CSU, Chico News

Mr. Jim O’Neal, district director of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), announced the award of approximately $1.5 million in grant funds to the California State University, Chico Research Foundation’s Center for Economic Development (CED) at a meeting of economic development professionals in Chico yesterday.

The 18-month grant project will establish the CED as the Lead Small Business Development Center (SBDC) to provide administrative services to the SBDC network within the designated Sacramento geographic area, which covers the following counties: Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, El Dorado, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Yolo and Yuba. The Lead SBDC will link resources of the federal, state, and local governments with the resources of the educational community and the private sector to meet the specialized and complex needs of the increasingly diverse small business community.

The concept of six SBDC lead centers in California covering the same geographical areas as SBA district offices is a new one. In the past, a single lead center in Sacramento within the state’s Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency was the primary contact for direction of the delivery of services to 31 SBDCs in California. The state’s severe budget shortage impacted its ability to continue managing the statewide SBDC system. The six regional lead centers will be co-located in the same areas served by their SBDCs to provide better oversight, training and operational program guidance, as well as closer cooperation with SBA district directors.

Dan Ripke, CED director, expressed his pleasure at receiving the award. “It will be rewarding to work with such a dedicated group of individuals at the local service centers,” he said.

As an agent of CSU, Chico, the CED supports, expands and re-emphasizes the university’s role in the regional economic development process. The CED is dedicated to improving the capacity of existing economic development practitioners, policymakers and community leaders to plan and carry out effective programs. The CED has a 17-year history of being the premiere provider of university-based economic development and business development technical assistance in Northern California. Over the years, the CED has had a strong, growing relationship with regional businesses. This role has included providing export trade information, business counseling, market analysis, business planning, and most recently, “economic gardening” business assistance. The CED has a proven track record for administering, implementing and marketing its services.

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The Scripps Howard Foundation has named California State University, Chico journalism student Melody Gutierrez as one of its Top Ten scholarship winners. Each year $100,000 in scholarships is awarded to 10 college journalism students from across the United States as part of the Top Ten Scholars program.

Gutierrez will receive a $10,000 scholarship. The scholarship is a one-time award covering a full academic year.

Top Ten scholarship winners are nominated by their universities and selected based on academic achievement and a demonstrated interest in a career in journalism. The nominees wrote personal essays emphasizing their long-term goals. A committee of industry professionals selected the winners.

Gutierrez, a senior, is a staff member for The Orion, the student newspaper. She served most recently as opinion editor and has been appointed managing editor for the fall 2003 semester. Her main interest is sports reporting, and she is working this summer as a sports intern at the Sacramento Bee. She worked as a sports intern for the Houston Chronicle during summer 2002.

Dave Waddell, adviser to The Orion, said, “Melody is one of the few, if not the only, first-semester freshmen to ever work on The Orion. That was about three years ago, and since then she has held virtually every editing position on the paper, culminating with her appointment to be managing editor for the fall 2003 semester. In addition, she has excelled academically and won a host of state and national awards, none more impressive than the Scripps Howard scholarship, which puts her in very exclusive company,” said.

“Each year we seek out the most talented and promising journalism students in the nation to help them achieve their goal of becoming career journalists,” said Judith G. Clabes, president and CEO of the foundation. The Scripps Howard Foundation supports excellence in education through scholarships, internships, literacy, minority recruitment/development and furthering First Amendment causes.

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Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Scott McNall will assume the post of interim president of California State University, Chico on July 1.

McNall replaces Manuel Esteban, who is retiring after nearly 10 years as president of CSU, Chico.

The search for a permanent president of CSU, Chico is expected to be completed by the end of 2003. McNall will serve as interim president and provost until the new president arrives on campus.

McNall was appointed provost at CSU, Chico by President Esteban in April 1994. Prior to that, he had been dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for five years at the University of Toledo.

McNall was chair of the sociology department at the University of Kansas for 10 years and also served as chair of the American studies department. He has held academic positions at Arizona State University, University of Minnesota and University of Oregon, where he earned his Ph.D. in sociology. He did his undergraduate work at Portland State University.

