| Commencement 2013 |
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The College of Education and Integrative Studies would like to recognize three outstanding faculty members who will be retiring at the end of the 2012-2013 academic year.
Parvin Abyaneh
Dr. Parvin Abyaneh has been at Cal Poly Pomona for 24 years (1989-2013). Abyaneh has been a faculty member in the Department of Ethnic and Women Studies, and was instrumental in the creation of the GEMS major. Abyaneh was one of the first faculty members to integrate technology into educational curricula. She led the efforts in the department to create hybrid, blended learning courses and introduced new ideas to the library for student direct access to online materials, including films. Abyaneh spearheaded the inclusion of Middle Eastern voices into the EWS curriculum and has been a leading advocate for the representation of women and minority women in particular.
Patricia de Freitas
Dr. Patricia de Freitas has been at Cal Poly Pomona for 18 years (1995-2013). De Freitas has been a faculty member and Chair in the Department of Ethnic and Women Studies and has served as Interim Associate Dean for the College of Education and Integrative studies. De Freitas has shared her research and expertise on the reproduction of identities (gender, racial, class, ethnic, national and transnational), diaspora studies, globalization hybridity, cultural practices and popular culture, discourses and practice of power, and educational praxis. She worked closely with the Office of Student Life/Cultural Centers integrating cultural programming, and collaborating on campus events. Her community service includes sharing her expertise as an anthropologist and life-commitment to advocacy. She has been recognized and received awards for her mentoring and service to others. Among them is a CEIS Advisor Award and the African American Cultural Center’s Elders Award.
Pamela Walker
Dr. Pamela Walker has been at Cal Poly Pomona for 6 years (2007-2013). Walker has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education, and helped to establish an online Autism Added Authorization Program that has served students from across the United States. Walker’s research interests lay in curriculum development for diverse students, including those with special needs and English learners. Dr. Walker collaborated with Dr. Ruth Ahn on studies and articles regarding effective math instruction for English learners.
Dr. Shahnaz Lotfipour, Coordinator of the Educational Multimedia Program of the Department of Education in the College of Education and Integrative Studies, received an award from the CSU for her exemplary hybrid-online course. The CSU follows the national, accelerating trend of significant growth in online teaching and learning. The evolution of the Internet and broadband access at home and via mobile devices makes it certain that there will be a continued growth in hybrid and online courses. As CSU campuses offer additional online courses, it is important to define quality online teaching and learning, as well as to determine how to assess it. The Quality Online Learning and Teaching (QOLT) program was developed to assist faculty, faculty developers, and instructional designers to more effectively design hybrid and online courses. In addition, the QOLT program was developed to recognize and share exemplary practices in CSU hybrid-online courses.
Dr. Lotfipour was chosen based on her Graphic Design and Animation for Educational Multimedia course, last taught in Fall 2012. Her course was recognized as an exemplary CSU hybrid-online course, based on multiple levels of review using the QOLT analysis rubric:
Some of the evaluation comments include:
When asked how she felt about the award, Dr. Lotfipour said, “It is definitely very fulfilling and rewarding to be acknowledged for what you do and for having the opportunity to share what you have done with other faculty members, which could eventually lead into creating a learning community among us to collaborate, learn, and benefit from each other’s knowledge, expertise, and skills.”
Nestor Gonzalez, a junior in the Ethnic and Women Studies Program, has been selected to participate in the Emerging Archival Scholars Program. Out of the hundreds of applications, twelve Emerging Archival Scholars were chosen to participate in this year’s Emerging Archival Scholars Program. This year, the Program will be held will be held at the University of Texas at Austin from June 17-21, 2013.
During the Archival Education and Research Institute (AERI), each scholarship recipient will be assigned both a faculty research and a Ph.D. student mentor who will help Scholars navigate the Institute and the intellectual and social environments. In addition to mentors, scholarship recipients will participate in a workshop discussing application processes and expectations for Ph.D. programs in the U.S. and internationally as well as the nature and scope of future possible careers. They will also participate with other AERI attendees in workshops, seminars, and field trips. For Scholars who indicate an interest in pursuing a Ph.D. in this field after attending AERI, mentors will be selected for them to work with on a continuing basis and they will be alerted to other possible opportunities, such as bridge programs, additional scholarships and research opportunities that might be available through AERI or at different academic institutions.
When asked how he felt about being selected, Nestor said, “I am very excited to be accepted to the Emerging Archival Scholars Program! It is a great opportunity to learn from Ph.D candidates on what is expected from a student myself when applying to graduate school. It is also an honor, since I am a first generation college student in my family. I want to give the best present any parent can ask for a son who will one day be the first Dr. Gonzalez in the family. I was surprised that I got selected because it had been a week since the April 22 deadline. I am very excited to visit Austin, Texas and attend Archival Education and Research Institute (AERI) conference to learn about various graduate programs from across the country. I am very thankful for Dr. Terri Gomez and Dr. Anita Jain who wrote my letters of recommendation for the application process. I am proud to represent the College of Education and Integrative Studies and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona this June!”
