CSU, Chico News

Sharon Yep, managing editor for California State University, Chico's student newspaper The Orion, has been selected as one of the Scripps Howard Foundation's Top Ten Scholars for 2006.

The awards were announced Friday, Sept. 15, at the foundation's headquarters in Cincinnati. Each of the 10 recipients receives a $10,000 scholarship that can be applied toward one academic year.

"Since the program began in 1999, the foundation has awarded $800,000 to 80 exceptional scholars," said Judith G. Clabes, president and CEO of the Scripps Howard Foundation. "Like their predecessors, this year's winners represent a very bright future for journalism in America."

Yep, a junior from San Francisco, is managing editor of The Orion for the fall 2006 semester. She is a journalism major with a minor in linguistics.

Winners are chosen for their demonstrated interest in journalism, academic achievement, portfolio and an essay about their long-term career goals. A panel of newspaper, broadcast and television network professionals chose the scholarship recipients from among entries across the country.

The winners come from seven states and Washington, D.C. and include editors of student newspapers at Northwestern University, University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Texas.

The CSU, Chico Department of Journalism has one of the top news-editorial programs in the country. The Orion is a nine-time winner of the National Pacemaker award for Orion Editor Wins One of the Nation's Most Prestigious Journalism Scholarships general excellence, and was inducted into the Associated Press Hall of Fame in 2005. The California Newspaper Publishers Association has named The Orion the state's best university newspaper a record eight times over the past 12 years.

The Scripps Howard Foundation is the philanthropic arm of The E.W. Scripps Company, a diverse and large media enterprise with interests in national cable networks, newspaper publishing, broadcast television stations, electronic commerce, interactive media, and licensing and syndication.

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The tragic death of a World War II hero has provided California State University, Chico with one of its most enduring and prestigious scholarship awards.

After Lt. Robert Merton Rawlins died piloting a B-29 over Tokyo Bay, his mother wanted to leave a legacy in the name of her son. In 1981, Mrs. Fern Rawlins established the Lieutenant Robert Merton Rawlins Merit Award endowment.

In the years since the award was established, more than $850,000 in scholarships have gone to CSU, Chico students.

This Thursday, Sept. 14, 28 students will join hundreds of others who have been honored as recipients of the Rawlins Merit Award.

The 23nd annual Rawlins Merit Award Reception will take place at 4 p.m. on the Kendall Hall lawn.

Students are nominated to receive the scholarship by faculty members. Recipients are selected on the basis of scholarship, involvement in extracurricular activities, and professionally-related and academic accomplishments. Each award-winner receives $2,000.

CSU, Chico Vice President for Advancement Services Rick Ellison and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Scott McNall will speak at tomorrow's event.

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California State University, Chico College of Business will offer a Professional Master of Business Administration in the Yuba-Sutter County area starting August 2007.

First offered in 1995, the Professional MBA meets the needs of working professionals by providing convenient access to the only MBA in the North State accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International.

Courses in the two-year, 30-unit MBA program will be taught by experienced Chico faculty and scheduled in an accelerated Saturday format. Classes will be delivered through two-way video teleconferencing originating from the Chico campus and Shasta College. Yuba-Sutter area participants can elect to attend live, two-way video courses or can join the CSU, Chico cohort in Chico.

The Professional MBA curriculum focuses on the real-world application of theory and best business practices to give candidates the knowledge and skills required to proactively manage both small and large enterprises.

Individuals who are interested in the Professional MBA program are encouraged to attend the upcoming information session in Yuba City. Faculty will be on hand to discuss the program, answer questions and assist in the admissions process.

The Professional MBA information session will be held Thursday, September 28, 6-7:30 p.m., at the Sutter County Superintendent of Schools Office, boardroom, located at 970 Klamath Lane, Yuba City.

Interested individuals who want to attend the information session are asked to RSVP by calling CSU, Chico Continuing Education at 530-898-6105 or by sending an e-mail to rce@csuchico.edu with their contact information. More information available online.

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Carol Channing, one of Broadway’s greatest living legends, will visit CSU, Chico September 10th for a performance with a purpose. Channing is donating all proceeds from the 2 p.m. performance in Laxson Auditorium, as well as making a significant personal contribution, to establish the Carol Channing Musical Theatre Performing Arts Scholarship Endowment at Chico State.

Channing, now in her 85th year, is offering benefit performances throughout the California State University system as a means to create public and financial support for the various schools of arts. Channing’s vision is to assure that young students who show an aptitude for the arts have a college scholarship to help them build on those talents.