“Scott and I have worked very closely for the last nine years,” said Esteban. “He has been an exceptional provost and is very qualified to lead CSU, Chico, and I know that the university will be in excellent hands during his interim period,” Esteban said.

“I look forward to the challenges of the position and even hope to have some fun,” McNall said. “I am backed up by an outstanding team of people, who will help me and the university during the transition period.”

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New technologies in treating wastewater can preserve Central Valley agricultural land by permitting residential development on once-unusable land, according to a new California State University, Chico report.

CSU, Chico’s California Wastewater Training and Research Center has released a 166-page study titled “On-site Wastewater Treatment Technology and the Preservation of Agricultural Land in California’s Central Valley.”

The report details how over the past 20 years there have been significant advances in on-site wastewater technology. The new technologies provide more thorough wastewater treatment to protect public health and water quality. These treatment systems can be installed on land with poor soil quality or sloping grades-property that now cannot be developed with the traditional septic tank and drain field. This can reduce the pressure on high-quality land now in agricultural use to be converted to residential use.

The new treatment technologies also allow greater housing density in rural areas by using cluster development, protecting more agricultural land and open space. The higher level of treatment also allows for re-utilization of the wastewater for beneficial uses, such as subsurface drip irrigation.

Booming population and agricultural production increasingly compete in the state’s 450-mile-long Central Valley. Valley farms produce more than $16 billion a year in various commodities, while the population of 5.5 million residents is expected to double within the next 40 years.

“The effort to preserve agricultural land has looked to large-lot zoning, conservation easements and the Williamson Act for help,” said CSU, Chico political science professor Irv Schiffman, one of the authors of the report.

“Another way to save ag land can be to use non-ag land, such as marginal land, for the new residential development,” Schiffman said.

The report included the results of a survey that asked county planners and environmental health directors if restrictions on lot sizes and densities in their area were based, in part, on septic system limitations. Sixty-two percent of the health directors, and 86 percent of the planners, said yes.

Along with survey data and analyses of wastewater systems, the report includes a model ordinance for new wastewater treatment regulations.

The other authors of the report are CSU, Chico agriculture professor Mitchell Johns and Tibor Banathy, director of the university’s Wastewater Training and Research Center.

More than 200 copies of the report are being distributed to planners and environmental health directors. The report is also available on the Web site of the California Wastewater Training and Research Center.

Support for the study came from the CSU Agricultural Research Initiative and the National Decentralized Water Resources Capacity Development Project, which was funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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Wittmeier Ford and Ford Motor Company’s Business Preferred Network recently donated $7,500 toward the CSU, Chico College of Agriculture’s annual golf tournament fundraiser. This is the second year that Wittmeier has committed to be the tournament’s major sponsor.

The CSU, Chico Superior Ag/Wittmeier Ford Golf Classic will be held Monday, July 21, at Butte Creek Country Club. The tournament normally nets between $30,000 and $40,000 for scholarships and other programs in the college.

Wittmeier’s commercial accounts manager Gary Mitchell coordinated efforts to get the gift. “Wittmeier Ford and Ford Motor Company’s Business Preferred Network both feel it is a great thing to support agricultural development, and starting at the college level helps those entering this important field,” said Mitchell.

North State agriculture leaders formed Superior Ag in the early 1990s, with its sole mission to support the university’s agriculture program. A subcommittee of the organization is the driving force behind the tournament, now in its seventh year.

“Every year our longtime supporters pull out all the stops in donating time, energy and money for the good of our students,” said Charles Crabb, dean of the college. “We are proud to have Wittmeier Ford join our family of extraordinary friends.”

Other key sponsors include Tri-Counties Bank, Matson and Isom, Bell Carter Olive Company, C.F. Koehnen & Sons, Durham Pump, Farm Credit, and Interwest Insurance. Participants in the tournament include production agriculturists, irrigation specialists, bankers, food processors, co-op managers and commodity organization managers.

While player spots are sold out, tee green sponsors and drawing prize donors are still needed for the tournament. A tee green sponsorship gets your company signage on the course, an ad in the tournament golf journal, and your company’s name in post-tournament thank-you ads in local papers. Drawing prize donors get their name on a sign in the clubhouse during dinner and a listing in the post tournament thank-you ad.

