This spring, Clerihan graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, and she's planning to launch her own construction billing business in the community she now calls home. She credits her professors at CSUSM at Temecula for encouraging her to pursue her educational and entrepreneurial dreams.

“I was never that student who enjoyed school, but at CSUSM at Temecula, I found myself on the dean’s list and looking forward to going to class,” Clerihan said. “My parents were amazed by the change in me.” 

Her story was highlighted by CSUSM President Ellen Neufeldt at “The Power of Us” Southwest Riverside County Community Breakfast on June 30. The event brought together local business, government, education and community leaders to explore how partnerships are shaping the region’s educational and economic future. 

Sponsored by the Pechanga Band of Indians, the event was emceed by CSUSM Foundation Board directors Alisha Wilkins and Esther Phahla, both Temecula residents and local business owners with deep ties to the region. 

Before Neufeldt took the stage, Riverside County Third District Supervisor Chuck Washington reflected on the partnership that has shaped CSUSM’s presence in Southwest Riverside County. 

“It started with a simple but ambitious idea: bringing expanded higher education opportunities closer to the families of Southwest Riverside County,” Washington said. “Cal State San Marcos has listened to our communities, understood our workforce needs and invested in programs that reflect our local priorities.”  

Meeting Students Where They Are 

CSUSM established its Temecula campus in 2008 and has expanded to include two locations, with programs in nursing, software engineering, teacher credentialing and business administration. That commitment received a major boost in 2024 when Riverside County invested $5.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding to enhance technology, equipment and academic programs.  

Today, more than 20% of CSUSM’s nearly 17,000 students come from Riverside County. Students attend classes on the university’s main campus in San Marcos, at CSUSM’s Temecula locations, online or through a combination of locations. 

Expanding access to higher education is central to CSUSM’s mission of advancing social mobility. Last fall, the university again was recognized as the nation’s top university for social mobility by CollegeNET, reflecting its success in helping students improve their economic opportunities through earning a degree. 

“Beyond the ranking, social mobility is a student like Alyssa, who thought she would have to drop out and instead earned her business degree,” Neufeldt said. “It's a first-generation student becoming an engineer. A working parent becoming a nurse. A transfer student becoming a teacher. That's what social mobility looks like.” 

Collaborating Across the Region 

In her remarks, Neufeldt emphasized that expanding access to higher education requires collaboration among schools, colleges, employers and community partners. 

She highlighted the university's participation in Riverside County's Direct Admission initiative, the first countywide partnership of its kind with the California State University system, as well as CSUSM's Alliance partnerships with more than two dozen school districts and tribal nations. 

“The message to students is simple,” Neufeldt said. “You belong here. You can do this. College is not something that happens to other people. It is for you.” 

Aligning Education with Workforce Needs 

Neufeldt also showcased several programs developed in response to workforce needs identified by employers throughout Southwest Riverside County. 

Among them is an accelerated software engineering pathway created in partnership with MSJC, Temecula Valley Unified School District and Murrieta Valley Unified School District. The innovative model allows students to begin coursework in high school, earn college credit through MSJC and complete a CSUSM bachelor's degree on an accelerated timeline. The program is now expanding to include Lake Elsinore Unified School District. 

The university is also strengthening healthcare pathways. CSUSM produces more nurses than any other campus in the California State University system and has graduated nearly 4,000 nurses over the past decade. The university is developing a concurrent nursing agreement with MSJC that would allow students to earn their RN and BSN degrees simultaneously. 

“A skilled workforce is essential to the economic vitality of this region, and we are working conscientiously with our education partners and community leaders to create and deliver the right mix of programs that meet the needs of these communities,” said Godfrey Gibbison, CSUSM’s dean of Extended Learning and associate vice president for international programs.  

Additional programs under development include integrated studies, early childhood education and clinical laboratory science, a high-demand healthcare profession identified by regional employers as one of their most difficult positions to fill. 

“Every one of these programs starts with the same question,” Neufeldt said. “What does this region need? And how can we help meet that need?” 

Looking Ahead 

Neufeldt noted that CSUSM's work in Southwest Riverside County continues to evolve, with plans to further expand into MSJC University Center. 

"This gathering represents something that is a hallmark of Southwest Riverside County: the belief that progress happens through partnership," she said. "Real change happens when we work together." 

For students like Clerihan, those opportunities can be life-changing: a degree, a business and a future in the community she loves. 

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Helmantoler had planned to major in speech-language pathology, but a part-time job leading art classes for children shifted her direction entirely. 

“I realized I loved working with a group of kids and creating that classroom environment,” said Helmantoler, president of the Future Educators Association (FEA), an organization for aspiring teachers at Cal State San Marcos. 

This week, Helmantoler will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies, and this fall she will begin a multiple subject credential program to teach transitional kindergarten. 

Her involvement in FEA has been supported by Project R.I.S.E. (short for Recruiting Inclusive, Supportive Educators), a CSUSM initiative aimed at strengthening Southern California’s educator pipeline.   

Jared Leeds is on a similar path, one he has envisioned since childhood. 

“I remember playing teacher when I was in kindergarten,” said Leeds, who is pursuing a single-subject credential in English and plans to teach literature to middle and high school students. 

“It’s an interest that has always stayed with me. There’s something profound about building trust with students and knowing you can make an impact, whether it’s big or small. It’s a fulfilling career path.” 

Project R.I.S.E. also has shaped Leeds’ experience. Through program events, he connected with high school students exploring teaching, as well as educators who shared their perspectives and career journeys. 

The initiative is generously funded by SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union, which provided an initial $40,000 grant to launch Project R.I.S.E. last year and has since committed an additional $120,000 to expand the program. 

“Supporting future educators is an investment in the future of our communities,” said Kristin Crellin, senior vice president at SchoolsFirst FCU and a CSUSM Foundation Board director. “Programs like Project R.I.S.E. create pathways for students to become teachers who will make a lasting difference for generations to come.” 

With this investment, Project R.I.S.E. hosted 400 high school students and their teachers at the Future Educators Summit, offering 14 sessions ranging from student panels and campus tours to hands-on classroom activities. It also organized mock interviews with school administrators for CSUSM students and launched its first College and Career Readiness Summit, bringing together regional educators to co-develop pathways that better support students from high school through college and into careers in education. 

“SchoolsFirst FCU makes this work possible,” said Cassiopeia Guthrie, Project R.I.S.E. faculty fellow and Distinguished Teacher in Residence. “It allows us to create opportunities for students at every stage, from bringing high school students to campus to helping credential candidates cover essential costs like testing and certification fees, while helping build a more diverse educator workforce.” 

Support from SchoolsFirst FCU helps students like Helmantoler and Leeds become educators who will shape and inspire the next generation. It also contributes to CSUSM’s Blueprint for the Future fundraising campaign to raise $200 million in philanthropy and research funding.  

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Yang is part of Cal State San Marcos' Aspiring Scholars program, which helps students with intellectual disabilities fully experience campus life while building skills, confidence and a pathway to meaningful employment. Launched in 2023 by CSUSM education professor Rebecca Brooks, the program has grown from four students to 19, offering participants an opportunity to learn and grow in the CSUSM community while earning a certificate in higher education academic and career studies. Last fall, the program reached another milestone by securing on-campus internships for students like Yang.

Yang spent the spring semester as an intern in the University Communications office. Working with other student assistants and interns in University Communications, Yang documented campus life through photography and was always eager to help in the creation of social media content.

Yang has taken hundreds of photos throughout the semester, and some of his favorites were shared in March and April. With his internship ending this month, we're sharing one more selection of some of Yang's recent work.

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Her aspiration was to build something lasting: a culture where community partnership would become so deeply embedded in CSUSM’s identity that it became a shared responsibility across the entire campus.

“I wanted to work myself out of a job,” Prado-Olmos said. “My marker was that community-engaged work would be so endemic across the institution that it would be a hallmark of who Cal State San Marcos is. We would hear about that as a hallmark in the community. And people on campus would be saying, ‘Well, of course, that’s what we do. That’s part of who we are.’

“We’re really at that point, and I think we’ve been at that point for a couple of years.”

CSUSM will continue to build on her legacy and its strong foundation in community engagement, with more information on next steps being shared in the new academic year.

As for Prado-Olmos, she has decided that she will retire at the end of the 2026-27 academic year and conclude her 30-year career at CSUSM, including the last six as chief community engagement officer.

Prado-Olmos not only has served as a senior leader overseeing the Office of Community Relations & University Engagement, but she also has been a trusted confidante of President Ellen Neufeldt as a member of the President’s Advisory Team (PAT). Neufeldt said she remembers fondly Prado-Olmos’ role in welcoming her to campus as a part of the presidential search committee in 2019.

“I am profoundly grateful for all that she has contributed to and shaped at our university,” Neufeldt said. “I am also thankful that she will remain with us in the year ahead, continuing to support the institution to which she has given so much. Her wisdom and care have made me a better leader.”

In many ways, community has been a touchstone for Prado-Olmos throughout her life. She grew up in El Monte, east of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley, in a Mexican American community where family and working-class values were treasured. Her father was a firefighter, and she had uncles who were plumbers and foundry workers.

A first-generation college student, Prado-Olmos chose Pomona College, which felt many more miles from her hometown than the approximately 20 that actually separate the two locales.

“It wasn’t until I got to college that I understood in really stark ways that there were people who didn’t regard my background, my family, the schools I came from, the city I grew up in as having value,” Prado-Olmos said. “I knew the value of my family and the languages and my community and everything that came with me, but it was not recognized or validated.

“So when I decided to stay in higher education – and I chose public education for very specific reasons – I said to myself, ‘I’m going to work to change that narrative, where what communities bring is valued.’ ”

At the advice of a Pomona professor, who thought she would be a natural in the classroom, Prado-Olmos elected to pursue a doctorate in educational psychology at UC Santa Barbara. Her first teaching position was in the School of Education at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, where she immediately sought to embed herself in the local school districts.

Two years later, in 1995, Prado-Olmos found herself as a visiting professor back at Pomona, a university that didn’t have a reputation for strong community ties. She tried to change that. Teaching an educational psychology class, she took her wide-eyed students on field trips to area schools to make observations.

“It was kind of breaking the boundaries, but people at Pomona took notice,” she said, adding that the college now boasts the Draper Center for Community Partnerships.

Prado-Olmos, though, truly found the alignment between her personal philosophy and a university’s mission when her third faculty position brought her to CSUSM in 1997. Hired as a professor in what then was called the College of Education, she had been teaching for only a couple of years when she was given a chance to build an internship credential program with school districts in the Temecula Valley, a region where CSUSM now has a secondary campus but then was largely unmined territory.

“An assistant professor two years in rarely gets those kinds of opportunities,” Prado-Olmos said.

Opportunities kept coming for Prado-Olmos, and she kept seizing them – further ensconcing herself in both the campus and external communities. She said yes to an offer to move into the administration as associate dean of the College of Education under Mark Baldwin. She accepted a job as the first director of the Alliance to Accelerate Excellence in Education (The Alliance, for short), a grant-funded program aimed at improving college attendance and graduation rates for all students in CSUSM’s service region.

And when Jan Jackson retired as the university’s first vice president of community engagement, Prado-Olmos stepped away from a classroom role again and into Jackson’s shoes in January 2015.

“I knew that Cal State San Marcos had a lot to offer and that we, at the same time, had a lot to learn from communities,” she said.

When she assumed the VP position, Prado-Olmos recalled, there were pockets of community engagement across campus that needed to be centralized under one umbrella. That became her charge. Her office took on internships, service learning, community outreach, tribal relations, presidential councils and civic education, among other initiatives.

One of Prado-Olmos’ closest colleagues in the division was Sarah Villarreal, who served as her associate VP responsible for community outreach for almost five years. The pair still work together in PAT, with Villarreal being Neufeldt’s chief of staff.

“In every context, she has brought an unwavering commitment to social justice and a deep belief in the importance of authentic partnership between the university and the community,” Villarreal said. “She reshaped how I think about engagement – not as something we do for a community, but something we build with community. Her emphasis on mutual benefit and shared purpose has had a lasting impact on both my work and perspective.”

What, at its core, does it mean for CSUSM to be a community-engaged university?

“I think it means that our students have unique learning opportunities that they can’t always find at another institution,” Prado-Olmos said. “It means that they’re learning a value set and a skill set about how to do things and how to interact with people in partnership that creates a stronger whole. That could not happen without faculty who have the talent to help students translate what they’re learning in the classroom to something applied in a variety of community settings, and that’s the kind of faculty we bring here because they thrive here.”

In retirement, Prado-Olmos wants to spend more time with her family, including her mother, two adult children and two grandchildren. She also wants to take time to really think about what comes next.

“People ask, ‘Well, what do you like to do these days?’ ” she said. “I don’t even know. I like to rest. I enjoy cooking. I enjoy learning. I just don’t know what I want to learn next. Maybe how to do retirement well.”

But Prado-Olmos has one more year to reflect on it, and one more year to keep community – of every stripe – close to her heart.

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Yang is part of the Aspiring Scholars program, which helps students with intellectual disabilities fully experience campus life while building skills, confidence and a pathway to meaningful employment.

Launched in 2023 by CSUSM education professor Rebecca Brooks, the program has grown from four students to 19, offering participants an opportunity to learn and grow in the CSUSM community while earning a certificate in higher education academic and career studies. Last fall, the program reached another milestone by securing on-campus internships for students.

Yang has been honing his skills as a photographer and assisting with social media throughout the spring semester. We recently asked him to select some of his favorite images from March to share. All photos in the gallery were taken and edited by Yang. 

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

The program began as an idea from Marilyn Huerta, the college's marketing, communications and engagement specialist. Huerta envisioned creating a student-led leadership and communications team to highlight the work and impact of CEHHS programs. She helped develop the program and guided the launch of its first group of student ambassadors.

The inaugural team includes four students who are helping expand the college’s visibility while building professional skills that will support their future careers.

Ariana Saenz hosts the college’s new podcast series, “CEHHS Unplugged,” in which she interviews health and education professionals about their backgrounds, programs they teach, career pathways and words of wisdom.

