CSU, Chico News

CSU, Chico geographers Chuck Nelson and Donald Holtgrieve are co-recipients of the 1999 Chico Rotary Environmental Awareness Award.

The award recognizes a person or organization from the Chico area deserving of commendation for specific actions that protect the natural environment. Nelson and Holtgrieve gave presentations about their environmental work at a December 14 Rotary meeting.

Chuck Nelson is an adjunct professor of Geography and Planning and director of the Geographic Information Center (GIC). He is a member of the Butte County Planning Commission and a former Chico City Council member and mayor. In 1989, he developed the Geographic Information Center.

GIC has become a valuable resource to the region. It provides detailed and descriptive maps and related data utilizing the latest computer technology called Geographical Information Systems. Through combining databases and computerized map making, the center can provide information that a city, county, special district or state agency needs to know about a given place.

Professor Walt Schafer, chair of the Rotary Environmental Committee and interim dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at CSU, Chico, said, “Through this vital and unique service to the north state, Chuck Nelson provides the best possible information to policy-makers at the local and state levels. His center also trains people in public agencies to do this type of work themselves.”

Donald Holtgrieve, professor of geography and environmental planning for 11 years at CSU, Chico, is the director of the Watershed Projects. The projects for watershed analysis and planning include 40 grants and contracts funded by federal, state and local agencies.

The work of the Watershed Projects comes out of federal policy that directs attention to protecting entire habitats rather than specific species. It is work that includes cooperation on all levels, from local grassroots organizations to state and federal agencies.

Holtgrieve and his staff facilitate local involvement in the environmental planning process. By providing existing condition reports, analysis, and guidance to local governments and other local units such as watershed conservancy citizens boards, the Watershed Projects support informed local decision making.

Rotary

Among his projects are the Cache Creek Management area, the Sacramento River Watershed Web site, and the San Joaquin Adopt-A-Watershed project. Recently, Holtgrieve was instrumental in the acquisition of a 93-acre parcel in Butte Creek Canyon as a long-term nature preserve. The University Research Foundation received $186,000 from several state agencies to acquire the land, part of the Butte Creek Canyon Watershed Plan.

Schafer said of Holtgrieve’s award, “This award recognizes the quiet, competent dedication with which Don Holtgrieve has provided information and guidance to citizens and agencies throughout the north state, enabling them to make wise decisions about the future of our extraordinary natural environment.”

This is the second annual award given by the Chico Rotary Environmental Awareness Committee. The first annual award was presented to Lundberg Family Farms.

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CSU, Chico’s Upward Bound program for high school students has received a donation of Microsoft Office 2000 Premium, valued at $250,087, from Microsoft Corporation. Upward Bound shares the gift with Colusa, Hamilton Union, Oroville, and Paradise high schools, and the College of Communication and Education at CSU, Chico.

The contribution continues a partnership Upward Bound has formed with Microsoft in which they provide software for use in the Upward Bound and Teacher Diversity Program computer lab.

The Upward Bound Project prepares low-income students and students who would be first-generation college students for success in college. The access to Microsoft’s up-to-date and comprehensive software provides a rare educational opportunity for these students.

Microsoft Office 2000 Premium includes the nine most utilized applications for school and business. It includes word processing, database, spreadsheet, multimedia presentation, desktop publishing, Web page design, e-mail, and small business tools.

David Ferguson, director of the Upward Bound project, said, “We are fortunate to partner with Microsoft. Upward Bound participants are definitely more technologically prepared than they were five years ago before the partnership. They can design Web sites, give media-aided presentations, create databases, and they create some amazing artwork.”

Over the last five years, the high school graduation rate of Chico’s Upward Bound participants has been 100 percent, compared to 67 percent of all high school students. In addition, all Upward Bound graduates advance to college, compared to 57 percent of all other high school graduates in California.

Upward Bound, originally enacted under the 1964 Economic Opportunities Act, is one of the oldest programs in the country and the longest running grant-funded program on the campus. It was first funded at Chico in 1965 and has served thousands of students since then.