“This is an incredible contribution from a true entertainment industry icon,” said Joel P. Rogers, Chair of Chico State’s Department of Theatre Arts. Rogers, who is one of Channing’s greatest fans, credits the legendary performer with his personal decision to pursue theatre and theatre education as his life’s work.

“I saw “Hello, Dolly!” when I was a young teenager and the energy of that production with the role of Dolly as defined by Channing emblazoned me,” noted Rogers. “I knew it was what I wanted to do with my life.”

Channing performed “Hello, Dolly!” on stage more than 5,000 times, never missing a show. Her role as the irascible Dolly Levi has made Channing the most easily recognized and highly imitated Broadway star alive. Many years later, Channing has lost none of her style, voice, or class. Chico audiences “will find themselves roaring with laughter and filled with delight during an incredible show that will offer memories, humorous storytelling, and, of course, several of her signature tunes,” noted Rogers.

Channing’s new role as a performing arts philanthropist may have been seeded years ago, in the lines she spoke through Dolly Levi, “Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It's not worth a thing unless it's spread around, encouraging young things to grow.”

“That line says it all — Carol is spreading her passion to the next generation,” said Rogers. “Nothing can be as exciting — this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our students to learn and grow and benefit from a legend.”

Opening for Channing will be "The Off-Broadways,” a song-and-dance ensemble made up of talented CSU, Chico musical theatre students.

During the school year “The Off-Broadways” perform a wide variety of showstoppers from the classics of the Golden Age to the contemporary hits of today, and bring their professionally staged shows to the public — in schools, civic gatherings, campus events, and state tours.

Not only do these energetic young performers get the unique benefits that come with performing in varied venues, but, under the direction of faculty member Mike Mazur and accompanist Jeffrey Childs, they study the composers, lyricists, and shows that brought generations of theatre goers fantastic songs, creating the next generation of musical theatre artists ready to make the jump from "The Off-Broadways" to Broadway, noted Rogers.

Channing’s performance will be held in CSU, Chico’s Laxson Auditorium at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 10. Advance tickets, at $45 premium, $40 adults and seniors, and $20 students and children, are available in Chico at the University Box Office, 898-6333, and Terrace Pharmacy, and in Paradise at The House of Color. Add $2 for tickets purchased at the door. For best seats, purchase tickets well in advance.

In addition to the public performance, Channing will also work with students in class on Monday, September 11th.

Channing’s visit to CSU, Chico is presented by Chico Performances, with assistance from Chico State’s School of the Arts/College of Humanities and Fine Arts. Media co-sponsors include KHSL-TV Channel 12, the Paradise Post, KCHO Northstate Public Radio, the Chico Enterprise Record, and KPAY 1290 a.m. Newstalk Radio.

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The College of Humanities and Fine Arts Travel Program is offering three different trips during 2007, each customized with the help of a faculty-in-residence: "Americans in Paris" with Tracy Butts, English department; "Garden Tour of Southern England" with Jeanne Lawrence, history department and humanities program; and "Enchanting Sicily" with Brunella Windsor, foreign languages and literatures department. A tax-deductible portion of the cost goes to college scholarships and programs.

Americans in Paris
March 16-23, 2007

The tour will include six nights in Paris (with an optional one-day excursion south to France's Champagne region). The faculty-in-residence is Department of English professor Tracy Butts, whose specialties are American, African American, and multicultural literature. The $2,200 package includes round-trip airfare from San Francisco, airport fees, transfers, first-class hotels, buffet breakfast daily, a welcome dinner and a Seine dinner cruise; local guides for a city tour and a tour of the Left Bank; a carnet of 10 métro tickets; and the full-time services of a professional tour director. Limited space remains. Last day to sign up unless the tour fills earlier: Dec. 16, 2006.

Garden Tour of Southern England
May 22 -June 2, 2007

The tour will include four nights in London; one night each in the Lewes, Chichester and Exeter areas; one night in Bath; and two nights in the St. Ives area. The faculty-in-residence is history and humanities professor Jeanne Catherine Lawrence, who earned her PhD from Yale and holds an MS in the history of architecture from the University of London and an MA in history from UC Riverside. It is possible for CSU, Chico students to earn 1-3 units through humanities or history. The $3,600 package includes round-trip airfare from San Francisco, airport fees, transfers, first-class hotels, buffet breakfast daily and three dinners; admission to the Chelsea Flower Show, Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Great Dixter, Charleston Farmhouse, Petworth House, Stourhead, Lost Gardens of Heligan, Eden Project, Hestercombe, Tintinhull Garden and Hidcote Manor Garden; and the full-time services of a professional tour director. Limited space remains. Last day to sign up unless the tour fills earlier: Feb. 21, 2007.