“Through the ‘CEHHS Unplugged’ podcast and the ambassador program, I’m proud to help amplify student voices and showcase the incredible community within our college,” Saenz said.

Daniel Lopez launched the CEHHS Student & Success Story Series, producing written profiles that showcase the journeys and accomplishments of CEHHS students and alumni.

Serving as the team’s lead ambassador, Natalya Taseveki helps coordinate student engagement efforts and supports events and activities across the college, including programming connected to Scholars in Wellness and Innovation Fast-Track (SWIFT) Health Programs, kinesiology, human development, social work, education, nursing, speech-language pathology and public health.

The team’s digital presence is led by Audrie Smith, who started the college’s TikTok account and helps manage CEHHS social media platforms, sharing content that highlights events, fundraisers, student life and college achievements.

The ambassadors support a wide range of initiatives across the college. They assist the CEHHS dean, Jennifer Ostergren, during events honoring students who earned dean’s list recognition and participate in outreach and recruitment activities such as Cougar Blue Day and Discover CSUSM.

They also contribute to campuswide efforts such as Giving Day and Cougar Crowdfunding. Last semester, they hosted a student engagement “Giving Tree” event to encourage philanthropy and community support.

Beyond large events, the ambassadors attend student organization meetings and departmental activities to photograph and document student experiences across CEHHS. The team collaborates with the college’s Committee for Inclusivity, Diversity and Equity (CIDE) to support outreach and networking opportunities for students.

Participation in the program also emphasizes professional development. Through the CSUSM Career Center, the ambassadors are building career portfolios, strengthening résumé and interview skills, participating in workshops and attending the university’s Etiquette Dinner experience.

In addition, they remain active across campus through initiatives with Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) and the university’s Orientation Team.

Huerta continues to mentor and supervise the team members as they develop leadership and communication skills while serving as ambassadors for the college.

College leaders hope the program will continue to grow in the coming years, giving more students opportunities to gain real-world experience while helping share the stories and impact of CEHHS programs.

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Signed into law on June 27, Assembly Bill 121 (AB 121) established the Student Teacher Stipend Program, which provides $10,000 stipends to eligible student teachers who complete at least 500 hours of student teaching. The program, which will go into effect for student teachers in the 2026-27 academic year, is designed to support future educators and strengthen the state’s teacher pipeline.

The initiative is funded through the California General Fund, with $300 million allocated for the 2025-26 fiscal year. Beginning in 2026-27, up to $100 million annually may be made available, depending on future state budget appropriations.

The stipends will be available to local educational agencies (LEAs) – including school districts, charter schools and county offices of education – that host student teachers, teacher residents or apprentices. Intern credential holders are not eligible.

The program is non-competitive, meaning all eligible LEAs that apply will receive funding, subject to availability. LEAs apply through a streamlined online process managed by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC). In addition to supporting student teachers, LEAs may use stipend awards to offset wages for apprentices or support residents not funded through other residency programs.

LEAs can apply through the CTC’s online portal. Each eligible student teacher receives a stipend of $10,000, paid during the year they complete 500 hours of student teaching. For more information, the commission has established a specific email box for questions: STSP@ctc.ca.gov. You also can contact Moses Ochanji, director of Cal State San Marcos' School of Education, at mochanji@csusm.edu.

This stipend program represents a significant investment in California’s future educators and aligns with CSUSM's commitment to supporting students pursuing careers in education.

“Become an Arts Teacher Day” will take place on Saturday, Nov. 8 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Arts Building on campus. The free event will bring together students and community members to participate in arts activities and listen to guest educators speak about arts teaching. They also will learn more about the steps needed to apply to the multiple subject credential program.

The workshop is part of the Arts Credential Pathway Project, a collaboration among CSUSM’s School of Arts, School of Education and Center ARTES. Founded in 2023, the project was developed to address the shortage of visual and performing arts teachers in California, and to provide an arts credential pathway at CSUSM that can be duplicated on other campuses. CSUSM professors in music; dance; art, media and design; and education have worked for multiple years to build and implement arts credential opportunities for CSUSM students.

Students wanting to pursue this pathway though CSUSM can apply to the School of Education’s multiple subject credential program. Once accepted, students who want to teach in the arts can apply to the CREATE Teacher Residency Program. The program supplies a stipend and financial support, hands-on experience, arts mentorship, a consistent cohort of peers, professional development and networking, priority job interviews, and more.

To learn more, students can contact their art discipline’s Arts Credential Pathway Project representative or visit the teaching credential program website.

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist
bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

The grant funding will build on the early success of the Aspiring Scholars program, which was launched in 2023 by CSUSM education professor Rebecca Brooks. Now in its third year, the program has grown from four students to 19, offering them an opportunity to learn and grow in the CSUSM community while earning a certificate in higher education academic and career studies.

The largest of the grants is $2.44 million over five years from the Transition and Post-Secondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disabilities (TPSID) in the U.S. Department of Education. Brooks is the principal investigator, with psychology professor Allison Jobin as the co-PI.

The pair also secured grants of $75,000 from the California Center for Inclusive College and $50,000 from the CSU Commission on Professional and Continuing Education.

“Seeing my dream for this program, and for our students, come to life through the collaborative efforts of our incredible CSUSM community has meant the world to me,” Brooks said.

The new funding will enable Aspiring Scholars to hire its first full-time staff members, secure dedicated campus space, increase its support and training to peer mentors and professors, enhance student support, and obtain essential materials for daily operations, program orientations and events.

The program is built on four core pillars:

• Academics: College courses aligned with students’ interests and career goals
• Internships: Career development and employment readiness
• Life skills: Fostering independence and self-advocacy
• Campus life and student engagement: Supporting full participation in campus life

This semester, Aspiring Scholars welcomed its third cohort of 10 students, raising the total to 19. The program has collaborated with nearly 70 faculty members, and the number of peer mentors (CSUSM students who provide essential one-on-one support) has increased from a dozen in 2023 to an average of 60 per semester.

The program recently launched on-campus internships for students. Among the internship sites are the Kellogg Library, Cougar Pantry, Center for Children and Families, Campus Recreation, Innovation Hub, and Office of Recruitment & Outreach.

Additionally, Aspiring Scholars has been recognized as a Comprehensive Transition Postsecondary (CTP) Program, allowing participants to apply for federal student aid.

“Our ultimate goal is to build a sustainable, long-term program that continues to evolve and thrive,” Brooks said.  

The application period for the fall 2026 cohort opened Oct. 1 and will close Nov. 30. The first class will graduate in May 2027.

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist
bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

A proud alumna of Cal State San Marcos and its School of Education, Guthrie serves as a Distinguished Teacher in Residence (DTiR) – a unique program that brings experienced educators into the university to teach, mentor and lead. DTiRs play a vital role in preparing the next generation of teachers by bridging theory and practice, offering students real-world insights and guidance rooted in classroom experience.

In her role, Guthrie designs and teaches a wide range of undergraduate, credential and graduate-level courses. Her leadership extends beyond instruction, as she co-chairs the school’s Community Governance and DTiR committees and serves on the Education Recruitment Committee.

“It has been an honor to come full circle by returning to teach in the School of Education," Guthrie said. “The faculty at CSUSM do an incredible job of preparing and inspiring future educators to create meaningful learning environments across our region. The opportunity to bring my classroom and real-world experience back to support our TK–12 candidates fills me with both joy and a deep sense of purpose.”

Last year, Guthrie was honored with the College of Education, Health and Human Services Outstanding Alumni Award, a recognition of her impact on education and her continued dedication to CSUSM’s mission.

Now, she’s taking on a new challenge as the faculty fellow for Project R.I.S.E. (Recruiting Inclusive, Supportive Educators), leading strategic programming and planning to support sustained outreach across partner school districts. Her work will lay the foundation for a future Project R.I.S.E. Center, envisioned as a regional hub to strengthen recruitment and pipeline development for aspiring educators.

“Cassiopeia brings a unique blend of creativity, strategic thinking and heart to everything she does,” said Moses Ochanji, director of the School of Education. “Her leadership in Project R.I.S.E. will help us build lasting partnerships and expand opportunities for future teachers.”

Guthrie’s journey began with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from San Diego State, followed by a teaching credential at CSUSM and an MBA from a private university. She is pursuing a Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership through the joint doctoral program between CSUSM and UC San Diego, with a research focus on how political rhetoric affects teachers’ emotional responses in polarized times.

Her resume includes roles such as a curriculum and educational technology specialist, marketing communications officer, and arts integration fellow with CSUSM’s Center ARTES. She also has served as a journalist and theater critic, earning multiple San Diego Press Club awards and contributing to outlets such as San Diego Magazine and San Diego Story.

Whether she’s leading professional development, designing equity-focused curriculum or mentoring future educators, Guthrie’s work reflects CSUSM’s commitment to innovation and developing creative solutions in partnership with the community.

Support leaders like Cassiopeia Guthrie and programs like DTiR, Project R.I.S.E. and Center ARTES by contributing to CSUSM’s “Blueprint for the Future” fundraising campaign. Your gift helps us innovate in education, accelerate student success and cultivate lasting impact across our region. Learn more and give today.

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Project R.I.S.E. will focus on multiple priorities, from building pathways into teaching through future educator summits to hosting workshops that will connect high school, community college and university students interested in education. The project also will support the Emerging Leaders Academy, which will prepare teachers for equity-based leadership roles in partnership with local districts and remove financial barriers by expanding a  fund that helps credential candidates cover essential costs like testing and certification fees.

Cassiopeia Guthrie, a member of the Distinguished Teachers in Residence program in the School of Education, is leading the project activities as the Project R.I.S.E. faculty fellow. She will coordinate programming and planning, helping to create sustained outreach and support across partner districts. That role also will lay the groundwork for a future Project R.I.S.E. center, envisioned as a hub to strengthen regional recruitment and pipeline development for aspiring educators.

Moses Ochanji, director of the School of Education, said the initiative is rooted in opportunity and equity.

“By opening doors early, supporting students along the way and removing financial barriers, we are ensuring that students in as early as high school grades see teaching as a viable and welcoming profession and also that our schools will be led by educators who reflect and understand the communities they serve,” Ochanji said.

“The School of Education is grateful for the partnership with SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union in working to remove barriers before they become roadblocks.”

Jennifer Ostergren, dean of the College of Education, Health and Human Services, called the partnership with SchoolsFirst a timely investment.

“This is more than a grant,” Ostergren said. “It is a commitment to building pathways for the next generation of teachers and leaders.”

The announcement comes at a critical time as California continues to face teacher shortages, particularly in high-need communities. With Project R.I.S.E., CSUSM is positioning itself at the forefront of solutions by engaging students early, supporting them through credentialing and preparing them for impactful careers in education.

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist
bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Hosted by Math and Science Teacher Initiative (MSTI) and the CSUSM Noyce Teacher Scholars Program, the event reinforced the shared commitment to preparing and empowering STEM educators.

“The STEM Teacher Celebration had guest speakers who provided invaluable insights and teaching strategies that greatly benefited the teacher candidates,” student Sunny Naidu said. “The seasoned educators highlighted successful case studies and provided examples of how these strategies can be implemented in the classroom to foster collaboration, critical thinking and creativity among students.

“The interactive nature of the small-group presentations allowed the teacher candidates to ask questions, share their experiences and participate in discussions, leading to a rich exchange of ideas. Many teacher candidates left the celebration feeling inspired and equipped with new strategies that they could immediately apply in their future classrooms.”

Some 40 STEM teacher candidates, MSTI Cougar Mathematics and Science Teacher Scholarship Program recipients, Noyce Scholars, undergraduate Students of Promise, practicing STEM teachers, and faculty and administrators attended this year’s event at the McMahan House on campus.

Through engaging roundtable discussions, participants explored practical strategies for implementing California mathematics and science curriculum frameworks. The event highlighted the importance of ongoing professional learning and support in advancing effective STEM teaching and learning.

“As a teacher candidate, I appreciated the roundtable discussions at the STEM Teacher Celebration,” student Courtney Wilson said. “It was a unique opportunity to hear real teachers share innovative and practical approaches to teaching – and the food was great, too!”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim assistant director of editorial and external affairs
ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

At the time, there were four main buildings on campus with University Hall having just opened a couple of years before Charles graduated with her liberal studies degree.

So, it’s easy to imagine her shock at seeing campus for the first time since those commencement ceremonies when she arrived in the summer of 2023 to attend family orientation with her daughter, Kaiah, who was an incoming first-year student that fall.

“It was crazy,” Charles said. “I thought, ‘This was my little school, and it's just so beautiful.’ I was so proud of how far it's come. I almost got teary eyed. I feel like I was there at the beginning, and it's become this incredible university. Attending orientation, I don’t know why people in the area would want to go anywhere else. It’s so gorgeous and you have everything.”

Charles attended CSUSM with a single goal – becoming an elementary school teacher. And she credits the university for helping to prepare her for the career she’s enjoyed for more than two decades.

“Like with anything, once you actually get into teaching it can be so different than what you learned in school,” Charles said. “But CSUSM really does a great job of setting you up for success.

“It was helpful that so many of my professors had been in the classroom before. It wasn't someone just telling you what it was going to be like, it was based on real-life experience. That made a huge difference learning from people who actually know what you're going to be going through and what it’s like. They didn’t sugarcoat everything, which was good because they know that there are good things about teaching and there are challenging things about teaching.”

Charles was a first-generation college student, and she was focused from a young age on becoming a teacher (brief thoughts about becoming a nurse ended in fifth grade when she sliced open her hand and saw the blood). She always loved working with kids – even when she was one herself. In elementary school, she often helped in the kindergarten classes, loving every minute working with younger students.

An Escondido native, Charles taught in her hometown at Conway Elementary (now known as Conway Academy of Expeditionary Learning) for three years before moving across town to help open Bernardo Elementary School in 2005. She has been at Bernardo ever since, teaching first grade throughout her career.

“I love what I do,” Charles said. “First grade is so much fun because a lot of these kids come in knowing letters and sounds, but they literally leave as readers. First grade is so foundational that just to see their growth is so rewarding.