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California State University, Chico’s Center for Regional and Continuing Education presents Building an Online Retail Store, a new extension course designed to help retailers successfully enter the rapidly growing world of e-commerce. The course will focus on the basic principles of Web-based retailing and the steps necessary to build an online retail operation. Participants will design and construct a complete interactive Web-based outlet that will include a shopping cart, payment module and administrative pages.

Building an Online Retail Store will be presented on Friday, January 14, 2000, from 1-5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, January 15-16, from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. The course will be held on the CSU, Chico campus in a state-of-the-art computer lab that provides individual workstations and complete hands-on technology support. In addition to the hands-on experience, participants will be provided a digital archive of the course work. The non-credit course fee is $395. Computer lab space is limited, so anyone interested in this class is advised to enroll as soon as possible. To enroll call the Center for Regional and Continuing Education at 530-898-6105 or go online at rce.csuchico.edu.

Building an Online Retail Store will be taught by Kent Sandoe, College of Business faculty member with more than 15 years’ experience in management information systems. Prior to joining CSU, Chico’s faculty, he taught courses in e-commerce at Fordham University in New York City. Professor Sandoe’s technical specialty is e-commerce and systems integration.

To accommodate the educational demands of Northern California, the Center for Regional and Continuing Education develops specialized programming and distance education services to meet the region’s higher education needs. The center also addresses the needs of those regularly enrolled at CSU, Chico, as well as the professional and personal development needs of individuals and organizations throughout the world. To find out more about the center visit rce.csuchico.edu or call 530-898-6105.

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The Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team at California State University, Chico is co-sponsoring “Halftime Shootout” with Wildcat Pride and Wittmeier Ford to increase turnout for the women’s and men’s basketball teams.

This Friday’s game kicks off the two-month event, which will take place at the thirteen home basketball games at Chico State. Fans attending the game will get a chance to shoot for prize money or a chance to win the grand prize, an automobile worth $15,000 from Wittmeier Ford.

“This long-term event is a good way to get the fans involved and, hopefully, to get a better turnout for the basketball teams,” said Ed Person, vice president of marketing for the SIFE team.

At each of the home basketball games, five fans will take a set of shots. The Halftime Shootout works like this:

* People who are interested in shooting will purchase tickets for a nominal amount from a booth set up in the entry way of Acker Gym. Ten minutes before the halftime of the women’s game, two names will be randomly selected from that group.
* Each person will get three shots — from the free-throw line, the three-point line and halfcourt. Any contestant who makes all the shots will win $285.
* The same process is repeated for the men’s game, except three names will be announced. Two people will be selected to shoot for prize money, and one additional person will be selected for the “Wittmeier Big Shot.”
* The “Wittmeier Big Shot” contestant has 45 seconds to take one shot from behind the 3/4 court line (free throw line from the opposite basket). If the contestant makes the shot, he or she will win a $15,000 car.

According to Charles Brooks, a sophomore marketing major from Novato and SIFE project leader, tickets will available 30 minutes prior to the women’s game, and will continue to be sold until 10 minutes before halftime of the men’s game.

“SIFE will pay all prize money for the game, and Wittmeier will provide $15,000 to purchase a vehicle,” said Brooks. “Not only do we want to attract more students and community members to basketball games, but we also want to raise awareness of the work Wildcat Pride is doing on-campus and the work SIFE is doing off-campus.”

SIFE is a nonprofit educational organization that works in partnership with business and higher education to provide college students leadership experience by establishing free enterprise community outreach programs that teach others how market economies and businesses operate.

SIFE

Wildcat Pride is a student spirit group that organizes various activities during sporting events at California State University, Chico.

For more information, call Ed Person at 345-9891, Charles Brooks at 896-1442, or Curt DeBerg at 898-4824. These gentlemen are available for live interviews via telephone starting today, December 7. The media are also invited to each home conference game. For the game schedule see the Web site at www.csuchico.edu/athletics.

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California State University, Chico is pleased to announce that Artemus Ward, a professor in the Department of Political Science, has received the 1999 Hughes-Gossett Prize for his paper “The Tenth Justice: The Retirement of William O. Douglas.”

Ward, who joined the political science department this fall, wrote the paper last spring while in graduate school at Syracuse University.

The Hughes-Gossett Prize, awarded by the Supreme Court Historical Society, is given to the best paper written by a student (law, graduate or undergraduate) on a topic in Supreme Court history.