Enchanting Sicily (Incanto Siciliano)
July 1-12, 2007

The tour will include four nights in Palermo, two in Syracuse and four in Taormina (with optional excursions to Erice, Segeste, Marsala, Mt. Etna and the Aeolian Islands). The faculty-in-residence is Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures professor Brunella Windsor, who was born in Italy, majored in French, studied piano and is passionately interested in language and music. The $3,700 package includes round-trip airfare from San Francisco, airport fees, transfers, first-class hotels, buffet breakfast daily and three dinners; local guides for and entry fees to Palermo Cathedral, Monreale, Agrigento Greek Ruins, Syracuse Greek Theatre and Taormina Greek Theatre; and the full-time services of a professional tour director. Limited space remains. Last day to sign up unless the tour fills earlier: April 1, 2007.

For information on all upcoming trips and detailed information on the above trips, visit the website, or call Thomasin Saxe, group director, at 530-898-4642.

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Chico State alum and world-renowned artist John Pugh has created more than 200 large-scale murals across the United States, New Zealand, and Taiwan and is considered to be the leading trompe l'oeil muralist in the world. The Murals of John Pugh, the first-ever collection of Pugh's work, showcases 35 of his most famous pieces, discusses how he revitalized the trompe l'oeil ("trick of the eye") genre into a vital mode of artistic expression, and illuminates the artist's creative process from sketch to finished mural.

Pugh's career began as a student at CSU, Chico with the famous Taylor Hall mural. He was honored as the College of Humanities and Fine Arts' Distinguished Alum in 2003. He returned to Chico that summer and spent a week refurbishing the mural, much to the delight of Chicoans who visited him long into the hot summer nights as he repainted the wall.

He and author Kevin Bruce will launch his new book in Chico on September 8. There will be an illustrated talk in Ayres Hall 106 at 4 p.m. with a reception honoring them both at the Taylor Hall Mural.

Throughout his twenty-five-year career as a trompe l'oeil muralist, Pugh has brought the structure of an architect, the intellectual vision of a scholar, the humor of a comedian, and the narrative ability of a master storyteller to his craft. His murals cleverly fool the viewer into seeing a modern facade's broken wall revealing Greek columns or a bull grazing in frot of an unfinished mural. But his art also captures the imagination and engages the mind. "Once captivated by the deception," he says, "the viewer is lured into crossing an artistic threshold and is seduced into exploring the concept of the piece."

The trompe l'oeil murals of John Pugh are not merely ornamental or curiously clever; they are thought-provoking, substantial, even spiritual. The creation of Drain, a visual representation of Los Angeles's infamous water wars of the early 1900s, generated emotional responses from the city's citizens, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and the international media and is a perfect example of the power of public art to arouse passion and engage communities.

The Murals of John Pugh illustrates how, within a framework of artfully rendered illusionary space, this pioneering artist orchestrates layers of historical, social, and mythical commentary that challenge the viewer to find deeper layers of meaning.

Pugh has been painting murals since the late 1970s. He has received numerous public and private commissions in the United States, Taiwan, and New Zealand, and currently works in a specially constructed mural studio in Los Gatos, California. Visit the website for more information.

Bruce is a writer and Stanford-educated art historian who wrote his master's thesis on the works of John Pugh. He is currently chronicling the history of the contemporary mural. He lives in Saratoga, California.

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Two California State University, Chico students have won a national design competition hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) regarding electromagnetic interference and compatibility.

Parthasarathi Datta and Roopa Bharathan came up the winning design and received a $900 prize and $2,100 to travel to the 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility in Portland, Ore., Aug. 14-18. They attended meetings at the conference and also presented their results from the competition.

Adel Ghandakly, chair of CSU, Chico's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, said it is a high honor to win the competition, which has many entries from student teams at engineering schools across the country. He said all entrants were provided an electromagnetic interference problem and asked to come up with a solution to reduce noise in a circuit and improve output. The CSU, Chico team's design was rated best by the competition judges.