“And we have great families at Bernardo. I love my team that I work with and we have an awesome principal. I couldn't work at a better school.”

Charles has similar feelings about CSUSM. She was about 7 months pregnant with her first child, Benjamin, when she received her teaching credential at commencement in 2001. A year later, she began teaching at Conway. She had three more children – Kaiah and sons Elijah and Josiah – with Kaiah following in her mom’s footsteps by attending CSUSM.

Like her mom, Kaiah is looking toward a career working with children. She is majoring in psychological science and works about 30 hours a week doing applied behavior analysis therapy to help young children with autism learn and develop skills.

“I love working with kids. I feel like I was born to do it,” said Kaiah, who likely will pursue her master’s with an eye on being a therapist.

It's gratifying for Charles to see how Kaiah is finding her place at CSUSM and looking forward to diving deeper into her major as she completes her general education courses.      

“I'm so happy she's there, and she's really happy that she's there, too,” Charles said. “Right from the time we got to orientation, it just felt like a family and a community.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Teachers, after all, love teaching aspiring teachers how to teach, and the notion of sacrificing that for a largely administrative post can be a hard sell for many.

But with the teaching industry still struggling to claw back lost numbers from the pandemic, the job is more essential than ever, and the School of Education thinks it has found the perfect person to lead the way.

Moses Ochanji, who’s entering his 21^st year as a professor at CSUSM, was officially appointed to a two-year term as the school’s director on Aug. 1. Ochanji has served as associate director for four years under two different directors, and he also has been the chair of the human development department.

“I have been looking in at this job for some years,” Ochanji said. “I know a little bit about what the job entails, and I thought it was time for me to raise my hand and do it.”

Ochanji has replaced Laurie Stowell, who became School of Education director in January 2021. Stowell, a professor at CSUSM since 1992, is entering the Faculty Early Retirement Program (FERP), which allows tenured faculty to continue teaching after retiring from service.

Stowell also will continue to run the San Marcos Writing Project, which is celebrating its 25^th anniversary this year.

“I think it’s fabulous,” Stowell said of the leadership change. “I talked to him about the job. All of us in the school have thought Moses would be a great leader for a long time, and he’s also a wonderful science educator.”

As a professor of science education, Ochanji teaches science methods classes for prospective teachers. He also is the co-principal investigator on two grants in the science education arena: the Mathematics and Science Teacher Initiative (MSTI), a California State University-funded program to help recruit math and science teachers; and the Noyce Teacher Scholars program, a National Science Foundation grant that encourages talented STEM students and professionals to pursue teaching careers.

Ochanji and Stowell agree that recruitment is the biggest hurdle facing the School of Education and the teaching profession as a whole. Teachers left the field en masse during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and the population has yet to recover.

At CSUSM this fall, there is the usual distribution of student teacher cohorts – three for the multiple-subject credential, two for single subject and one each for middle school and special education – but the numbers in each cohort are smaller.

“When people are leaving the profession, the word goes around,” Ochanji said. “So there are spillover effects. People hear about it and think, ‘Teaching is hard. I don’t want to go into teaching.’ And that discourages more.

“Then there’s this national narrative that teachers are not paid well. So it’s, ‘Why would I do something so difficult and not get paid well?’ Those are some of the challenges that we face with many young people.”

Both the state and CSUSM are taking action to stem, and even reverse, the tide. The state, for example, has removed the requirement that teachers must pass the California Basic Educational Skills Test, allowing the undergraduate degree to substitute as a measure of competency. California also offers residencies as a way to pay students while they are engaged in student teaching so they don’t need to hold down jobs on the side.  

At CSUSM, the School of Education is considering bringing back a part-time program or adding the option of a January start so that student teachers have more flexibility. The school has a recruitment committee and faculty recruitment fellow who is studying the challenges that the university is facing and how it can better reach prospective teachers.

Despite the enrollment decline, the School of Education has enjoyed some clear successes. Perhaps the best recent example is Project SUPPORT, a five-year, $2.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education that ended last fall. The program greatly increased the number of bilingual teacher candidates to enter the School of Education, to the extent that in the last two years there was almost a full cohort of them (roughly 30 teachers).

“One thing that the CSU has pushed is to make teacher recruitment a university-wide event, not just a School of Education activity,” Ochanji said. “We’re all parents, and we want the people who leave our program to be good enough to teach our children. So we all have an interest in making sure that we have good teachers in the classroom helping our students.”

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

The day is celebrated annually by biologists, science teachers and anyone who’s interested in genetics. This year, the occasion has been made more memorable at elementary schools across the region thanks to a group of students at Cal State San Marcos.

About two weeks before DNA Day, more than two dozen students gathered in a classroom on the fourth floor of Academic Hall for the culmination of months of work to prepare a creative and thought-provoking lesson on DNA for local K-6 classrooms. Six STEAM ambassadors – arts and liberal studies majors who also have a passion for STEM disciplines – presented the kits they have been compiling to a class, taught by Ingrid Flores, of pre-service teachers pursuing their multiple-subject credential.

The ambassadors showed the student teachers how to extract DNA from a strawberry. They engaged them in an activity that involves a paint-covered marble creating twisted lines on paper to resemble strands of DNA. They read the children’s book “The Smallest Spot of a Dot,” which explains how genetics makes each person unique.

And they did all this so that the teachers, as well as the ambassadors themselves, would be equipped to turn around and give the same lesson to classes full of schoolchildren. The activity was expected to be presented in 70 classrooms during the ensuing month, reaching more than 2,000 kids.

“We think and hope that kids can see that science experiments can be done with simple ingredients that you can find at home,” said Melanie Wollrabe, a third-year liberal studies major (with a focus in art) who’s the coordinator of the other STEAM ambassadors. “Additionally, we hope it is evident that anyone can be a scientist, as well as an artist.”

During the event at University Hall, the CSUSM students listened to a talk about genomics by Manuel Martinez, a scientist at Illumina, a San Diego-based biotech company that develops DNA sequencing technology to enable research and improve health. Illumina, along with the Coastal Community Foundation, provided funding this academic year to support the STEAM ambassadors program.

“I was impressed with the depth and engagement the students had regarding genetic topics,” Martinez said. “I say I was impressed because when I was a student, these topics were not being discussed much outside of the scientific circles, so seeing this level of knowledge and awareness in just a decade was very pleasant.”

The STEAM initiative started four years ago, when music professor Merryl Goldberg allowed several of her students to become arts ambassadors as part of an independent study assignment through her Art=Opportunity program. One day a week, the students would report to a school in Vista either to help teachers with their art classes or teach a lesson on their own. Goldberg recruited professors Lucy HG Solomon and Christiane Wood to incorporate STEM concepts into the arts curriculum, and the arts ambassadors became STEAM ambassadors.

The program was run then, and is still run now, by  Solomon and Wood, who have developed a strong partnership as faculty from the School of Arts and the School of Education, respectively. Solomon has an expertise for fusing art with science. Wood not only has brought teaching credential students into the program (to implement the lessons that the ambassadors conjure up), but she also has incorporated the core concept of literacy.

In addition to funding the DNA activity that’s central to its mission as a company, Illumina also is supporting the use of podcasting technology and audio storytelling to enhance student learning.

“Podcasting offers students a dynamic way to document and share their scientific discoveries,” Wood said. “By using words, tone, pace and creative audio techniques, they can effectively communicate their ideas and findings.”

Wollrabe has been a STEAM ambassador since the spring semester of her freshman year in 2022, when she learned about the opportunity in her art education course. She thought it would be the perfect job for her since it combines two things that she loves: being creative and organizing. She did both so well that last fall she was promoted to STEAM coordinator, which involves orchestrating meetings with the ambassadors and communicating with the faculty in charge.

When Wollrabe graduates in May 2025, she hopes to become an elementary school teacher, with an inclination toward art as her subject. She knows that her time as a STEAM ambassador will aid her cause considerably.

“I have gained extensive experience with creating projects that combine art, reading and STEM,” she said. “So it has given me the proper tools to come up with ideas to carry out in the classroom.”

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Almost since the day she was hired as a professor in the School of Education in 2015, Brooks has aspired to establish a program that would give students with intellectual disabilities as close to a normal college experience as possible.

A couple of years into her tenure, she began talking to CSUSM colleagues about it. In 2020, during a sabbatical, she started working on it. And now, nearly a decade later, that dream is a reality.

Last fall, Brooks officially established the Aspiring Scholars program, a four-year initiative for students with intellectual disabilities who aren’t pursuing a degree but are seeking an inclusive college experience that will prepare them for competitive integrated employment. Four students are part of the first cohort of this program in which they learn and grow alongside the CSUSM community while earning a certificate in higher education career studies and skill development.

“I'm thrilled that we are able to offer this program at CSUSM,” Brooks said. “It's something that I've wanted even prior to working at CSUSM. So being able to create a pathway for students when they finish high school to attend a four-year university is very exciting and much needed.”

Aspiring Scholars falls into the category of a nationwide trend called Inclusive Postsecondary Education (IPSE), which is designed for students with intellectual disabilities (and of college age) to continue academic, career and technical, and independent living instruction to prepare themselves for employment. CSUSM has joined more than 300 degree-granting institutions in the United States that offer IPSE programs, which might sound impressive until you consider that the country contains more than 4,300 such institutions.

In California, the ratio is even more dire, as only five four-year universities in the state offered IPSE programs in 2022. Brooks is trying to help change that, and the state grant that’s funding her program involves a partnership with five other California State University campuses: East Bay, Long Beach, Northridge, San Francisco and San Jose.

Brooks pointed to data showing that only 3% of adults with intellectual disabilities make a living wage in California, whereas a survey by Think College – a national research center based at UMass Boston for students with intellectual disabilities – found that 73% of respondents had a paid job one year after completing an IPSE.

“It is critical that more programs like this be developed and offered to students,” Brooks said.

The four students in the inaugural cohort – Joshua Corder, Roman Martens, Tammy Tang and Alex Vaghefi – are participants in a program that has been tailored to their individual needs. Students are required to take at least two classes per semester, but they can choose any discipline they want based on their interests and career goals. In Year 2, an internship component will be introduced to offer the students an opportunity to gain skills and experiences. And Aspiring Scholars provides plenty of chances for students to get involved in campus life, whether it’s clubs, university events or sports competitions.

Tang, for example, is a 22-year-old from Carmel Valley who always has wanted an authentic college experience. After graduating from the Winston School, a Del Mar institution for students in grades 6-12 who learn in nontraditional ways, Tang (with the guidance of her parents) had been trying to cobble together online classes here and there for the past couple of years.

Aspiring Scholars, by contrast, offers her an in-person and holistic approach to university life. The two classes she’s taking are general education 101 (required) and theater arts (elective), and she also joined the theater club and auditioned for a part in a play.

“I want to be an artist one day,” Tang said. “I like drawing and painting.”

In sending Tammy to CSUSM, her parents were reassured by a particularly important aspect of the program. Aspiring Scholars incorporates about a dozen peer mentors who assist the four students as they go about their days. Some signed up to fulfill service learning hours; others chose to volunteer. Some are assigned to a particular student; others work with multiple students during a specific time of day.

All, however, derive something valuable from the experience. Gabriella Nunez is a junior psychology major who needed service learning hours and heard about the program from one of her professors. She contacted Brooks last fall and was introduced to Tang. The two hit it off immediately, bonding over their shared love of pizza and Katy Perry.

“It's a really good program,” said Nunez, who plans to pursue a master’s degree and specialize in school psychology. “In my field, you have to take a course that helps those who have intellectual disabilities or physical disabilities. So this is a good head start if you want to go in that direction.”

Tang’s parents, meanwhile, have received the gift of peace of mind.

“From our point of view, this program is very helpful because of the peer mentor support,” said Steven Tang, Tammy’s father. “We had been looking for programs for Tammy, but we also had to plan to go with her because we still weren’t sure whether she could be independent just cruising around campus. With someone who can work with her closely and guide her and also help her with homework, that really gives us a break so we can go to work without worrying about what's going on.”

Brooks said the first year of Aspiring Scholars has exceeded her expectations, in large part because of the support she has received from faculty and staff across campus. She anticipates that the number of students will remain at roughly the same level for Year 2, but she plans to apply for additional funding that will allow the program to build on itself and become more sustainable.

“I'm excited to see it grow,” Brooks said. “I'm eager to have larger cohorts of students, have more peer mentors, and be able to work with more professors across campus as students enroll in their courses.”

If you'd like more information about the Aspiring Scholars program, or to apply, contact director Rebecca Brooks at scholars@csusm.edu.

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

 The summit will give attendees the opportunity to meet like-minded high school students who are interested in pursuing a career in education.  

The Educator Recruitment Committee holds individual career and technical education classes throughout each year but will be combining three class visits into one summit due to popular demand.  

Over 100 career and technical education students from Helix, Mission Hills and Oceanside high schools will be on campus to learn more about specific credential programs offered at Cal State San Marcos and explore their passion for a teaching career.  

“There is a teaching shortage in California that we should all be concerned about,” said Pat Stall, a professor in the School of Education who has led several career and technical education campus visits.  

“In the School of Education, we want to reach prospective teachers early to encourage them to consider a career in education and support them in that endeavor. We know we need to begin early while students are thinking about what they want to do in their futures. Our partnership with high school future teacher organizations and classes is crucial to enticing and nurturing the best candidates who will eventually teach our K-12 children.”  

The half-day event will open with a cross-campus high school student meet-and-greet, followed by brief presentations from School of Education faculty and staff. Campus tours will serve as the format of the summit, and students on campus are encouraged to provide a warm welcome to attendees as they engage with the university and its community.  

The partnership, which is being funded by a grant of more than $2 million that San Marcos Unified received from the California Department of Education, is titled San Marcos Teacher Residency (SMaTR).

Modeled after medical residencies, the program will involve CSUSM teacher candidates spending a full year as co-teachers in a classroom with mentor teachers while completing coursework in a credential program. The residents also will participate in professional development and essentially complete the first year of induction.