Anna Marie Storti, a senior in the Ethnic and Women Studies Program, received a $2,000 scholarship from the Kellogg Undergraduate Scholars Program. Storti’s project, titled “But You Don't Look Like a Lesbian: The Portrayal of Queer Life Through a Feminine Experience”. Storti’s research will focus on women who are positively labeled as feminine by society, but who are also negatively labeled as queer by society. Storti said of her proposed research, “I intend to gather and investigate information in order to foster a solid foundation for a future career of research. I identify as a feminine queer woman of color. In my daily life, I often pass as a straight white woman. In my pursuit of shaping my interests in queer knowledge, I have been unsuccessful in finding experiences completely relevant to mine in which they incorporate feminine appearance and passing privileges. In numerous scholarly pieces, such as the ones provided in my literature review, there are statements that generalize the reality of passing and the doubt associated with being a queer feminine woman. However, in my search for a deeper understanding about this phenomenon, I have been unable to locate research that explains the experiences of this group of people with a queer application in a detailed and in depth manner. The purpose of my study is to then portray the lives of these marginalized queer women with the purpose of highlighting the importance of femininity, how femininity is rejected in this specific population, and the personal effect femininity has of these women.”
KUSP provides student scholarships of up to $2,000 to support mentored research or creative activities in a student’s chosen field. The goal is to support undergraduate research engagement of underrepresented students, and to encourage persistence to degree, and pursuit of graduate education.
KUSP scholarships are administered by URFAC with assistance from the Cal Poly Pomona Office of Research. Funding for this program is provided by a three-year grant from the Kellogg Legacy Project Endowment. This grant, titled The Kellogg Fund for Transformative Undergraduate Research Engagement (Kellogg FuTURE Program), provides support for quality faculty-mentored research, scholarship, and creative activities by undergraduate students in all eight colleges.
Are you beginning your search for your first teaching job? Are you trying to get back into the field of teaching but do not know where to begin?
The College of Education and Integrative Studies and the Education Alumni Group is hosting a discussion on tips for first-time teachers. A group of administrators from surrounding districts will take part in a panel discussion about the current job market for teachers and what employers are looking for in potential hires.
After the HR Panel, there will be mock interviews that give attendees an idea of the kinds of questions to expect when being interviewed and the appropriate responses to give.
The event is free to the community. Parking passes can be purchased at the Parking Booth in Lot C. If you have any questions, please contact Kristen Jaoui.
Click here to RSVP for the event!
On March 5, 2013, IGE students, family, friends, faculty members, staff, and administrators from the Cal Poly Pomona community gathered in URSA Major Suite for the 10th annual IGE Projects Fair.
The IGE Program is an alternative to the General Education courses undergraduates must take to complete their degrees. IGE students come from a variety of academic backgrounds, including Business, Architecture, Engineering and Liberal Studies.
In IGE 224, students complete an individual capstone project that synthesizes and extends themes from their IGE learning experience. The projects ranged from posters about Stereotypes in Poverty to an indoor rock-climbing wall. This year, the IGE program had a hundred and three graduates. IGE Department Chair Dennis Quinn said of the event, "We started in 1983 and pride ourselves as being one of the first and longest running learning communities on campus. When the IGE Projects Fair began, it was a quiet and small event. Now, ten years later, the Projects Fair has grown into a bigger and campus wide anticipated event. This year, there was such a variety of projects that showcased what students had learned and topics they had become interested in as IGE students." The IGE Projects information, forming their own opinions based on evidence, and fair is a great example of the foundations of the IGE Program. It shows students learning synthesizing what they have learned. It was a great success.
The College of Education and Integrative Studies celebrates one of our faculty members, Dr. Corina Benavides López, has received the honor of the Women of the Achievement Award. The Women of Achievement Award is in its 29th year, and is given by the given by the YWCA San Gabriel Valley. The YWCA San Gabriel Valley is an organization whose mission is to eliminate racism, empower women and promote peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all.
Dr. Benavides López was nominated by one of her students, Dora Lopez, who expressed her excitement upon learning that Dr. Benavides López won the award. She recalled, "When I received the email, I thought this was a great opportunity for me to nominate a great professor who has changed the lives of many students here at Cal Poly Pomona. Dr. Benavides-Lopez was the first professor who spoke to me about graduate school and pushed me to improve my own writing. I always listen to her advice to read and writ,e which are tools to succeed in higher education. Thanks to her mentorship, I was able to believe in myself. Now, she is my McNair Scholar Mentor and I am thankful to have her on our campus. She is great motivator and mentor to many students. She taught me that higher education is the way to succeed and is form of resistance to oppression. So, nominating her for this award was a small thank you for all the work she has done and continues to do."
