Baugh specializes in the study of religion and American culture, focusing on the intersections of religion and environmental concern. Her research explores power dynamics related to race, ethnicity, and class in the "greening" of American religion. She is currently working on a book manuscript which analyzes the role of race and ethnicity in the "greening" of American religion. Professor Baugh has received this grant to help reflect service learning pedagogy in her RS 370 course.

 Interdisciplinary Grant

Holli Tonyan graduated from UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies with a PhD in Psychological Studies in Education. She has since completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Developmental Science at UC, Santa Cruz and worked as a Lecturer at Monash University in Melbourne Australia. Her research interests are organized around understanding children's development as part of social and cultural contexts and the vision that adults can create spaces for young children that nurture their full potential toward a variety of ideals of life (and not just certain ideals for development). Professor Tonyan has received this grant to help implement community engagement projects in her PSY 499 and PSY 699 courses.

 Interdisciplinary Grant 

Jennifer Romack received a B.A. in physical education from Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY. She earned an M.S. degree in kinesiology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a Ph.D. in human performance from Indiana University, Bloomington. Dr. Romack has two research programs, both pertaining to the movement skills of young children. The first program focuses on contributing factors related to children’s risk for becoming overweight or obese. To this end, research questions are framed around social and cultural factors associated with the physical activity young children engage in while attending child care and the link this physical activity has with health outcomes (body composition) and movement competency. The second program focuses on the effect that age and movement experiences have on the neuromuscular control strategies that children use to land from various heights. Dr. Romack is a strong advocate of student engagement in their own learning and with the community. Since 2000, Dr. Romack has supervised over 1900 undergraduate kinesiology majors in service-learning projects designed to meet community-identified physical activity needs for young children. She served as CSUN’s Director of Community Service-Learning in 2004 and 2006. Dr. Romack received the 2006 Faculty Award for Visionary Community Service-Learning and 2014 Outstanding Faculty Award. She has received this year’s grant to help implement a community engagement project in her KIN 478 course.

Discipline Based Learning Project Grant

 In the past Dr. Jongeun Kim has conducted service learning projects with many organizations including MEND, Northridge High School, Robert M. Wilkinson Multipurpose Senior Center, and Sylmar High School. She has received this year’s grant to help implement a community engagement project in her FCS 471 course. Her FCS students will work directly with the fashion club at James Monroe High School to help facilitate the understanding of apparel design.   

 Discipline Based Learning Project Grant

 Yoko Mimura is Assistant Professor of Consumer Affairs in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, California State University Northridge. Her research focuses on financial practices of special populations, such as women, immigrants, and low-income families with children. She can be contacted at California State University Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, California 91330-8308, phone: 818.677.7859, e-mail . Professor Mimura has received this grant to help implement a community engagement project in her FCS 380 course.

 Discipline Based Learning Project Grant

Dr. Gini Vandergon has been involved with Service learning since her arrival on campus in 2000. She served on the advisory board at that time and designed a Service learning course right away. The first program she ran was the Tomorrow’s  Scientist program which is connected with her Biology 102 course Biological Concepts. This course is for pre-service teachers in their sophomore year. These students design and implement interactive science lessons for the eight week after school program. Middle school children from nearby underserved middle schools are bused to campus for this experience. Her overall goal was to engage the CSUN students in science teaching and improve their attitudes and content knowledge in Biology by having them teach these middle school students. This program has been in existence since 2001 and Dr. Vandergon had her work on this published in 2007 (see below). Dr. Vandergon then went on to work with her colleagues in Biology and designed a service learning component that was attached to all of the Genetics sections offered at CSUN. The genetic students worked one on one with someone who has a genetics syndrome (for example helping coach a Special Olympics team). This helped the CSUN students make connections with real people who are more than just a textbook description (this program ran from 2003-2010. She continues to work with faculty who are doing service learning, she ahs presented her findings at both campus and national meetings and in 2004 was awarded the University Community Engagement award. Professor Vandergon has received this grant to help implement community engagement projects in her BIOL 102CS and BIOL 102 LCS courses.

 Vandergon, V. M. Oberholzer (2007) Improving aptitude and attitude in Science teaching. Academic Exchange Quartley, Fall pp108-112.