“Residencies are a wonderful opportunity to attract and support diverse candidates in high-need teaching disciplines,” said Laurie Stowell, director of CSUSM’s School of Education. “We appreciate the partnership with San Marcos Unified, which has always been supportive of our teacher candidates and hiring our graduates. It is a mutually beneficial partnership, and we look forward to learning with and from them.”

The School of Education recently completed the selection process for the first year, and 23 residents were chosen. There will be 20-25 each year, or 80-100 total over the full period. Each resident will receive a $10,000 stipend and an extra $1,000 for testing and credential fees.

Additionally, CSUSM will receive eight $5,000 scholarships for selected residents from a CSU Chancellor’s Office grant.

SMaTR is designed for diverse teacher candidates in high-need areas: special education, bilingual candidates for dual immersion in elementary classrooms, STEM in middle and high school, and a few elementary teachers. 

Residents are guaranteed an interview with San Marcos Unified upon successful completion of their credential requirements.

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist
bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

The inaugural Future Teacher Summit was held on Friday, April 21 at Mesa College and was attended by more than 400 high school and community college students.

Led by education professor Pat Stall, CSUSM was among the core group of planners for the event, along with Mesa College and the San Diego County of Education. Other organizers included the San Diego State College of Education and area high schools.  

Several faculty members from the School of Education presented at the summit, including Stall, Laurie Stowell (also the school’s director), Moses Ochanji, Erika Daniels and Wynne Love, a distinguished teacher in residence. Some middle level teacher candidates also presented with Daniels, and a panel of CSUSM teacher credential students discussed their experiences.

Among the topics of breakout sessions were:

• Teaching Social and Emotional Learning Through Play
• After-School Programs and Expanded Learning: Your First Step on an Educator’s Career Pathway
• Bilingual Teaching: Affirming First Language and Culture in the Classroom
• Black Teachers Matter: The Past, Present and Future of Being a Black Teacher in Public Schools
• Careers In Education: Which Grade Level Is for You?
• SchoolsFirst Credit Union: Financial Education Workshop
• Teaching as an Act of Social Justice
• Life/Work Balance in an Education Career
• Making a Difference for Young Adolescents
• The Tutor-to-Teacher Pipeline: Learning Assistance Will Transform the Future of Education
• The Need for STEM Teachers of Color
• Shape a Better Society – Become a Special Education Teacher
• Re-Envisioning the Recruitment of Latino Teachers

Stowell said feedback from the students was very positive and that planning for the event next year has already begun.

“For a first-time event, it was a great success,” she said.

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist
bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

The grant was awarded to Ana Hernandez and Annette Daoud, both professors in the School of Education, through the National Professional Development (NPD) program. That program is administered by the Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition, which provides national leadership to ensure that English learners and immigrant students attain English proficiency and achieve academic success.

Of the 144 applications for NPD grants in the 2022 cycle, only 44 received funding.

“This grant will increase the opportunities for our culturally and linguistically diverse students to provide equitable learning environments in their communities and validate their own identities,” Hernandez said.

The grant creates a program called Project CELEBRATE (Childhood Early Literacy for Emergent Bilinguals with Resources and Access to Technology Engagement) that will build upon the results Hernandez and Daoud achieved through a previous NPD award that ended on Aug. 31. That grant was worth $2.56 million and was titled Project ACCEPT (Aligning the Common Core for English Learners, Parents and Teachers).

Both projects serve educators of English learners and their families. But while Project ACCEPT was focused on dual language education for English learners in kindergarten through eighth grade, Project CELEBRATE is geared to early literacy programs for English learners (pre-K to second grade) and their successful transition to middle elementary school (third through fifth grades).

Both projects aim to engage the families of English learners with mobile technology like iPads, but Project CELEBRATE broadens to include a partnership with the Parent Institute for Quality Education (based in National City) to conduct workshops for parents on early childhood development and family engagement in education.

Project CELEBRATE also features three new school district partners in San Marcos Unified, Vista Unified and Escondido Union – versus the previous partners of Oceanside, Fallbrook and Valley Center-Pauma. And the new project increases the number of CSUSM students who receive stipends – not only the Bilingual Authorization and Dual Language Certificate students served by Project ACCEPT, but also students in the Master of Arts in Multilingual and Multicultural Education and a new certificate being developed called “Certificate for Spanish Language and Cultural Development for Bilingual Educators.”

The grant funding will go toward professional development with the three district partners, stipends for CSUSM teacher candidates and in-service teachers, family workshops and technology, research, early literacy projects, and conferences.

“We can’t overstate the importance of the district partnerships to continue our collaboration with educators and administrators in strengthening the instructional programs for English learners and their families,” Daoud said.

Project CELEBRATE aims to build upon the outcomes of Project ACCEPT, which include almost $700,000 in total stipends, 172 students earning a Bilingual Authorization, 64 earning a Dual Language Certificate, 132 in-service teachers receiving professional development, and 115 families being trained in the use of mobile technology and being awarded an iPad upon completion.

Project CELEBRATE marks the third NPD grant awarded to Hernandez and Daoud. The first one, worth $1.75 million, was given in 2012 to improve the instruction of English learners in high schools. The three consecutive NPD grants have supported CSUSM teacher preparation programs and local schools with almost $7.5 million.

It’s a question that schools across the country are asking as education returns to some degree of normalcy from the pandemic. And it’s a question that Cal State San Marcos hopes to be on the leading edge of answering, thanks to a generous donation.  

CSUSM on Monday held a grand opening for the SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union Education Active Learning Lab, a large and previously traditional classroom on the fourth floor of University Hall that has been transformed thanks to a $132,707 gift from SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union. Headquartered in Orange County, SchoolsFirst is the nation’s largest educational credit union, serving California school employees and their families since 1934.  

“I am grateful to SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union for empowering out future educators with such an innovative learning space,” CSUSM President Ellen Neufeldt said Monday during the ribbon-cutting. “And my thanks also to our School of Education faculty and staff, as well as the leadership in our College of Education, Health and Human Services, for making this vision of a 21^st-century teaching and learning center a reality.” 

The renovation project took an existing double classroom, University Hall 444, that seats 60 students and turned into a reimagined space featuring modern, movable tables and chairs, wall-mounted and portable whiteboards, and state-of-the-art technology that includes 3D printers, virtual reality headsets and “power towers” (large charging stations).  

“The idea was, let's turn this into an active learning lab, let's think about how we use the space that we teach and learn in,” said Laurie Stowell, director of the School of Education. “How could we make it a model for our future teachers and our master’s students, our in-service teachers, for how we create environments for teaching and learning? I think that was the vision for how that room could be used.” 

The gift was secured in 2019 by a group that included Stowell’s predecessor, Pat Stall; School of Education professors Annette Daoud and Rebecca Brooks; and the former dean of CEHHS, Emiliano Ayala. But the pandemic caused a delay in implementation. Stowell revived the effort when she took over as director in January 2021, and the next several months were spent outfitting the space with furniture and equipment.  

The learning lab has been open and hosting classes since the beginning of the current academic year. Stowell said the next step is determining how else the room can be utilized and what type of programs will be adopted.  

“There will be workshops and seminars,” she said. “The point is to bring teachers to campus. So the room will really become a hub of the professional development that we offer for teachers.” 

The grand opening Monday was attended by several representatives from SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union, including CEO Bill Cheney.

“We are honored to support Cal State San Marcos as they reimagine the future of teaching and learning," Cheney said. “The SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union Education Active Learning Lab will help future teachers be on the cutting edge, preparing them to develop innovative lesson plans and ways that our students of tomorrow can learn and interact with technology.”

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Even when he was exposed to the concept early in his EDUC 364 course, he understood it mainly as a 20-hour requirement to complete the class. But the experience of tutoring foster youth as part of his service learning project affected Edwards deeply, so much so that he’s bringing a decided spirit of giving to the holiday season.

Edwards this month organized a toy drive with the student organization Brotherhood Alliance through the Black Student Center that netted 322 toys that will become Christmas gifts for local foster kids. If that weren’t enough, he also raised hundreds of dollars for a San Diego nonprofit that helps former foster kids transition to independent living.

“I just thought, ‘It’s the holidays and there are so many kids in the foster system who are going without and who just want to get a sense of what it feels like to have Christmas or be supported through their journey of being in foster youth,’ ” Edwards said. “So I took it upon myself to go a little farther and do these acts to demonstrate that we can all be the change that we want to see in terms of helping foster kids.”

Edwards embarked on the service learning project in a course taught by School of Education lecturer Sherry Freeborn called “The Role of Cultural Diversity in Schooling.” In that class and other education prerequisites like it, CSUSM partners with a program called Tutor Connection run by Michelle Bailow, who works in foster youth services for the San Diego County Office of Education.

After teaching students about the effects of trauma and the ins and outs of the child welfare system, Bailow matches them with a foster youth from somewhere in the county for 20 hours of tutoring supervised by her.

Edwards met for two hours every Monday with a seventh-grade foster youth who has special needs. Assuming at the outset that the sessions would revolve around classwork and other educational problems, Edwards soon discovered that was not the case.

“When I started talking with the kid, it became clear that he just needed a friend, someone to lift him up a little bit,” Edwards said. “That's what I began to do, and that's what got me thinking about the fundraisers that I have been participating in.”

Edwards derived so much inspiration from his weekly tutoring meetings that he volunteered to be paired with a second foster youth as well. And when he approached Bailow with his desire to do even more for the holidays, Bailow connected him with two local agencies. 

Promises2Kids, founded in 1981, is a San Diego nonprofit that annually supports more than 3,000 current and former foster youth in the county, and each December it holds the “Give from Your Heart” toy drive. In concert with the Brotherhood Alliance, Edwards stationed two drop-off boxes in the Black Student Center and several more at various locations around the county. Last week, he picked up the hundreds of toys and delivered them to Promises2Kids for distribution before Christmas. 

At the same time, Edwards worked with Just in Time for Foster Youth, specifically its My First Home program, which assists former foster youth in furnishing their new apartments as they exit the system and begin to live on their own. Edwards visited all of the EDUC 364 classes to present his fundraising plan and ask students to chip in up to $5. He and his friends in the Brotherhood Alliance then teamed up to match what the students gave, which amounted to a total of $600. 

Bailow has been a community partner of CSUSM for about 15 years, and she said Edwards’ level of initiative and generosity is rare in her experience.   

“I have phenomenal students who are dedicated to their kids and become mentors,” Bailow said. “But the fact that he took on all this on his own because this class had such an impact on him and that he wanted to give back and do something special for kids in the foster care system, he definitely stands out as one of the shining stars from all my years of doing this.” 

Edwards is on track to graduate in May 2023 with a degree in psychology. At 31, he also just became a licensed barber, having recently completed the required 1,500 hours of training and passed the California state exam. His career ambition is to fuse his two interests, bettering his clients’ mental state while cutting and styling their hair.  

“A lot of men won't go and talk to a therapist, but they'll talk to their barber,” he said. “I also hope to continue to partner with Michelle and offer my service for free to foster youth who need haircuts. I want to use that skill of cutting hair to support my education and to tie it in with everything else that I do.” 

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

The article, titled “Examining Field Experiences of Teacher Candidates During COVID-19: Systemic Inequities Unveiled for Underserved English Learners in K-12 Grades,” was published on Nov. 18. The authors are School of Education professors Ana Hernandez and Annette Daoud, psychology research faculty Anna Woodcock, and Kyle Landin, an assessment specialist in student services for the College of Education, Health and Human Services.  

The article marks the first collaborative publication to emerge from Project ACCEPT (Aligning the Common Core with English learners, Parents and Teachers), a five-year U.S. Department of Education grant that provides professional development to improve the education of English learners.  

The study supporting the journal article confirmed that, in the wake of COVID-19, K-12 English learners lacked access to online learning, active engagement with peers/teachers and differentiated instruction due to rapid changes and uncertainties in their programs.  

Professors published in journal 

Communication professors Michelle Holling and Dreama Moon have written an article that was recently published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech.  

The article is titled “20/20 in 2020?: Refractive Vision, 45 and White Supremacy.” It’s part of a forum on the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign focused on division, discord and democracy. 

Founded in 1915, the Quarterly Journal of Speech is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the National Communication Association.  

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

The group’s article, “Transforming Lives of Former Foster Youths: A Campus-Based Support Program Grounded in Social Work Values,” details ACE’s model.

“Support programs to improve higher education outcomes for former foster youths have emerged in the past 20 years, but literature to guide their development and implementation is limited,” the paper abstract states. “This conceptual article presents the program logic model for ACE (Achieving College Excellence) Scholars Services, the comprehensive, campus-based program supporting former foster youths grounded in social work values at California State University San Marcos.”

ACE Scholars Services has graduated more than 100 students since its founding in 2007.

Honors for School of Education alumni

Four alumni from the School of Education were honored with teacher of the year awards:

• Alex Buder, who works at Oak Valley Middle School, was named one of Poway Unified School District’s 2021 School Site Teachers of the Year.
• Sheen Garcia, who teaches at Del Dios Academy, was named a 2020-21 Teacher of the Year for Escondido Union School District.
• Joy Leichtfuss, a sixth-grade reading, language arts, and world history teacher at San Marcos Middle School, was named San Marcos Unified School District’s 2020-21 Teacher of the Year.
• Joe Prechtl, a teacher at Sullivan Middle School, was named a 2020-21 Teacher of the Year for Bonsall Union School District.

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

The competition, which is hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy, provides college students with “real-world experience and industry connections that will help them prepare for future careers in the marine energy sector and the blue economy.”

CSUSM is partnering with New Mexico State for the competition.

In its third year, the competition will have teams create a market-research-supported business plan; develop, design and test technologies; and build and test their device to achieve energy production.

Reza Kamali, an associate professor of electrical engineering, said the competition opportunity was possible with the assistance of Hamed Nademi, a faculty member at New Mexico State who is joining CSUSM this summer.

Nademi said wave energy is the most abundant form of renewable energy with a relatively high power density and readily available along the coasts.