In addition to receiving $500, Ward will have his paper published in the March issue of the Journal of Supreme Court History.

In June, Ward will attend the society’s Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. to receive the award from one of the Supreme Court Justices. He will also attend the black tie dinner reception that follows the award ceremony.

As part of a larger work on retirements in the U.S. Supreme Court, Ward traveled to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. to analyze the papers of Justice Douglas as well as others. Ward is currently in the process of publishing the larger work as a book.

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California State University, Chico’s civil engineering students captured an intercollegiate design competition for the third time in the last four years.

Chico defeated CSU, Sacramento, the University of the Pacific and UC, Davis at the Structural Engineers Association of Central California (SEAOCC) structural design contest.

The contest was held in three phases, with the final presentation stage and prizes awarded on November 9 at the annual SEAOCC student night in Sacramento.

For the contest, engineering students must design and construct a structure according to specific dimensional and material limitations. The structure should be easy to assemble, have a high strength-weight ratio and a predictable failure mode.

The Chico team of four civil engineering students built a 12-foot by 4-foot by 5-inch custom truss, called an “underslung” truss in the building industry. The truss was built from the three materials allowed — steel, aluminum, and wood — and was designed to fail by the tearing of a steel gusset plate at a connecting bolt.

This kind of failure is the most undesirable in an actual bridge or building because it is sudden and there is little reserve strength. Its consistency, however, made it easy to identify by the judges.

The competition was divided into three stages: a design phase, a timed assembly phase and a presentation phase. The design phase required the teams to submit a design report that included substantiating engineering calculations, the same type of calculations performed for a real structure in order to evaluate its strength.

The second stage, held a week after the first at UC, Davis, included a timed assembly period. Chico’s complex structure took about 2 1/2 minutes to assemble — one of the slower times for the Chico team. The complexity paid off in the accuracy of predictions.

Of the four teams, Chico’s was the only one to predict both the magnitude of the failure load and the type of failure. Chico’s structure missed the predicted load by only nine pounds, with a predicted load of 3,409 pounds and an actual failure load of 3,418 pounds. This is one of the most accurate predictions made at this competition.

On November 9, team members Josh Wallace, Jason Zwinggi, Jared Holliday and Brian Stephenson gave a presentation on all stages of the competition. They were awarded $400 along with first place overall.

Engineering

Along with their successes in other competitions, the civil engineering students have out-performed some of the best universities in the nation. Such competitions are not only demonstrations of the quality of the civil engineering department at CSU, Chico, they are valuable tests of student preparation for eventual careers as engineers.

The faculty adviser for the CSU, Chico team is Dr. Russell Mills. Shop technicians Jim Luallen and Mike Renwick assisted in fabrication of the structure.

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California State University, Chico’s Opera Workshop will perform at the United States Embassy in Beijing during its upcoming trip to China from November 18 through the 26.

Director Ying Yeh arranged the visit as part of an itinerary which will take the workshop to music conservatories in Beijing, Shanghai, and Xi’an, and to the Beijing Language and Culture University.

Director Yeh, one of China’s most popular opera performers and James Bankhead, Chair of the Music Department, conceived of the trip to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Chico’s Opera Workshop.

Seventy-five faculty, staff, and friends of CSU, Chico will accompany the 22 members of the Opera Workshop, pianist Caren Levine, and Yeh on the tour which includes visits to Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Jade Bhudda Temple.

Yeh said that the timing of this trip is especially significant as China and the United States enter the new millennium. “The two countries are extremely important to each other economically and culturally. We need to work closely together. The Chico State trip is like a mini-ambassadorial tour.”

CSU, Chico already has a strong connection to China: at least four professors were born in China; there is a new semester in Beijing program; and now Yeh is director of the Opera Workshop. The group will rendezvous with English professor Frank Li and 15 CSU, Chico students, who are in China for a semester at the Beijing Language and Culture University.

John Gibbens, development director for Humanities and Fine Arts, is in charge of all arrangements for the trip and will act as a tour guide. Gibbens, who has managed symphonies for several major cities, said making tour arrangements for symphonies was simple compared to making travel arrangements for 99 people in a foreign language to a destination as far away as China.