 Discipline Based Learning Project Grant 

"Dr Jeanine Minge areas of interest include performance studies, feminist theory, queer theory, community art, and arts-based inquiry. All of her work is dedicated to cultivating social justice. She is equally enthralled by and creates the communicative presence of visual imagery, poetry, installation art, narrative and performance".  Professor Minge has received this grant to help implement a community engagement project in her COMS 410 course." ( http://www.csun.edu/mike-curb-arts-media-communication/communication-studies/jeanine-marie-ming%C3%A9-bio)

 Discipline Based Learning Project Grant 

Professor Doty completed his research at the local UCLA Cyclotron lab, earning his PhD in 1966.  That same year he joined the San Fernando State College faculty, where he has spent the last 49 years teaching as the school has matured into CSUN.  Professor Doty is a tenured Professor who has been awarded the rank of Emeritus but is still deeply involved in teaching and the Physics Department's student research.  His specialties are Nuclear Radiation Detection, Quantum Mechanics and Electromagnetic Radiation.  He has received the University Outstanding Teaching award and the Don Dorsey Excellence in Mentoring Award.  His prize however, lies in the collection of sixteen Master of Science theses which have been completed by his students. His students have also coauthored serveral papers published in peer reviewed journals.  Once a day he challenges the CSUN's current students on the tennis courts, in the campus pool or at the rec center so they can get even with him.  Professor Doty has also begun the study of Classical Guitar, taking advantage of the excellent music program here at the CSUN campus. Professor Doty has received this grant to help implement a community engagement project in his PHYS 466 course.

 Discipline Based Learning Project Grant 

 "A commitment of diversity has been the hallmark of my career. more precisely, I emerged as a scholar after the U.S. Ethnic studies movement of the 1970's and during the Women's Studies, queer theory and culture studies movements of the 1980's and 1990's. Consequently, my commitment to diversity is not simply racial and cultural but also significantly integrates gender, sexuality, and hybridity within an interdisciplinary intellectual approach. My awareness, nonetheless, of the profound education legacy of the U.S. Ethnic Studies movement makes me deeply and enduringly committed to the practice of politics of general education. My interest in Asian American children's literature is deliberately related to my interest in teacher preparation. I wish to deploy insights at CSUN that I have acquired teaching introductory courses in composition, literature and critical thinking at El Camino College in Torrance, serving as an Advanced Placement Reader for the English Literation Examinations of The College Board, passing the CBEST and TFE exams, and acquiring an English Subject Matter Competency Evaluation from CUN's College of Education. I look forward to following the odyssey of CSUN's extraordinarily innovative Stretch Composition initiative" ( https: //www.csun.edu/humanities/asian-american-studies/tomo-hattori).

Professor Hattori has received this grant to help implement a community engagement project in his AAS 321 course. This project will focus on bringing public attention to the memory of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition, a US Internment Camp from World War II, and address the advocacy of public history. 

Discipline Based Learning Project Grant  

Professor Jennifer Thompson is a Professor of Applied Jewish Ethics and Civic Engagement. In the past she has facilitated many service learning projects. Professor Thompson has received this grant to help implement a community engagement project in her UNIV 100 course.  

 Discipline Based Learning Project Grant 

Professor  Stefanie Drew had received this grant to help implement a community engagement project in her PSY 396 course. She will continue her work with CSUN’s AS Children’s Center. Her students will have the opportunity to work directly with the children and their family’s to help them manage educational resources.

Discipline Based Learning Project Grant  

Dr. Frankline Augustin MSHA is an award winning Assistant Professor in the Health Administration Program at California State University, Northridge. Reflected both in her teaching style and philosophy, Dr. Augustin typically utilizes a learning-centered approach that is both hands-on and holistic. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in health administration, gerontology, cultural competence, health policy, international health, leadership development, management skills, and human resources among others. Before her faculty appointment, Dr. Augustin amassed over 10 years of management experience in educational administration, developing and implementing programs that improve college completion rates for low-income undergraduate students in science, mathematics, and health sciences. Also under her leadership, Dr. Augustin oversaw the development and implementation of a successful health pathways pipeline program that helped to improve the diversity of the healthcare workforce. Her research interests include studying the well being of elderly/older adults; professional competence of health administration students and health professionals; and investigating strategies that improve diversity in the healthcare workforce. Dr. Augustin serves the healthcare community as Vice Chair of the Program Board for M.E.N.D. (Meet Each Need with Dignity) in Pacoima, California. She has received this grant to help implement a community engagement project in her HSCI 413 course.