“In some regions, this resource is large enough to form a significant part of the energy mix,” Nademi said. “To effectively and efficiently connect any of the marine technologies to the existing electrical infrastructure, either onshore or offshore, a power conversion system needs to be developed for the proper conditioning of the wave energy to be delivered.

“Rethinking the traditional rules and methods is required for the design and assembly of a marine electrical power network that needs a novel skill set for future workforces. This is an extra benefit of bringing electrical engineering students to this DOE 2022 Marine Energy Collegiate Competition. It stimulates students to pursue further studies in any area of STEM-related disciplines while simultaneously engaging them in the design, simulation and 3D printing experiments.”

Communication professor part of U.S. delegation on HIV/AIDS

Communication professor Andrew Spieldenner was selected to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations High Level Meeting (HLM) on HIV/AIDS from June 8-10.

This is the fourth HLM meeting, which is held every five years, since the UN General Assembly adopted its Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS in 2001. One of the objectives of this week’s meeting will be to review progress on commitments made at the 2016 HLM toward ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

Spieldenner also was recently named one of the Eastern Communication Association Teaching Fellows for 2021. The teaching fellows program recognizes a distinguished career of teaching excellence in the field of communication.

Honors for School of Education alumni

Three alumni from the School of Education were recently honored with teacher of the year awards:

• Sheila Gromm received the Outstanding Special Education Teacher Award for the North County Consortium of Special Education, which comprises 14 school districts in North San Diego County.
• Michael Mueller, an education specialist at Twin Oaks High School in San Marcos, was named San Marcos Unified School District Teacher of the Year Secondary.
• Sierra Thernes, an education specialist at Calavera Hills Elementary School in Carlsbad, was named Teacher of the Year in the Carlsbad Unified School District.

Recognition for nursing program

The nursing program has been ranked 21^st on College Values Online’s “30 Best Online RN to BSN Programs for 2021.”

College Values Online’s methodology includes tuition costs, return on investment, scholarship availability, accelerated program availability and online student support.

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Just a month after earning her degree, the 9/11 terrorist attacks shocked the nation, creating short- and long-term changes for the country. Amid the social and economic impacts in the aftermath of 9/11, the job market suffered. But Brown had followed a savvy tip to take the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) required to become a substitute teacher in California.

With that qualification, Brown quickly found a position as a substitute teacher in the Compton Unified School District. And just like that, she fell in love with teaching.

“It was effortless,” she said. “They placed me in a class where the teacher was out for the semester. I had a group of second graders on a long-term assignment. It was such a positive experience.”

Still, Brown spent some time cycling between work as a substitute teacher and positions in the field for which she had trained, including roles in the technical education department at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/CalTech and in television for “Steve Harvey’s Big Time Challenge.” But teaching kept calling to her.

Finally, in a conference room in Hollywood, she told Steve Harvey she was leaving the show to go to graduate school and earn her teaching credential. Her mind was made up.

“Teaching found me and it wouldn’t let me go,” Brown said. “I have always been one to connect with the community, so the connection with the families and the students drew me in. It was the joy and it was seeing the ‘aha’ moment. It was the feeling that I’m doing something that matters, that I’m helping children in the community be successful.”

Over the years, Brown has worked in schools from Los Angeles to North County San Diego and with students from kindergarten through 12th grade. No matter the grade, she is fulfilled by every class she teaches and she sees every student as filled with potential. Accordingly, she works hard to meet each student’s needs.

“As a Black woman, I’ve had my own personal schooling experience of not really getting what I needed in some schools,” she said. “You work that much harder because you see the students who look like you and you have this drive to do everything you can to set every student up for success, to provide them with what you didn’t have.”

While teaching countless students herself, Brown has continued her own education, earning a master’s in education in 2008, an education specialist teaching credential in 2012 and — from Cal State San Marcos — a preliminary administrative services credential in 2019.

After years of teaching, moving into administration was a natural next step. Making that change during a global pandemic wasn’t. In July 2020, Brown became the assistant principal at Breeze Hill Elementary School in the Vista Unified School District.

“I don’t know what was more challenging: having taken this position during a pandemic and helping to run a school, or doing this while being new in the district and trying to learn all of the systems and policies,” Brown said.

Regardless, she says her teaching experience and the CSUSM program both equipped her for her new responsibilities as well as for what the future holds post-pandemic.

“The way the (CSUSM) program paced us, you have the sense that you’re prepared to do this work and, even if you don’t have all of the tools, you have everything you need within you,” she said.

“There are a lot of people who say they will be glad when the schools get back to normal. I push back on that a little bit. I don’t want to go back to normal; I want to move forward to better.”

For more information on CSUSM’s MA in Educational Administration and Preliminary Administrative Services Credential, please visit csusm.edu/el/edadmin.

Now, almost three decades later, she’s ready for a new challenge.  

Stowell has been named the director of the School of Education, one of three schools within the College of Education, Health and Human Services at CSUSM. She will officially begin the job on Jan. 25, the first day of the spring semester, though she said she has been working closely with current director Pat Stall during the transition.  

Stall, who has been in the position since 2016, is returning as a faculty member in the School of Education.  

Stowell, a professor of literacy, will serve as the school’s director for the rest of this academic year and the next three academic years.  

“I love the School of Ed and I love my colleagues,” Stowell said. “I’m pleased to serve the school and the university, and I look forward to working with the other department chairs and directors in the college.” 

Because of the shared governance model of the School of Education, the approximately two dozen tenure-track faculty members are evaluated by peer review committees, not the director. That means that Stowell will remain their colleague as opposed to being their supervisor.  

“This is a role in which I can facilitate the work of other people rather than manage it,” she said.  

Deborah Kristan, the interim dean of CEHHS, said Stowell is “exactly the right person at the right time” for the job of director.  

“Her leadership in education scholarship, accreditation and shared governance ensure that she is well poised to be successful in this position,” Kristan said. “The School of Education is very fortunate to have such an accomplished colleague at the helm.” 

Stowell said one of her biggest immediate tasks will be continuing the work started by Stall in preparing reports for the process of accreditation that will culminate in about a year. Other challenges that Stowell expects to face during her term include funding shortages stemming from the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and difficult conversations about the future of education in a post-pandemic world. 

“What happens on the other side of all this online learning?” Stowell said. “The university is reflecting what’s happening in K-12, and our teacher credential candidates are being prepared fully online. But, hopefully in the fall, they’ll primarily go back to physical classrooms. What lessons can we take from this? What do we want to keep? What do we want to throw out? It’s a good opportunity to reflect on what works virtually and what we value in face-to-face environments.” 

Stowell will relinquish her teaching duties while serving as director, but she plans to keep running the San Marcos Writing Project, which she founded in 2001 and which provides professional development for local teachers. 

Stowell received the Brakebill Award for outstanding professor of the year at CSUSM in 1997 and the CSU Wang Family Excellence Award in 2005. She earned a Ph.D. in language, literature and reading from Ohio State University, before which she taught middle school in Columbus, Ohio, for 11 years.  

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

That’s unusual, Melo thought. Did I do something wrong? 

Nervously, he joined the call, having no idea what to expect. The principal began talking about the dual language department that Melo teaches for, about further planning for the upcoming year. Then he threw Melo another curveball. 

“Well, Jose,” the principal said, “there are some people who want to join this meeting.” 

Into the Zoom windows popped the San Diego County superintendent of schools and two other officials from the county office. Melo quickly went from confused to elated when they told him that he had been named one of the five county Teachers of the Year for the elementary through high school levels. 

“It was all just a big surprise to me,” Melo said. “It was a great way to start the school year.” 

Melo, a Cal State San Marcos graduate who teaches dual language social studies and English language development (ELD) at Valley Center Middle School, and his fellow honorees were chosen from among 40 educators selected by their districts for their commitment to students, teaching and lifelong learning. The selection panel was composed of former Teachers of the Year, school and county office of education administrators, and a parent representative.  

Melo will be recognized during the 30th annual “Cox Presents: A Salute to Teachers,” a pre-recorded show, on Nov. 21 and represent the county in the 2020-21 California Teacher of the Year program. The California Teacher of the Year winners will be announced later this fall.  

“Being a teacher is really a calling,” said Melo, 29. “I feel very fortunate to work with the students I work with every day. My students empower me. When you’re feeling a little down as a teacher, just listening to a student greet you or being excited walking into the classroom gives you the motivation, the energy to keep going.” 

Valley Center Middle School is part of the Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District, in which more than half of the student population is Latino. Because of that dynamic, when Melo teaches social studies, the lessons are delivered in English and Spanish, with the goal of students becoming bilingual and biliterate. He doubles as an instructor in the ELD program, which is designed for students whose primary language is not English, to help them learn the four domains of language: reading, writing, listening and speaking.  

The role is fitting for Melo. Born in Mexico, he moved with his family to Fallbrook when he was 6 years old. Like many of his current students, he grew up in a household where Spanish was the first language. Like many of his students, he participated in the ELD program – in his case, it started in kindergarten.  

“I can totally relate to those students and the challenges that they encounter in developing their English skills,” Melo said. “That’s one of the reasons why I really enjoy teaching ELD. And also working with the parents, I think that part is instrumental – informing them about their child’s education and how they can better support their kids as students.” 

Melo’s parents both worked in agriculture in Fallbrook and neighboring Bonsall, and as a boy, he would spend many summer days helping them pick avocados and other fruits and vegetables in the fields. In school, he took advantage of the federal Migrant Education Program, which provides supplementary educational and support services to identified migrant students.  

It was the combination of those two experiences – working with his family in the fields, while receiving empowerment from understanding teachers in school – that enabled Melo to begin to see a path forward through education, and even a potential career as an educator himself.  

Melo applied to and enrolled at Cal State San Marcos with the aid of the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP), essentially the higher ed version of the services that he had benefited from in elementary through high school. He also found inspiration through California Mini-Corps, a statewide program that recruits college students with migrant backgrounds to work as tutors for migrant students in public schools.  

After becoming the first person in his family to graduate from college – he earned a bachelor’s in liberal studies in 2012 – Melo didn’t stop there. Seeking to fulfill his goal of pursuing teaching, he stayed at CSUSM to complete a multiple subject credential with a focus on middle school education.  

His mentor that year was School of Education professor Ana Hernandez, who remains close to Melo and frequently invites him back to campus to speak to her students. It was Hernandez, in fact, who wrote the letter nominating him for the Teacher of the Year award.  

“I have seen Jose in many educational contexts – as a learner, teacher, and leader in education,” Hernandez said. “In every occasion, he has easily connected with the audience through engaging activities that allow creativity and voice in the process of learning. He is seen as a role model of equitable practices, reaching out to every linguistically and culturally diverse learner.” 

While he was in the credential program, Melo participated in the San Marcos Writing Project run by education professor Laurie Stowell. He found that to be doubly beneficial in that he was awakened to the power of writing to encourage students to tell their stories, and also awakened – by Stowell – to the possibility of graduate school.  

So two years after he started teaching in Valley Center, Melo returned to CSUSM to pursue a master’s in general education, taking night classes to fit around his day job. In the master’s program, he became more attuned to the social justice aspect of his profession.  

“It makes you see things through a different lens,” he said. “How can we better support minority students, students who are learning English as a second language, or American Indian students? In this district, we serve students from five different reservations, students who unfortunately have a very challenging history in terms of trusting the school system and trusting the teacher. So it’s crucial that I support those students and build connections with the families.” 

Melo is one of five children in his family, and it appears that he’s the one who’s paving the way for a better future. Neither of his two older siblings had the opportunity to attend college, but his younger sister followed him to CSUSM – graduating with a degree in accounting in 2018 – and his younger brother is a sophomore at the university. At Melo’s urging, he’s leaning toward becoming a teacher as well.  

“CSUSM is like a tradition in my family now,” Melo said. “I tell my students that it only takes one person in your family to take that step. It’s going to be challenging, but that one person will open the door and allow the rest to follow. The power of education is an amazing thing.” 

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

When she first came to CSUSM as an assistant professor in the early 2000s, Kristan was tasked with putting together preparatory courses for a future School of Nursing curriculum. She served on an advisory group whose work was the footprint for the conception and organization of the future CEHHS. And she been on hiring committees for the founding nursing faculty as well as for human development and kinesiology professors. 

Now, after 2½ years in that associate dean role, Kristan is ready for her next challenge. On July 1, she will begin a one-year appointment as interim dean of CEHHS, encompassing the 2020-21 academic year. She will succeed Emiliano Ayala, who has decided to take on a faculty position in the college as a special education professor. 

“I feel like I completely understand the operations of the college from being the associate dean for the last 2½ years,” Kristan said. “I feel like I’m well-positioned to step in and provide some stability during this time of instability around the country, to keep the college on track. That’s how I view the job of an interim, is really just to keep the trains running on time – making decisions as needed, of course, but not making huge, 90-degree turns on anything until we go through a national search and the new, permanent dean comes in.” 

Kristan was named associate dean by former dean Janet Powell and learned under Powell for six months until Ayala was hired in July 2018. Ayala elected to retain Kristan in the role, and she in turn helped him acclimate to his new job. Kristan said she “thoroughly enjoyed” working with Ayala, lauding his management style, initiatives and approach to the deanship.  

Ayala, for his part, has no doubt that he’s leaving the college in very capable hands. 

“I am confident that Dr. Kristan will lead CEHHS with the same skill, experience and dedication she has brought to her role as our associate dean,” Ayala said. “During my tenure as dean, countless times I relied on and benefited from her thoughtful, measured approach to problem-solving that maintained a primary focus on supporting the needs of our college. Her leadership experience on campus offers her the ability to draw upon strong relationships across campus and echoes her collaborative nature, which will serve the college in immeasurable ways this next year.” 

As associate dean, Kristan acquired an intimate understanding of the college’s seven units – nursing, education, speech-language pathology, social work, public health, kinesiology and human development – from their accrediting bodies to their successes and struggles. She also helped manage the college’s budget, which, along with her experience with previous state budget cuts as a professor, has equipped her to navigate the likely financial crunch to come as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.  

“I feel very confident in my ability to guide the college in a budget crisis,” she said.  