Dr. Benavides López has been an inspiration to so many students and members of the community. Born in Tijuana, Mexico, Dr. Benavides López arrived to the U.S. at the age of four with her parents and sister as an undocumented child and struggled like many through poverty and being social marginalized. Growing up, she learned many lessons of sacrifice and struggle from her parents who worked long hours to provide and support the family. In 2010, Dr. Benavides López earned her Ph.D. in Education with a specialization in Race and Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has more than twenty years of experience in educational social justice community work and inter-racial dynamics coalition building. From her introduction to student affairs as an undergraduate peer advisor in her community college’s EOPS office to her professional experience as a university cultural center coordinator, and now teaching at the university, Dr. Benavides López has learned many professional and academic lessons in her years of experience in higher education. With the knowledge she has gained she actively supports the academic achievement and goals of first generation students and those at the margins of the U.S. educational pipeline. Her mission is to push students to fulfill their academic dreams. Furthermore, Dr. Benavides López is committed to educational scholarship and practice that promote transformative and emancipatory ideals and reflection.
With much excitement and passion, Dr. Benavides López currently teaches at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona’s Ethnic and Women’s Studies department and Liberal Studies department. The themes in your courses range from multiracial ethnic studies, Chicano/Latino contemporary and historical studies, history of Latin America/Mexican immigration, and U.S. schooling and inequality. Her research and scholarship has been published by academic journals such as the Radical History Review, Contemporary Justice Review, and Social Justice Review. When not teaching, she works as a Diversity and Education Consultant for various community and educational institutions. Dr. Benavides López’s professional and scholarly ambitions are to continue in the professoriate and support first generation college students in their work toward graduate school. She wants to continue developing her research on Chicana/o, Latina/o immigration history, immigrant undocumented AB540 students and families, educational inequality, feminisms and Critical Race Theory.
Congratulations to Dr. Corina Benavides López on her many accomplishments including being the recipient of the Women of Achievement Award.
Lytle Creek lies just north of Fontana in the San Bernardino National Forest. Because of the creek’s proximity to major urban areas it sees an overwhelming amount of day use, the result of which is mountains of litter. Hoping to put the ideas they were discussing in their interdisciplinary environmentalism class into action Professor Peg Lamphier took over 50 students to pick up trash in heavily used sections of Lytle Creek on three successive weekends during Fall quarter.
All total students picked up 53 large bags of garbage, including 57 shoes, two tires, large sections of PVC pipe and untold diapers, Styrofoam cups and plates, fast food detritus and more. “Students find all the information they learn in the class more than a little disheartening so one day we decided to DO STUFF, not just whine about how bad it is,” Lamphier reports. Not only did students engage in a variety of sustainability practices over the course of the quarter, from cutting down on their consumption of fast food to using less plastic, but they agreed to help the residents of Lytle Creek with the mess left week after week by people who come to the creek, have fun and leave their garbage behind. Front country rangers were also glad for the help, providing the student volunteers with gloves, bags and advice for negotiating the Canyon’s hazards. “The students had a blast,” Lamphier says, “both because we were out of the classroom together and because we were doing good work. Many of the students had never seen, let along walked around and through a real creek before, and finding a place so beautiful marred by human carelessness was eye opening for them.” Lamphier plans to expand the program next fall, using proceeds from a Service Learning mini-grant to purchase supplies, including bio-plastic (and thus renewable) bags and gloves. “I can have all the ideas I want,” she says, “but it’s the IGE students’ who made the project such a success. They’re so great.”
Chester Tadeja, lecturer in the College of Education has recently published a book looking at the latest 
educational technologies and how leaders can prepare to teach the contemporary student of the 21st century. The book entitled “Educational Leadership and Technology: Preparing School Administrators for a Digital Age” is released by Routledge Publishing a highly regarded publisher of textbooks to colleges and is being simultaneously debuted in the United Kingdom mostly because of the extensive research done on some of the technologies that have emerged recently from both North America and Europe.
“The book allowed me to research some of the latest educational technology being used across the country and abroad. The research is basically showing that technology and the way we use it in our classrooms is becoming more and more progressive, interactive, and instants,” said Tadeja.
The focus of this book is on how educational leaders should use the transformational power of emerging technologies for improving student learning. There is a great need for effective technology driven instruction in all schools, particularly in those of low socio-economic urban and rural areas where students are more likely to be digitally excluded. American schools are encountering poor student performance, high dropout rates and waning world leader status in education. In order to address those challenges, national and international policy initiatives recently emerged as catalysts for changing the professional practices of educational leaders across the globe.