Contact tournament coordinator Desiree Gonzalez at 898-4597 for more information.

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A senior psychology major at California State University, Chico has received the prestigious 2003 William R. Hearst/CSU Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement.

Benjamin Seigler is one of six students in the California State University system to receive the award this year. The Trustees’ Award provides financial support to students who show superior academic performance, community service and personal accomplishments in the face of personal hardship and challenges. Each student honored will receive $3,000.

Seigler is a psychology major with an emphasis in child psychology. He stands in the top 2 percent of his department. A re-entry student and a single father (his license plate reads CSUC DAD), Seigler is the first member in his immediate family to attend college. At 14, he dropped out of school, a response to family substance abuse problems, constant moving and poverty.

At 16, he returned to school, attending a continuation high school in Yuba City. He was on the honor roll and began helping second graders learn to read and counseling sixth graders at Woodleaf Outdoor School. “This was the first time that I actually enjoyed school,” said Seigler. Unfortunately, a recurrence of family and personal drug use pulled him off track.

After six years of homelessness, drug addiction and eating out of dumpsters, his life changed forever when he attended a church service in 1997. “It doesn’t happen that way for everyone,” said Seigler, “but that experience changed my life-it was the beginning of a life of more stability and actual achievement.”

Seigler plans to become a marriage and family therapist. His work with youth full time at Philbrick’s Place Rehabilitation Center for three years and the experience of tutoring other community college students in psychology and biology convinced him that his life’s work would be helping others. He is currently working with a summer program for youth in Nevada City.

In her letter of recommendation for Seigler, Sujan Burgeson, faculty member at Yuba College, wrote, “Ben Seigler has not only overcome extremely difficult economic, social and educational difficulties, but he is one of the most extraordinary individuals I know in his commitment to others.” Burgeson also noted his intelligence, perception, creativity and originality.

CSU, Chico psychology professor Eddie Vela, academic adviser and instructor to Seigler, said, “ In addition to well-developed academic skills, Ben is sensitive to diversity and understands struggle. He is devoted to his son and works hard to excel academically. In a nutshell, Ben is a gem.”

Seigler said: “This award is really encouraging for me-I’m not used to winning or being chosen. It means a lot. It is one of the awesome gifts that have been given to me in the last six years.”

Seigler is the seventh CSU, Chico student to receive the Trustees’ Award since 1993. The previous awardees are Dijana Fazlic (2002), Patty Cotter (2001), Aimee Webb (2000), Lynn Wirt (1996), Kelly Baylor (1995) and David Ware (1993).

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The California Arts Council recently selected two local artists as recipients of the 2002-03 Artist Fellowship Award for the Visual Arts. Michael Bishop and Sheri Simons, professors in the Department of Art and Art History at California State University, Chico, are part of a diverse group of 26 honored California artists.

The basis for selection is at least 10 years of professional experience and artistic excellence. The artists in the visual arts include photographers, printmakers, painters and sculptors. Bishop and Simons, both sculptors, received their awards in the Three Dimension Art category. Each artist will receive $4,567.

Simons creates large multimedia works out of common materials, which she calls “pedestrian miracles.” She attempts to engage the viewer on multiple levels, attempting to take them beyond an intellectual and emotional response to what she calls a “body”’ response (change of posture, for example). “The body’s response is honest, and its wisdom is commonly overlooked,” she said.

Simons’ public works have been commissioned by Miami University, Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission and Kings County Arts Commission. She is a past recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship and the Michigan Council for the Arts Artist-Apprenticeship.

Bishop works with easily recognizable objects. He describes his work as “rooted in hard work and preciseness …carefully built and arranged to function as deliberately composed scenarios.”

Bishop’s 40-year exhibition and award record includes exhibits in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Brussels, Belgium. His work is in both private and public collections including Triton in Santa Clara and the Rene and Veronica di Rosa Foundation in Napa.