The pandemic and the devastation it has wrought have reinforced the vital importance of higher education, and in particular the disciplines taught in CEHHS that are so interconnected with COVID-19 – the nurses who work on the front lines in the fight against the disease, the public health experts who study it, the educators who are either teaching K-12 students or helping other teachers do so in a new and unfamiliar format. 

“I feel like all of the disciplines within our college have such relevance to what we’re all experiencing as humans as we’re moving our way through this pandemic,” Kristan said.  

Kristan has been a professor at CSUSM since 2003. Her husband, Bill, is the chair of the biology department. The couple has two sons: Nathan, a recent graduate of Humboldt State University (where Debbie completed her master’s degree) and Ian, who just finished his freshman year at San Diego State. 

“I have the viewpoint of an educator, an administrator and a parent in terms of how this pandemic is affecting higher education,” Kristan said. “I also believe in the CSU and its mission. I feel like it provides such a quality education, and I want to help move that forward in this year for CEHHS.” 

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Most students were going to brick-and-mortar buildings for their classes. Most college professors and all K-12 teachers were standing before rooms full of kids and young adults, delivering lectures or otherwise engaging them academically in person. 

Almost overnight, that age-old model fundamentally shifted because of the coronavirus outbreak, and in many ways, K-12 schools as well as colleges and universities are still scrambling to adjust to this new reality.  

To help instructors in smoothing that process, we reached out to a pair of faculty members from Cal State San Marcos’ School of Education who specialize in virtual teaching. Brooke Soles is an assistant professor of educational administration and leadership, and Anthony Matranga is an assistant professor of mathematics education and educational technologies.   

Question: What are the most important pieces of advice you’d give to K-12 teachers who are struggling to make this transition in the middle of a school year?  

Brooke Soles: Teacher-student connections matter. Like a physical classroom environment, the teacher is the most important factor in an online classroom. Even if your lesson doesn’t seem to be going well, the students remember how you made them feel. Students have to process feelings like hunger and fear before they can open up to learn intellectually. Yes, I understand that feelings are not a substitute for learning, but by creating a culture of care and working through a cultural proficiency framework, learning will occur. Whether you are sending a video post card through Animoto (a cloud-based video creation service) to your students, simply recording a 60-second Zoom announcement of yourself about the upcoming assignment, or providing a synchronous video chat for informal conversations or structured communication through free protocols from the National School Reform Faculty Harmony Education Center, it remains crucial to stay human and connected while delivering content. As an instructor, consider having students conduct their own brief Zoom meetings, following a set protocol, recording it, and posting it for you to review. Find ways to work smarter, not harder.  

Anthony Matranga: The most important piece of advice I’d give to teachers is to try not to recreate what you do in a face-to-face setting in the online setting. Instead, I’d encourage teachers to take advantage of the fact that collaboration in online settings can be asynchronous. In other words, the learning experience does not have to happen during a specifically scheduled time period during the day like folks are used to in face-to-face settings. Asynchronous collaboration has many benefits and slows down the fast pace of teaching and learning and provides learners and instructors time to think deeply about course content and their peers’/students’ ideas.  

Q: How does that advice differ for an elementary school teacher vs. a middle school teacher, and for middle school vs. high school? 

BS: It is not about time management, but rather attention management. Having worked in elementary, middle and high schools as a K-12 teacher in California and having worked as an assistant principal, principal and county office administrator, I find that no matter what age, people are people, and we get distracted. All classrooms need norms, accountability, connection, collaboration and caring environments to focus our attention to teaching and learning. Our middle school students might be posting to TikTok, but our adults are equally distracted responding to emails while on Zoom. Thus, how can we have not only courageous conversations about race and identity, for example, in our online environments, but also who owns and controls our attention?  

AM: This is a hard question. I don’t see an immediate difference between middle school and high school; however, my thought is that things might be different for elementary teachers because students might need more support staying focused on a task and transferring their thinking into an online space.  

Q: What have you been doing since the COVID-19 outbreak hit to assist instructors in the move online, either on or off campus? 

BS: My main focus has been checking in via email, phone and Zoom with my instructors and students to better understand what support they need and how to co-construct their next steps toward success. Because our Master of Arts in Education program is fully online, our instructors are already 100% online. Yet, some of these instructors are still new to teaching online and are now joining the rest of the teachers across the state who are learning how to teach online because of COVID-19. A unique challenge our program is facing is that our students who are K-12 teachers aspiring to be administrators are working in schools and districts that have closed their physical and sometimes virtual doors to teaching. The challenge right now is not the teaching but how to reduce the anxiety many people are experiencing so learning can occur.  

AM: I have been collecting resources for online teaching and learning, particularly in the area of mathematics education. I have been talking with my mathematics teacher candidates on a regular basis to support them in making the shift to online instruction. I’ve also reached out to some K-12 teachers I have worked with to see if they need help with the transition. I have been attending webinars from professional organizations to continue to learn more about teaching and learning online.  

Q: What do you see as the biggest challenges involved in online teaching? 

BS: Some of the biggest challenges of online teaching come from our own understanding of what we think online teaching can and cannot do. Once we get past the technical aspect of learning the technical – for example, how to click when and where – online teaching really becomes an experience in and of itself. In fact, there are data that show teachers and students have the same connection and learning experiences online as in person.  

In addition, instructors must be vigilant and address the racism, hate and xenophobia that occur online just like the physical classroom. Resources like Teaching Tolerance provide avenues and lessons on how to engage in courageous conversations on this topic. Instructors need to have synchronous opportunities, check blog posts, monitor Zoom chats, and scan the screen for visual signals of behavior that must be addressed. Silence can also mean many things in all settings. Zoom bombing is happening, too. Meeting one-on-one with students or even in smaller groups can benefit all to better understand your online classroom.  

AM: One the biggest challenges I see with online teaching is creating a learning experience for students that feels as if it is not mediated by the internet. I use several strategies to overcome this challenge. The first is to stay in regular contact with the students through a variety of communication mechanisms. For example, I send frequent announcements to a class regarding assignment deadlines, grading, etc. I also try to respond to student questions via email as fast as possible; even if I don’t have the answer to a question, I might say something like “I’m working on this, I’ll get back to you with an answer soon.” This strategy also includes reaching out to students if they miss a deadline for an assignment soon after the assignment was due. The idea is to give the class the sense that you are always online and always monitoring their activity in the online space.

The second strategy I use is to support communication between students. This includes using discussion forums to promote dialogue between students about the course they are completing. I monitor these spaces by subscribing to the course’s discussion forum so that every time someone posts to the forum, I get an email. Often times, questions come up and instead of answering the question, I might look for a student who had a similar question or seemed like they would have a good response to the question and tell the student to go to that person’s thread. In this sense, I am just facilitating conversation, just like you might do in a face-to-face setting. Another strategy I use is keeping track of the students I communicate with and when. For example, I’ll create a spreadsheet that has my students’ names and the weeks of the course. Every time I interact with a student via email, course discussion forum, etc., I tally the interaction on my spreadsheet. This allows me to ensure I am regularly interacting with all students in the class.  

Q: What pieces of technology or programs do you think would be most beneficial to teachers dealing with this situation? 

BS: Start with the one thing that works for you. There are so many options now. I recommend flipping the script by having students bring what they like to you or have seen to the classroom. What are they already using that is engaging? I understand social media use is a tricky area, yet having a conversation about what is appropriate and why is also realistic. Everything is a learning opportunity. You do not have to be the expert; you just have to be curious. Now, how will you connect it to your content?  

AM: I think the most important pieces of technology are those that allow for communication between students. Many universities have learning management systems with discussion forums, which I think are great for collaboration, particularly the asynchronous collaboration that I mentioned earlier. However, there are other technologies such as Edmodo and Google Classroom that can serve similar purposes. In addition, platforms such as Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Slack and so on allow for synchronous, video-based communication. I also think Twitter and other apps geared for mobile communication can be effectively used to support productive collaboration between students. With that said, I think the most effective online instruction uses a variety of these communication technologies in order to appeal to students’ different interests and learning styles. 

Q: Most teachers can no longer fill up the whole school day with virtual instruction. What do you think parents can or should be doing to help fill the void?  

BS: Work with your colleagues and school leaders to figure out what our collective future looks like. I do not consider this as helping to fill a void. It is most definitely a period of transition, transformation and the unknown. It is a time of free play coupled with lots of reading. And perhaps it is a time to better understand how to engage in play, innovative practices and even video games with our families and communities, as Dr. Sinem Siyahhan, CSUSM School of Education faculty, discusses in her book, “Families at Play.” How are we changing the narrative we are telling ourselves about what is happening and what will happen? 

AM: Well, I’m not sure I have the answer for this, but I can tell you what my wife and I have been doing with our 5-year-old and 18-month-old girls. My kids love animals and going to the zoo, so our breakfast routine has included watching a YouTube video from a series the Cincinnati Zoo is doing. Each day they spotlight a particular animal, and the zookeeper talks about the animals and answers questions from the “live” audience. I have also been trying to teach my 5-year-old some basic coding using an app on the iPad. We asked our 5-year-old what she wanted to learn, and she said to “tell time.” So we have been working with her on learning how to tell time. We also read together and do other things like build a boat out of pillows and “paddle to La Jolla,” and we have had several trips to “the beach,” which is the patio area of our apartment. We also watch movies, exercise, and cook together. It has been interesting so far, but I guess my recommendation would be to involve your kids in things you are interested in doing and also get involved in the things your kids are interested in doing.  

Q: What do you say about the problem of students who don’t have the same access to the technology and equipment necessary for online education? 

BS: This is a serious equity issue. Not all families have access to reliable Wi-Fi. Parents have been laid off due to COVID-19. Families are negotiating space at home for those who have been infected with the coronavirus. Two-parent households are both working from home with kids. Single-parent households are doing the same with more responsibilities. This is everyone; not just our students, but our teachers and faculty, too. Figuring out how to get food into the home without exposing loved ones to the coronavirus is a daunting task, let alone figuring out how to pay for that food with the income-earner falling ill. Thus, it is our responsibility as teachers, school leaders and community members to work together to find solutions for the good of everyone.  

AM: This is a hard one. Zoom and other video communication technologies are data-heavy and require up-to-date technology and strong internet connection during a particular time period of the day. Therefore, I think asynchronous collaboration can help with this issue because students can participate via text-based communication (which is less data-heavy than video) during a time when they may have access to a friend or family members’ technology. With that said, I’ve heard that schools are trying to provide some students with technologies as well as set up hotspots to improve access to strong internet connection.  

Q: Do you foresee a crisis like this making online education more palatable or appealing to teachers? 

BS: We have to change our mindset. It is really not just about going online. It is about how the way of life as we know it has changed because of COVID-19. It seems “going to online instruction” is being conflated with “this is absolutely terrible.” I love teaching. Whether it is online, in person or in blended modalities, teaching and learning are my thing. I challenge myself and others to use a future studies frame to examine what possible, probable and preferable futures we would like to envision. We have to meet the students, technology and ourselves where we are and go from there. 

AM: I hope so! While I don’t see teaching moving exclusively online for a long time or if it even makes sense to do that, I think at least hybrid instruction has benefits that can improve student learning in all classrooms. For example, teachers could incorporate online discussions into their class that occur before the face-to-face class session. The teacher could then read the discussion before the class and identify interesting themes in the discussion, misconceptions, etc. that can be used to inform the face-to-face discussion and questions the teacher might ask during the discussion.  

However, there may be environmental benefits to moving to exclusively online instruction. For example, as we are seeing, reductions in travel because of the pandemic are resulting in improved air quality in China and potentially in the United States and globally in the weeks to come. Travel for educational purposes is not the sole contributor to CO2 emissions in the world; however, the more we move instruction online, the larger impact education can have on reducing CO2 emissions.  

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

The theme for this year is Better Together: NOW More than ever, and will feature Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of former Vice President Joe Biden, as the keynote speaker for the Summit. She will speak at Saint Mary’s College and her remarks will be simulcast to the 34 other sites across the state.

The Summit will also include addresses by education leaders, TED-style EdTalks presented by local teachers, and Edcamp discussions on timely, relevant and resourceful topics. Teachers will walk away with access to new resources and concrete tools that are already working in classrooms across the state.

One of 35 locations across the state, CSUSM invites San Diego-area teachers to an energized day where they can share ideas, learn the latest in a host of cutting-edge innovations, and join a state-wide teacher network and meet new colleagues from a variety of districts in and beyond our county. Running from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., the Summit will take place in CSUSM’s USU Ballroom at 333 South Twin Oaks Valley Road in San Marcos.

“Teachers have described past Summits as a powerful day of learning that made them proud of what they do and reminded them what an important difference they make in the lives of their students,” said Leslie Mauerman, a lecturer in CSUSM’s School of Education and the University’s Teachers Summit site lead. “We’re thrilled to invite San Diego-area teachers to our campus to join this growing network of teachers.”

A unique partnership between the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities, the California State University and New Teacher Center formed to host this free statewide day of learning. Through their strong and distinct networks, the organizers will reach educators at every stage in their development: new and veteran teachers, current teaching students, and alumni. Funding sources, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bechtel, Google, The Irvine Foundation, the Schwab Foundation, Boeing and many more, have made this significant teacher movement possible.

More information, a list of event locations, and online registration is available at CATeachersSummit.com. Follow #CATeachersSummit for up-to-date information.

What: Better Together: California Teachers Summit, a free statewide day of learning and networking

Who: Open to all California PreK-12 teachers, teacher candidates, school administrators and other educators

When: 8 a.m.-12:30 p.m., July 28

Where: USU Ballroom, California State University San Marcos

Cost: Free

Information: Click here to register or visit cateacherssummit.com for more information

About California State University San Marcos

Building on an innovative 27-year history, California State University San Marcos is a forward-focused institution, dedicated to preparing future leaders, building great communities and solving critical issues. Located on a 304-acre hillside overlooking the City of San Marcos, it is the only public four-year comprehensive university serving North San Diego, Southwest Riverside and South Orange Counties.