“Educational leaders do not need to have the most advanced technology infrastructure in their own districts. But they do need to be able to assess how emerging technologies can leverage real learning for all students; and, they do have to be able to find the resources to achieve and sustain this goal. The shortage of learning opportunities in some areas and in certain disciplines is an issue that can be immediately addressed with inexpensive digital age tools. Technology can be harnessed to meet the needs of under-served students living in urban or rural areas or for those without access to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects through online and hybrid (online and in class) course offerings. Virtual or “cyber-courses” are important because there are significant shortages of teachers in STEM and rural areas,” said Tadeja.
Tadeja co-authors the book with Virginia E. Garland, an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire. Both authors pay careful attention to the leadership roles played by school leaders in bringing about the kind of digital age technology integration. This book equips school leaders, digital natives and digital immigrants alike, to collaborate for systemic change. It is also a most useful tool for professional development because it combines recent scholarship and practical strategies. The book is unique in that an original impartial assessment is included in the book, which correspond to the two leading national technology standards and nicely integrates a way to identify how leaders can improve in these areas.
Tadeja has been a teacher at the secondary levels for the past 15 years and has taught at cal Poly since 2006. The book is available now from Routledge or any major textbook reseller and leading commercial bookstores including Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com.
Dr. Gwen D'Arcangelis earned her Ph.D. in Women's Studies at UCLA. Dr. D’Arcangelis w
as a postdoctoral scholar with the UC Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEIN) working at CNS-UCSB from 2010-2011. Her areas of teaching and research include postcolonial theory, trans-American studies, science and technology studies, gender and ethnic studies. She has published on the recent SARS disease scare, and on new forms of security and surveillance in the biosciences. She is a feminist science studies scholar interested in non-expert engagements with emerging science and technology. In her dissertation she studied the production of cultural discourses about disease during the post-9/11 disease scares and "biosecurity" policies implemented in their wake. She illustrated the centrality of cultural constructions of gendered and racialized disease carriers and biodefense personnel to the persistence of both the disease scares and subsequent disease control policies. Her current research focuses on the gendered and raced cultural productions surrounding the 2009 H1N1 "swine" flu scare. She is also involved in community engagement projects on science policy and environmental justice. More about her current projects can be found at gwenspagesite.
The Ludwick Professorship in Early Childhood Education will be funded through the generosity of Art and Sarah Ludwick, long time friends of Cal Poly Pomona. Sarah's dream of becoming an early childhood educator will now be fulfilled by countless teacher candidates thanks to the commitment to early learning and generous gift of the Ludwicks. We are forever in debt to Art and Sarah! For more information please see the artile in Polycentric.
Time Warner Cable donated $15,000 to Cal Poly Pomona to help promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. The full story is available in both PolyCentric and the Inland Valley Daily Bulliten.
Education student, Pamela Pernisco, was selected as one of four Outstanding Student Teachers by the Kappa Delta Gamma Society International (Chi State - Southern California region) and was honored at a dinner on May 19, 2009. |
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Congratulations to the Ethnic and Women’s Studies department for receiving the 2009 Excellence in Community Engagement Award from the Center for Community Service Learning! This award is given to a department that promotes a commitment to service, serves as a role model to others and actively engages its employees in service, service-learning activities or civic engagement opportunities. The Ethnic and Women's' Studies Department requires students to perform 50 hours of community service-learning. In 2006-07, the department reported that 11 faculty members, 30 classes and 710 students participated in community service-learning. Faculty members are very passionate about civic engagement and organize projects such as the Dia de los Muertos event and the Cesar E. Chavez Day of Service-Learning.
The Professional Associated Program partnership with The College of Education and Integrative Studies, TQE, and surrounding schools is featured in the Cal Poly Pomona Panorama magazine this month.
An excerpt:
Credential Students Learn From Education Pros
“Puberty, gangs, peer pressure, teen pregnancy and homelessness are just a few of the issues teachers face in today’s classrooms. For prospective teachers who want to know what the job is like, there’s no better way than to learn from the veterans.”
The Professional Associates Program is funded by a $6.3 million Teacher Quality Enhancement (TQE/Teacher PREP) grant from the U.S. Department of Education that Cal Poly Pomona received in 2004. For more information, visit TQE / Teacher Prep.
View the complete article in the Cal Poly Pomona Panorama magazine (PDF, 2.4 MB)
Four Gender, Ethnicity, and Multicultural Studies (GEMS) students from our Ethnic and Women’s Studies department were selected as “McNair Scholars” for 2008-2009: Raul Bravo, Ashley Faytol, Phi Su, and Rosa Portugal. The program assists undergraduates to prepare for graduate school and advanced degrees.