The large group includes members from Idaho, Texas, Ohio, and all parts of California, as well as Chico. It includes a cardiologist, a dentist and two nurses. “We have our own medical team,” quipped Gibbens.

Tiananmen Square for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.

CSU, Chico’s Opera Workshop, founded in 1959 by Dr. James Kinnee, and then directed by Gwen Curatillo until her retirement in 1996, is unusual for both a town of Chico’s size and a music department of modest size.

Curatillo said of the 40 years of the workshop’s history, “The workshop is a tribute to the university and the community that has supported it. It has been a magnificent adventure for a town of this size. And the trip to China may be its greatest adventure!”

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California State University, Chico is pleased to announce that Larissa Rouen of Elk Grove has been awarded an All-California Phi Theta Kappa Academic Second Team-CSU scholarship for the 1999-2000 school year.

The scholarship has been awarded to 47 California community college students transferring to CSU campuses. Rouen attended Cosumnes River College and qualified for the team on the basis of her outstanding academic achievement. She enrolled in CSU, Chico in fall 1999.

The scholarship program supports CSU’s commitment to provide access to transfer students who excel academically.

The Second Team winners receive an $1,800 scholarship and must be enrolled full-time with a minimum of 12 units for the fall and spring semesters.

The purpose of Phi Theta Kappa is to recognize and encourage scholarship among two-year college students. To achieve this purpose, Phi Theta Kappa provides opportunities for the development of leadership and service, an intellectual climate for the exchange of ideas and ideals, and stimulation of interest in continuing academic excellence.

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Suzy Roach has been voted chair and Nancy McDougal vice-chair of the California State University, Chico University Advisory Board.

The board officers assumed their new positions at the board’s regular fall meeting Friday, Oct. 29.

Roach is owner of Pip Printing in Chico. McDougal, also a Chico resident, sits on the University Foundation Board of Governors in addition to the University Advisory Board.

The board also has five new members: Wendell Lundberg, president of Lundberg Family Farms; Wolf Rosenberg, publisher of the Chico Enterprise-Record; Lee Salter, president and CEO of the McConnell Foundation in Redding; Judy Sitton, executive vice president of Bi-Tech Software in Chico; and the honorable Darrell Stevens, Superior Court judge.

The University Advisory Board was formed in 1996. Its 25 members from Northern California provide advice and guidance to the university on issues important to the university and community.

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California State University, Chico’s Research Foundation will hold an official opening of the Honey Run Unit of the Butte Creek Ecological Preserve on Nov. 12, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. at the unit property on Honey Run Road in Chico.

The Research Foundation purchased the “McAmis” property, located in the lower canyon reach of Butte Creek, in the summer of 1998, in order to preserve its natural beauty and protect wildlife habitat. The property is located four miles from the intersection of Skyway and Honey Run Road.

An endowment fund has been established to ensure long-term management of the preserve.

The 93-acre parcel straddles Butte Creek along a riparian corridor that was once slated for urban development. The area is home to several state and federal species of concern, including fall and spring-run Chinook salmon, steelhead trout, bald eagles and western pond turtles.

The property was purchased through the cooperative efforts of the CSU, Chico Office of Watershed Projects, which is charged with managing the preserve, and the Butte Creek Watershed Conservancy. Generous funding was received from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, CALFED and the Wildlife Conservation Board.

Since the purchase, a draft management plan has been developed and minor site planning has been initiated. There are plans for an outdoor classroom, self-guided nature trails, native plant greenhouse and restoration demonstration projects investigating new streambank stabilization and riparian re-vegetation techniques.

The grand opening underscores the efforts of the following entities for their cooperation in providing fish and wildlife habitat and environmental education: the California Department of Fish and Game, Wildlife Conservation Board, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, CALFED, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, CSU, Chico Research Foundation, Butte County Fish and Game Commission, Butte Creek Watershed Conservancy, Durham Mutual Water Company and M&T Ranch.

The CSU, Chico Office of Watershed Projects oversees 40 grants and contracts with a combined budget of approximately $3.5 million.

For more detailed directions to the preserve or for more information, please call Laura Lukes, Watershed Projects, at (530) 898-4083.

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