The University enrolls over 15,000 students. With approximately 2,000 employees, the institution is a Great College to Work For® (The Chronicle of Higher Education). As a recipient of the annual HEED Award since 2014—a national honor recognizing U.S. colleges and universities that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion—CSUSM is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment.

After visiting the museum, Diggs suggested that the three of them meet the following day to work on writing their first paragraph together.

Instead, the students were in Diggs’ office by lunch time the very day of the trip, each bringing along a paragraph they had written about their favorite part of the museum.

“When you’re making it meaningful for the kids, the reluctant learners, the student with an IEP, everybody – the project just brought so many kids together to shine,” said Diggs, a school-based resource teacher at Stuart Mesa, a K-8 school on Camp Pendleton.

“Voices of Military Children” was a collaboration between the San Marcos Writing Project and Stuart Mesa. It quickly grew into a multimedia project culminating in a red-carpet event at the school on May 3.

“You could really feel the pride from those kids, the pride they have in their parents and what they do every day,” said Laurie Stowell, a professor in Cal State San Marcos’ School of Education and the director of the San Marcos Writing Project. “They don’t take it for granted.”

The San Marcos Writing Project is part of the National Writing Project, a professional development network of teachers aiming to improve student-writing achievement. Diggs has participated in the San Marcos Writing Project for a number of years and attended its leadership institute in 2015.

Diggs said “Voices of Military Children” originally set out to have the students do some writing and oral histories, but soon transitioned to more journal writing.

“It was such a creative project that was inclusive,” said Diggs, who will be a 2017-19 CSUSM Distinguished Teacher in Residence. “It really allows access for all the kids.”

The project quickly expanded to include a film component after Diggs saw an episode of “Bulldog News” produced by a class taught by Jim Riggenbach, a science teacher at Stuart Mesa.

“Irene thought it would be a perfect match, and it really is,” Riggenbach said. “There are so many literacy skills taught through video.”

The videos include first-graders reading their own words in a salute to their parents in the military as well as documentary-style video features on Camp Pendleton landmarks such as the Historic Ranch House.

Four of the films have been nominated for Innovative Video in Education (iVIE) Awards. The 16th Annual iVIE Awards & Student Film Festival is June 3 at the Coronado Performing Arts Center.

“Voices of Military Children” was funded through a grant from Ruth Westreich, which allowed Diggs and Riggenbach to purchase equipment for the film work and covered the cost of printing about 500 copies of an anthology of the students’ writing.

Stuart Mesa students worked on the project throughout the year and Riggenbach proposed a red-carpet event to celebrate their success. About 250 people attended, including Patricia Prado-Olmos, CSUSM’s vice president of community engagement; Janet Powell, dean of the College of Education, Health and Human Services; Pat Stall, director of the School of Education; and Marilyn Huerta, CEHHS communications specialist.

Brigadier General Kevin J. Killea and Sgt. Major Julio E. Meza also attended as did Robin Hutton, author of the book “Sgt. Reckless: America's War Horse.” Hutton allowed Stuart Mesa students to use her book and photos as a resource for one of the videos they produced about the Reckless monument on Camp Pendleton. It was one of the four films nominated for an iVIE Award, along with “My Voice, My American,” “The Ranch House” and “LCAC.”

Students shared their writing and film work at the red-carpet event, speaking in front of the large audience and having their videos screened.

“I was so proud of them,” Diggs said. “The first graders are mostly writing about their dad or mom being a hero. But the middle schoolers, there’s a lot of loss in their stories. I really think that can apply to a lot of immigrant kids. Just getting children to connect that way and share their voice and that experience is important.”

Riggenbach said they are planning to do the project again at Stuart Mesa and he would love to see it expand to other schools.

“It’s project-based learning to the max where all different levels of students have a chance to shine,” he said.

Added Diggs: “People need to tell their stories. We have so many people from different cultures here. Maybe this is a pilot to remind people to tell their stories, build community and remember to share a bit of humanity with one another.”

At the end of March, she took 16 Cal State San Marcos School of Education students to the California Association for Bilingual Education conference in Anaheim.

She has already heard from school districts wanting to interview them.

“They’re worth their weight in gold because they get a regular credential and then on top of that they’re bilingual and they’re credentialed to teach in a bilingual class,” said Hernandez, an associate professor of multilingual and multicultural education and coordinator of CSUSM’s Bilingual Authorization Program, Dual Language Certificate and Multicultural Specialist Certificate in the School of Education.

“They can communicate with parents, they can do conferences in two languages, they can provide curriculum in two languages. You’re hiring someone who’s basically going to do double work.”

Hernandez is completing the first year of a $2.56 million, five-year grant awarded last fall through the U.S. Department of Education. The grant is titled Project ACCEPT, or Aligning the Common Core for English learners, Parents and Teachers.

The project is supporting the professional development of teachers preparing to teach English language learners. Hernandez said that out of nearly 400 grant applications, only 48 were funded.

“That says a lot about Cal State San Marcos’ program,” she said. “I think the fact that we already had a Dual-Language Certificate and we already had a Bilingual Authorization Program gave us a leg up because we already had it institutionalized here.”

Through the grant, Hernandez is working with Fallbrook Union Elementary School District, Oceanside Unified School District and Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District.

The K-12 teachers will be trained in strategies for dual-language education with English-language learners.

“One of the nice things about these programs is the other half of the students are English-only students who want to learn Spanish as a second language,” Hernandez said. “It’s like a conduit and they’re learning languages from each other. So not only is the teacher teaching language through content, such as science in Spanish or social studies in English depending on what the school district decides to do with the content instruction, but then those students are also learning the other language.”

The grant provides stipends for the K-12 teachers as well as funds for attending conferences and instructional materials.

Working with local school districts is just one part of the grant. It is also helping to recruit new bilingual teachers through CSUSM’s teaching credentialing program. CSUSM students receive a $3,000 scholarship for completing the program, which includes two classes and a field experience in a bilingual setting. They also take a state exam to establish oral and written proficiency in Spanish.

CSUSM student Christopher Norby is adding an English credential and the bilingual authorization to increase his hiring prospects.

While many of the students in the program are native or heritage Spanish speakers, Christopher started learning Spanish in eighth grade. He continued taking Spanish classes through high school and earned a minor in it as a CSUSM undergrad.

“I knew that this skill would be an advantage for me as an educator and was excited to hear about a Bilingual Authorization at the beginning of my credential program,” Christopher said.

Hernandez is hoping more CSUSM students learn about the scholarship opportunity. They are awarding 16 this year and will have funding for 50 next year – 25 through the Dual Language Certificate Program and 25 through the Bilingual Authorization Program.

Christopher said the program has been instrumental in helping him develop his teaching skills for English-learning students.

“These students are often the most lost and in need of help at the high school level, especially in content area classrooms where there is little additional support,” he said. “Being able to use skills acquired in this class has made me more adaptable for the students that need my help. Having learned a second language myself and having been a language minority in my Spanish classes has made me more appreciative and relatable to the struggles of my language-learning students.”

The grant also has a research component that includes following program participants to track their progress as bilingual teachers.

“It’s exciting to see our students involved in something like this and also that we’re working so closely with our community partners,” Hernandez said. “Our University is all about service and partnerships in our community and strengthening that. This benefits both the public education system and our students at Cal State San Marcos.”

She was right.

CSUSM’s Single Subject Credential Program will be honored with the CCTE Award in Conducting Research/Practice in Support of the Common Core State Standards at the group’s Fall 2016 Conference on Oct. 20-22.

The theme of the conference – “Together We Work Better: Partnerships in Teacher Education” – perfectly encapsulates why CSUSM won.

CSUSM faculty collaborate with partners from the Escondido Union High School District (EUHSD) to design instruction, activities and resources that aid both teacher candidates at the University and EUHSD teachers in using Common Core State Standards and California English Language Development Standards.

“The innovation of what we’re doing comes in the collaboration,” said Daoud, an associate professor in the School of Education. “Part of what they thought was innovative was that we sit down with our colleagues at the district and talk through this stuff. We spend a lot of time brainstorming. Everybody’s got a piece of expertise.”

CSUSM’s project is part of a five-year grant received in 2012 from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition.

As part of the grant, Daoud said they created a Professional Learning Community centered around teaching English learners in high school classes. The Professional Learning Community includes six members of CSUSM’s Single Subject Credential Program – Daoud, Anne Rene Elsbree, Joe Keating, Julie Rich, Tina Shinsato and Pat Stall – as well as five members of EUHSD.

“The 11 of us come together in this Professional Learning Community and we talk about ideas, how we can do things and what people see in the classroom,” Daoud said. “We have this partnership where together we create professional development workshops for the teachers and we develop curriculum for our students here. So we have two audiences – current teachers and future teachers.”

Daoud credits the Professional Learning Community for playing a large role in CSUSM receiving the CCTE award.

“It helps us design professional development for the teachers that makes sense and is useful for them and then design curriculum for our classes, which help our students understand,” Daoud said.

Daoud said one of the challenges that the project aims to address is how to effectively teach English language development in addition to a person’s content area, such as science or math. She said the grant is working simultaneously with CSUSM students in the Single Subject Credential Program and EUHSD teachers to help them understand how to do that.

Although this is the last year of the grant, Daoud said the group is already talking about continuing the Professional Learning Community because it has proven so beneficial.

“We’re really seeing such improvement,” she said. “A lot of our students do their student teaching in Escondido, which is our partnership district for this. They’re working with teachers who maybe two or three years ago went through the workshops with the grant. Everybody’s talking the same language, so it’s really nice.”

Daoud’s group will be recognized at the CCTE conference where they will also present at a poster session and Daoud will be part of a panel featuring people involved in collaborative projects.

Daoud is hoping the successful partnership between CSUSM and EUHSD can serve as inspiration for others.

“Anybody can partner with a district and do this,” she said. “It’s really easy and it fosters those relationships. We get the benefit of knowing how Escondido is teaching this particular curriculum and that helps us teach our students.

“It’s good to get their expertise and it helps us prepare the future teachers be the best they can be with the most current pedagogy that’s out there.”

But some 15 years later, Stowell remains dedicated to helping K-12 educators throughout the community improve the teaching and learning of writing.

The San Marcos Writing Project is one of about 200 sites of the National Writing Project, a professional development network of teachers aiming to improve student-writing achievement.

Stowell, who recently finished her 24^th year as a professor of literacy at Cal State San Marcos, was familiar with the National Writing Project from participating in one when she was a teacher in Ohio.

Eileen Oliver, a former associate dean at CSUSM, had been a writing project director and suggested that they start one at CSUSM.

“I always think of her as the fairy godmother of the project,” Stowell said.

At that first meeting, Stowell jokes that “everybody else sort of stepped back” when it came time to determine a director, leaving her to run the program. And it has been a passion of hers ever since.

“When I became a director they described it to me as a house,” she said. “In the living room is your summer institute, but you keep building out so you have these different rooms doing different things. A lot of people think it’s just the summer institute, but it’s really how you’re developing teacher leadership and serving your area schools.”

The San Marcos Writing Project serves as a resource for K-12 teachers and school districts in the region. There are workshops throughout the year and a variety of Young Writers camps for students during the summer. The centerpiece is the five-week summer institute that uses a “teachers teaching teachers” model to provide professional development opportunities.

“We’re all learning from each other,” Stowell said. “It’s developing teacher leadership. It’s not me offering a class, which is why I love to do it because I get ideas every summer. It’s not just me delivering, it’s the synergy of who shows up that summer.”

Stowell works closely with the North County Professional Development Federation. Each National Writing Project site also has a teacher serve as a co-director, a role Nancy Pace-Skinner has filled here for many years.

“The people who come to the summer institute are very thoughtful, very dedicated, very student-centered,” said Pace-Skinner, who recently retired from the Vista Unified School District.

Teachers attend the summer institute from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday for five weeks. The mornings include demonstrations, workshops and guest speakers. The afternoons are typically reserved for writing.

Stowell said one of the project’s guiding philosophies is that the best teachers of writing are writers themselves. Participants are able to use their own writing as models and have experiences similar to what they ask of their students.

The teachers meet in peer response groups at the end of the day to share and respond to each other’s writing. They also publish an anthology of their writing from the institute.

“You show up and you write every day,” Stowell said. “That’s what we’re trying to show kids. It’s not that people have been inspired and born gifted writers. You work at it. It’s a hard thing for kids.”

Some educators ask about the challenge of sharing experiences at the summer institute when there might be wide age gaps in the grades they teach, but Stowell said that isn’t a problem.

“What we always say is, ‘Share your best practice,’ ” she said. “Let the first grade teacher figure out what they can take from it or let the 12^th grade teacher figure out what they can take from it. And they always do. First grade teachers bring their picture books and talk about how they use them in their class. Twelfth-grade teachers see ways they can apply it. They all learn from each other.”

Stowell said new school writing standards have created a bigger need for writing project workshops as teachers try to become more comfortable teaching students about writing. The hope, Stowell said, is that with these new standards comes a shift away from formulaic writing that may prepare students to write in on-demand situations but not necessarily prepare them to write in college.

One of the challenges of the writing project is in funding. Contributions from the National Writing Project have decreased and Stowell spends significant time applying for grants. Some National Writing Project sites have even started hosting an institute every other summer rather than annually in an effort to reduce funding needs.

“I didn’t realize it was going to be such a hamster wheel of constantly searching for money, but it makes it worthwhile that you can serve the teachers,” Stowell said.

One of the goals of the institute is to help teachers develop leadership skills and workshops and then being able to serve as a model for good writing practices.

Pace-Skinner noted the dedication required to devote five weeks during the summer to professional development, which means the institute typically attracts highly motivated participants.

“You come here and it’s like the teacher’s staff room from heaven,” Pace-Skinner said. “It’s awesome. Everybody is here because they want to be here. They’re interested and they want to grow and they want to learn. That sustains you. That’s the kind of stuff that just feeds you as a teacher.”

Homie UP, short for Homie Universidad Popular, is a program that offers American history from a Chicano/Latino perspective free of charge to incarcerated individuals. The initiative started after community members participating in a similar curriculum known as Universidad Popular, or People’s University, expressed interest in presenting the information they were learning to their incarcerated loved ones.