Arts Council chair Barbara George referred to the artists as “among the best natural resources in California.” Speaking for the council, she said, “The Arts Council recognizes the enormous value that arts and culture have in our daily lives. By supporting these creative individuals, we are able to validate their artistic vision and further encourage their imaginations to make great things happen in California.”

The CAC Artist Fellowship program was established in 1987. Fellowships, awarded annually, rotate among four disciplines: visual arts, performing arts, media arts and new genre and literature.

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Antoinette Martinez, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, California State University, Chico, has received a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2003-04.

As a Ford fellow, Martinez will devote a year of research at the University of California, Berkeley into the role of Native American women in maintaining cultural and ethnic identity. The research supports work on her book, “Keepers of Tradition: Two Thousand Years of Cultural Continuity.”

Martinez will draw from recent archaeological data and research on the Kashaya Pomo female leaders of historic and contemporary times. The theoretical perspective that will provide the framework is rooted in current feminist theory.

The Ford Fellowship Postdoctoral Program for Minorities is sponsored by the Ford Foundation and administered by the National Research Council of the National Academies. The Anthropology Department and the Archaeological Research Facility at UC Berkeley will sponsor Martinez.

Selection for this prestigious award reflects professional and scholarly accomplishments as well as the likelihood that the fellow’s career will be enhanced by the postdoctoral fellowship experience.

“The timing of the award, both in terms of my career and the development of my book, couldn’t be better. I am very appreciative of the support I have received from the CSU, Chico College of Behavioral and Social Sciences and the Archaeological Research Facility at UC Berkeley,” said Martinez.

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Health concerns facing Mexican Americans is the topic of the June 2003 issue of The Californian Journal of Health Promotion, the new online journal by the Department of Health and Community Services, California State University, Chico.

“Far too many health problems continue to impact the Mexican American community,” writes CSU, Chico professor Paul Lopez, in an article in the issue, “from the lack of access to insurance and doctors, unhealthy diets, language and cultural barriers in treatment and chronic medical conditions that go undiagnosed, unstudied and untreated.”

For example, Mexican American farm workers often risk their health for their jobs, Lopez reports. “Being caught between keeping their jobs and staying home for several days because they are sick, farm workers usually have to choose to go to work despite being ill,” he writes.

Twenty-two articles are included in the journal, which is published free of charge. Among the authors in this issue are CSU, Chico professors Mary Portis, Diana Flannery, Jamie Gonzales, Cindy Wolff, Clark Davis and Lopez, as well as CSU, Chico students Joshua Brown, Vanessa Gyovai and Kathleen Ferran. CSU, Chico faculty member Mark Tomita edits the journal.

Other articles in the June issue examine pesticide education, telemedicine, community partnerships, lead poisoning, fertility rates and asthma care for Mexican Americans.

The journal was launched in March 2003. Along with being available online (URL: http://www.cjhp.org), the new issue is available in CD-Rom form from the Associated Students Bookstore at CSU, Chico (URL: http://asbookstore.csuchico.edu). Information about the journal can be obtained by contacting Tomita at (530) 898-4417.

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A California State University, Chico design student has won a competition among fellow design students to create a new logo for the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries (ACUMG).

Senior Melissa Welliver’s design was selected at the ACUMG’s Board of Director’s meeting held in Portland, Ore., May 18 through 22. The logo and design system will be used on published materials by the association nationwide.

Catherine Sullivan, curator of the Janet Turner Print Museum at CSU, Chico and Western representative of the ACUMG, said CSU, Chico students in communication design class 222, Corporate Design Systems, were asked to submit recommendations for the new logo. Under the tutelage of instructor Allen Rellaford, 13 students participated.

The ACUMG board chose three finalists from among the 13 presentations: Welliver and CSU, Chico seniors Ian Gilmore and Ryan Orcutt. “Everyone was very impressed by the overall quality of the entries,” Sullivan said. “It was very hard to make a decision.”

Welliver received $300 for her winning design system. Orcutt received $200 and Gilmore $100 for coming in second and third, respectively.

The ACUMG is a network of approximately 300 museums and galleries affiliated with academic institutions throughout North America.

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