Discipline Based Learning Project Grant  

Bobbie Eisenstock, Ph.D. specializes in the social-psychological effects of media and the role emergent interactive technologies play in our lives. A faculty member in the Journalism Department, she teaches about the history, economics, and social effects of media and popular culture, the analysis of race, class, gender and sexual identity in media portrayals, practices and policy, and media literacy strategies for living in a participatory digital culture. Dr. Eisenstock directs the Get REAL! Project, a community engagement partnership with the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA). Her students developed the social media-driven Get REAL! Digital Media Literacy Toolkit and Media and Body Image infographic for NEDA’s website (http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/get-involved/media-watchdog). In 2013, she was honored by NEDA with the Westin Family Award for Excellence in Activism and Advocacy for her educational outreach and commitment to civic engagement. Dr. Eisenstock has received this grant to help implement a community engagement project in her JOUR 371 course.

Discipline Based Learning Project Grant  

 Professor Oviatt has been at CSUN for 17 years and has taught 45 years including his teaching experience teaching in the San Diego city schools.  He is involved in many activities beyond the teaching day such as his work with elementary schools in the common core/art subjects. He is also a mentor for his former student teachers who have since secured teaching positions. Furthermore, Professor Ovaitt is in charge of the orange county aids day on December 1st and has been on the board of the Pasadena Dance Theatre and on the Burbank  community arts committee, issuing funds to the local schools. He also served as head of the California Art Education conferences and is working on the committee for this years event. Locally, the Professor is  in charge of the CSUN SM ART day event for local teachers and the clay day activity for middle and high school students for a day of fun/competition with clay. Professor Oviatt has received this grant to help implement a community engagement project in his ART 385L. 

 Title V Grant

Peri M. Klemm, Ph.D. is professor of art history. Her courses address the cultural context of the arts of Africa, Oceania, and Native America and the receptions and display of non-Western art in the West. Her dissertation and published materials focus on identity, dress, and the body in Oromia, Ethiopia. At the CSUN Art Galleries, she has co-curated with her exhibition design students ‘African Arts in the Lifecycle’, ‘Island Affinities: Contemporary Arts of Oceania’, ‘Bareedina: Women of Oromia’ and the upcoming 'Homage to San Simon: Folk Saint of Guatemala.' She has recently completed an electronic textbook for ART 112 (World Arts: Africa, Oceania, the Americas). A book on the historical and contemporary body art practices of Oromo women in Ethiopia and Kenya is forthcoming. She received her doctorate in African art history and a master's in Ancient American art history from Emory University. Professor Klemm has received this grant to help implement community engagement projects in her ART 342 and ART 842 courses.

  Title V Grant

“Douglas Carranza Mena received his Ph.D. in Social-Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has taught at California State University Northridge since 2001. Professor Carranza is interested in cultural and political issues, particularly in the rigors and conflicts of colonialism in the Central American region.  His research agenda is to explore from an interdisciplinary perspective the concepts of space, citizenship, civil society, sovereignty and modes of governing to address Indigenous movements and transnational communities in Central America and in the United States. He has taught a variety of courses that address the Central American diaspora and migration, the contemporary revolutionary processes, modern historiography and identity formation, development, environment and its human impact”. (http://www.csun.edu/humanities/central-american-studies/douglas-carranza) Professor Carranza has received this grant to help implement a community engagement projects in his CAS 309 course. 

  Title V Grant

 Together Professors Klein, Furumoto and Sears are implementing a series of service learning projects into their course curriculum. These community engagement projects will allow CSUN students enrolled in their LRS 333, LRS 433, CHS 480 and CHS 480F courses to work with children and their families to help improve literacy and promote social justice.