Ghandakly said reducing interference in electrical devices without losing functionality is a tremendously important challenge in electrical engineering.

Datta and Bharathan are both graduate students planning to receive an MS in electrical and computer engineering this semester. They completed their competition design under the guidance of Professor Uma Balaji, who also attended the IEEE conference in Portland.

The IEEE is a nonprofit professional organization for the advancement of technology, with 365,000 members in more than 150 countries. CSU, Chico has one of 1,570 student IEEE chapters in 80 countries.

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This Way to Sustainability II, the second annual sustainability conference, will be held in the Bell Memorial Union at California State University, Chico on Nov. 2 through 5, 2006. CSU, Chico, Butte Community College, the Associated Students of CSU, Chico and the Associated Students of Butte Community College will host the conference.

The conference, which is free and open to the public, will address such issues as water, energy, transportation, business, education, buildings, land use and planning, agriculture, student action and living a sustainable life. Attendees will have an opportunity to network with others working on similar issues.

Anthony D. Cortese, ScD, and Felicity Barringer, Washington correspondent for The New York Times, will be the keynote speakers.

Cortese is president of Second Nature, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to catalyze a worldwide effort to make healthy, just and environmentally sustainable action a foundation of all learning and practice in higher education. He was formerly the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. As the first dean of Environmental Programs at Tufts University, Cortese spearheaded the award-winning Tufts Environmental Literacy Institute in 1989 and the internationally acclaimed Talloires Declaration of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future in 1990.

Barringer is Washington correspondent on the environment for The New York Times. She joined The Times as a contributing correspondent in Moscow in 1986. She filed stories about the political and cultural upheavals of the early Gorbachev era. In addition to her coverage of Soviet culture, her subject matter ranged from the Chernobyl disaster to the Soviet space program. She was the founding editor for the Monday Business Day section, which launched in May 1995 with a special focus on news about the media and technology sectors. Barringer is the author of "Flight From Sorrow," a 1984 biography of Tamara Wall, who lost her family and childhood on a journey from Hitler's Germany to Stalin's Siberia.

For more information and to register for the conference online. You can also contact conference coordinators Jillian Buckholz at jbuckholz@csuchico.edu or Teri Randolph at trandolph@csuchico.edu.

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California State University, Chico remains ranked number four among master’s level public universities in the western United States, based in the 2007 edition of “America’s Best Colleges” from U.S. News & World Report magazine.

The master’s level category U.S. News & World Report uses includes universities that offer undergraduate and master’s programs, but few doctoral programs. The magazine rated 557 universities in four geographic regions in this category.

CSU, Chico was ranked fourth on the list in 2006, third in 2005 and 2004, fourth in 2003, and third in 2002. For 2007, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo is ranked number one in the master’s level category for public universities, followed by Western Washington University and CSU, Long Beach, respectively.

CSU, Chico also remains ranked 31st in the category that includes all master’s level universities, private and public, in the West. This category is traditionally dominated by private schools, with only the three public universities mentioned earlier – Cal Poly, SLO, Western Washington, and CSU, Long Beach – ranked above CSU, Chico.

U.S. News rates schools based on peer school assessment, retention of students, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving rate and faculty resources, which includes factors such as class size, student-faculty ratio and proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields.

The rankings of colleges and universities are available in the U.S. News & World Report magazine and at its Web site, www.usnews.com.

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California State University, Chico remains ranked number four among master's level public universities in the western United States, based in the 2007 edition of "America's Best Colleges" from U.S. News & World Report magazine.

The master's level category U.S. News & World Report uses includes universities that offer undergraduate and master's programs, but few doctoral programs. The magazine rated 557 universities in four geographic regions in this category.

CSU, Chico was ranked fourth on the list in 2006, third in 2005 and 2004, fourth in 2003, and third in 2002. For 2007, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo is ranked number one in the master's level category for public universities, followed by Western Washington University and CSU, Long Beach, respectively.

CSU, Chico also remains ranked 31st in the category that includes all master's level universities, private and public, in the West. This category is traditionally dominated by private schools, with only the three public universities mentioned earlier – Cal Poly, SLO, Western Washington, and CSU, Long Beach – ranked above CSU, Chico.

U.S. News rates schools based on peer school assessment, retention of students, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving rate and faculty resources, which includes factors such as class size, student-faculty ratio and proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields.

The rankings of colleges and universities are available in the U.S. News & World Report magazine and at its Web site, www.usnews.com.

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