“The program was initially intended for those serving a life sentence, but then we received so many requests, we felt compelled to make it accessible to all incarcerated individuals regardless of sentence length,” said Flor Alvarez, a Homie UP coordinator and National Latino Research Center (NLRC) Research Assistant.

As the popularity of the program increases, the program coordinators are beginning to feel some growing pains as their staff and funding remains the same.

“We have spent countless hours creating the Homie UP curriculum and reviewing assignments— sometimes we work overnight or even on the weekends,” said Alvarez. “It’s all on a volunteer basis, so many times we pay out of pocket to send assignments. When we are fortunate, some family members will contribute stamps, paper and envelopes.”

When the program was at its infancy, all the students were of Latino decent. Now, Homie UP’s student base is very diverse and includes both male and female inmates of all ethnicities convicted of a variety of offenses. The team’s future plan is to offer an increased variety of classes, and not just from a Latino perspective.

“This project has really catapulted us into this national discussion that’s going on around incarceration,” said NLRC Research Director Arcela Nuñez-Alvárez. “Our project is very much aligned to issues that happening nationally and at the state level and locally.”

A $10,000 grant from California Humanities has allowed the team to tell the story further through a documentary titled, Homie UP: Stories of Love and Redemption. The grant supports documentary films, radio and new media productions that enhance the community’s understanding of California and its cultures, peoples and histories.

The team had a one-year turnaround time to create the film and worked with filmmaker Jennifer Myhre, as well as an advisory group consisting of CSUSM professors David Avalos, Bonnie Bade, Marisol Clark-Ibáñez and Charles “Chuck” Allen.

The hour-long documentary recently received accolades and was presented with a Silver Award by the Spotlight Documentary Film Awards in December 2015.

So far the award-winning film has hosted 10 screenings throughout California from San Diego to San Francisco. The documentary features real students who have been released from prison, and family members. Screenings are usually accompanied with an art exhibit displaying the work of Homie UP students, as well as a panel discussion about how the prison system affects the entire community.

According to Nuñez-Alvárez, there is still a lot of discussion to be had concerning families, inmates and the so-called school-to-prison pipeline, a systematic process by which students, primarily African Americans and Latinos, are pushed out of the mainstream educational system and channeled into the criminal system.

“This happens through harsh and discriminatory school discipline policies,” said Nuñez-Alvárez. “Research shows that students of color receive harsher punishments. Incidents at school tend to be the first encounter with law enforcement and thus begin the pathway to jail or prison.”

The documentary is now being used as an educational tool for the community. An expansion of the documentary, which looks at why certain populations are over represented in prisons and in jail, is already in the planning stages.

“There is finally a shift of dialogue,” said Lilian Serrano, CSUSM alumnus and NLRC research coordinator. “Everyone can talk about the numbers, but the film gives faces to mass incarceration. For every person that is in prison, there is a mother, a father, a sibling or even children. I think that is a contribution to the discussion that no one else is making and that’s what makes this project unique.”

To learn more about Homie UP or to view an upcoming screening of Homie UP: Stories of Love and Redemption contact NLRC at 760-750-3500.

The fellowship will allow Ochanji to travel to his native country of Kenya in the summer of 2015 to work on a project to develop online curriculum and materials for the courses offered in the Teacher Professional Development Program at Kenyatta University in Nairobi. While there, Ochanji will collaborate with members of the university faculty.

The online access project will benefit thousands of teachers employed by the Kenya Teachers Service Commission. Many teachers, especially those who do not live or work in close proximity to a university, do not have access to professional development program curriculum.

“I am pleased and excited about the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship and the opportunity it offers to help teachers have online access to professional development coursework,” said Ochanji.”It will benefit thousands of teachers working all over Kenya.”

As part of the fellowship program, Ochanji will also work with faculty members of Kenyatta University to explore ways to establish long–term collaborations between CSUSM and Kenyatta University.Ochanji received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in science education from Kenyatta University and his Ph.D. in secondary science education from Syracuse University. He joined the faculty of the CSUSM College of Education, Health and Human Services in 2003. He has returned to Kenya several times in the last 15 years to collaborate with Kenyatta University’s faculty to develop teacher education curriculum and professional development programs.

No, this wasn’t your typical trial. The October 8 proceedings in Department 20 at San Diego Superior Court marked a crucial test of CSUSM Associate Professor Fran Chadwick’s work with a class of homeless fourth graders to change the way civics is taught in public schools. Chadwick’s `Literacy and the Law’ project brings lessons in line with Common Core state standards in persuasive writing and includes content standards in theatre, English language arts, history and social science, culminating in a mock trial in which a character from a book, play or current event has his or her day in court.

Over the previous weeks, fourth graders at San Diego’s Monarch School for the homeless had read David Shannon’s popular No, David! books and were asked to analyze accusations that the title character had stolen a batch of stickers from his teacher. On this day, David was put on trial, with Monarch School fourth graders playing the role of judge, jury, prosecutor, defense attorney, witnesses and the accused.

“We are teaching students about the rule of law, about being innocent unless proven guilty, issues of impartiality, and about making decisions based on the available facts and not based on someone’s opinion of a particular character,” Chadwick said.

Why target fourth graders at the Monarch School for the test run?

“We need to reach all youth, and youth from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to have any experiences with civics at all,” Chadwick said.

Chadwick has been working with Monarch School instructor and former San Diego County Teacher of the Year Stephen Keiley. San Diego’s Monarch School for the homeless and those at risk of becoming homeless is the only school of its kind in the country. Many of Keiley’s students live in homeless shelters, motels, cars, or find a roof to sleep under by couch surfing.

“I’ve never done anything like this on this level before,” Keiley said before the mock trial got under way. “But this is very impressive. It brings real-life situations to our kids, it opens up new vocabulary, a new understanding about the legal process and it also opens their eyes to new career possibilities.”

Chadwick is hoping to put the finishing touches by the end of the year on a new website that will serve as a ‘Literacy and the Law’ resource, complete with reference material and lesson plans, for instructors interested in adopting the teaching strategy that culminates with a mock trial.

Such project-based learning and providing quality civics resources for teachers is one of the recommendations of the California Task Force on K-12 Civic Learning, which has recently published `Revitalizing K-12 Civic Learning in California, a Blueprint for Action.’ Chadwick, who teaches in CSUSM’s School of Education, served as an advisor to the task force that was supported by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. Literacy and the Law’s advisory board consists of a who’s who of experts in law and education, including Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools David Gordon, Fourth District Court of Appeals Justice Judith McConnell, and lawyer and USD law professor Lynne Lasry.

Other lesson plans in the testing stage elsewhere in the state include a court case, Gurdev Kaur Cheema vs. Harold Thompson, which dealt with the constitutional right of freedom of religion for the Cheema children, who were kept from attending school while wearing a `kirpan,’ one of the items of faith they must wear as part of their Sikh religion. A third lesson plan involves the historical fiction `Journey to Topaz’ by Yoshido Uchida, which follows a family through its experience as Japanese-Americans sent to an internment camp during World War II and its subsequent return home after the war.

“Honestly, I was a little hesitant at first to implement this kind of a lesson plan at this grade level,” Keiley said. “But by using age-appropriate literature, we’re making it work. We’ve taken a children’s book and dug deeper to look at what it means to be accused, what it means to be charged with a crime and what the criminal justice system involves.”

This isn’t just any mock trial. It stems from an effort led by Fran Chadwick, Ed.D., associate professor in CSUSM’s School of Education and advisor to the California Task Force on K-12 Civic Learning. Chadwick has been working with a class of fourth graders at San Diego’s Monarch School for homeless children, the only such school of its kind in the United States.

Chadwick’s `Literacy and the Law’ project incorporates literature, theatre, composition, and critical thinking skills into lessons about the judicial branch of government, culminating in a mock trial in which a character from a book, play or current event has his or her day in court.

The trial gets underway Oct. 8 at 10 a.m. in the San Diego Superior Court when “David,” the character from the popular children’s series of `No, David!’ books by David Shannon, is accused of stealing a supply of stickers from his teacher’s desk drawer. Playing the role of judge, jury, prosecutor, defense attorney, witnesses and David will be Monarch School fourth graders. Once the trial is over, students will write and illustrate their own book, David Says “Yes” To the Rule of Law!

“We are teaching students about the rule of law, about being innocent unless proven guilty, issues of impartiality, and about making decisions based on the available facts and not based on someone’s opinion of a particular character,” Chadwick said. “The learning unit is based on Common Core State Standards on persuasive writing, and include content standards in theatre, English language arts and history social science.”

Why target fourth graders at the Monarch School for the test run?

“We need to reach all youth—and youth from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to have any experiences with civics at all,” said Chadwick.

Chadwick has been working with former San Diego County Teacher of the Year Stephen Keiley. Many of Keiley’s students reside in shelters, motels or cars, or find shelter by `couch surfing.’ When Chadwick is done, lesson plans and resource material will be posted on an educators’ website that she is developing.

Much is at stake as we face a civics crisis in this nation. Chadwick’s project-based learning units are created in an effort to provide quality civics resources for teachers, one of the recommendations of the California Task Force on K-12 Civic Learning, which has recently published, Revitalizing K-12 Civic Learning in California: a Blueprint for Action. The task force was supported by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. It was co-chaired by Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools David Gordon and Administrative Presiding Justice Judith McConnell from the Fourth Appellate District. The task force included prominent members across the state, including those who believe that the answer to the civic crisis and the success of our nation and state depend on educated, informed and active citizens.

Other lesson plans in the testing stage elsewhere in the state include a court case, Gurdev Kaur Cheema vs. Harold Thompson, which dealt with the Constitutional right of freedom of religion for the Cheema children, who were kept from attending school while wearing a `kirpan,’ one of the items of faith they must wear as part of their Sikh religion. A third lesson plan involves the historical fiction `Journey to Topaz’ by Yoshido Uchida, which follows a family through its experience as Japanese-Americans sent to an internment camp during World War II and its subsequent return home after the war.

WHO: Monarch School fourth graders; CSUSM; San Diego Superior Court.

WHAT: A mock trial with homeless fourth graders to test out new multidisciplinary lesson plans that meet Common Core standards.

WHEN: 10 a.m., Wednesday, Oct. 8

WHERE: San Diego Superior Court, Department 20, 330 W. Broadway, San Diego.

The university is launching a new, specialized program to train educators for dual language classrooms, where students learn everything from math to the humanities in both English and either Spanish, French, Mandarin or another second language. Demand for such instruction is exploding as parents and educators come to realize that American students must be fluent in more than one language to compete effectively in the global economy.

To help schools meet the growing demand, CSUSM this fall will offer a new Dual Language Certificate through its Master of Arts in Education program.

“You want teachers who are grounded in the research and methodology,” said Nenette Adelson-Rodriguez, director, Bilingual Services, for the San Diego County Department of Education. “Very few colleges or universities offer a program like this.”

According to some estimates, up to 3,000 schools nationwide are now home to dual language or language immersion programs, and the number of programs in San Diego County has spread from 10 in 2000 to 72 last year. The Los Angeles Unified School District this fall is adding Spanish language programs to three of its elementary schools, bringing the number of dual language programs in the state’s largest public school system to 57. Forty-three of those programs are in Spanish, 10 are in Korean, and four are in Mandarin.

“Cal State San Marcos is taking an important step forward in bringing us into what we need for the next few generations,” said Dr. Ana Hernandez, an assistant professor of Multicultural & Multilingual Education in the School of Education who helped develop the new four-course, online program. She said the certificate program fills “a gigantic need,” and added, “I’ve already received inquiries from as far away as Utah and Chicago.”

The CSUSM program comprises:

• Principles of Dual Language & Multilingual Education. This introductory course provides the nuts and bolts, tenets, research, and theoretical framework surrounding dual-language programs.
• Cross-Cultural Competence for Educational Leadership in Diverse Societies. This course focuses on instilling leadership qualities in dual language instructors and administrators.
• Practices and Strategies for Bilingualism/Multilingualism and Biliteracy/Multiliteracy Development. This course deals primarily with the pedagogy involved in a dual-language program.
• Curriculum Development, Program Assessment and Inclusion for Dual Language and Multilingual Education. This course focuses on how to adapt effectively dual language programs to state education standards, and how to adapt dual language programs for special needs children.

“To be a dual language teacher, you need to develop specific strategies and unique skills,” Hernandez said.

“The certificate program at Cal State San Marcos will help teachers become more effective in a dual immersion classroom setting while better preparing them for the unique challenges they face in a dual setting as well,” said Erin Flesher, who earned her teaching certificate at Cal State San Marcos and who now teaches a dual immersion, English/Spanish course at Valley Center Middle School.

Dual language programs vary from school to school, but many begin with students learning in a foreign language up to 90 percent of the day while in kindergarten, with the percentage falling by 10 percent annually until half the day is spent learning in English and the other half is spent learning in a foreign language.

Programs have become so popular that graduating high school seniors can now secure a State Seal of Biliteracy recognizing those who have attained a high level of proficiency in speaking, reading, and writing one or more languages in addition to English. A recent statement from Gregg Roberts, a world languages and dual immersion specialist with the Utah State Office of Education, “Monolingualism is the illiteracy of the 21st century,” has become a rallying cry for dual language education proponents.

The importance is not lost on students learning in dual language programs. “I know that I’ll be a step above others that know only one language, so that’s always a plus,” said Valley Center Middle School eighth grader Jessica Loya. “And also, since I want to enter the medical field, I’ll be able to talk to patients who only know one language.”

Alina Gonzalez, a Valley Center High School senior, agreed. “It’s opened a lot more doors for me. It’s given me opportunities I wouldn’t have had.”

For example, her fluency in Spanish and English helped land an internship at U-T San Diego, where she worked for its Spanish-language publication, Enlace. “We got to go to T.J. one day, and that helped a lot knowing Spanish,” Gonzalez said. 

Learn more about CSUSM's Dual Language Certificate program at www.csusm.edu/education/Programs/duallanguagecert.html