The year had its challenges as well, among them the uncertainty of the national economy and the delayed state budget, both of which have strained the resources of Cal State Northridge and every other public university in California.

President Jolene Koester

But May is the month of commencement, which means new beginnings. Our graduates are looking toward the future, and so are we. The university listens seriously to the forward-looking observations of students like Sean Carter, who said in the 50th anniversary issue of this magazine that Cal State Northridge must “stay up to date with what’s going on with technology and culture, not get stuck with doing the same thing, but being able to evolve.”

As I noted in an address to faculty in January, Erik Peterson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies describes the present as a world on “hyper-drive.” In this world, Peterson says, the technology referenced by our student Sean is in a state of revolution, as are our knowledge and information systems.

According to information provided in a fascinating video available online called “Did You Know,” by educators Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod, we live in a world in which technical information doubles every two years, which means half of what technical degree students learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study. The top ten in-demand jobs for 2010 will be ones that didn’t exist just six years ago; and U.S. Labor Department researchers predict today’s learner will change jobs a dizzying 10-14 times by age 38.

So as its next 50-year stretch begins, CSUN will need to swim ahead of the current as we prepare our students for the changing workforce, indeed for the changing nature of work itself.

We will continue to bring every possible resource to bear on student success and, yes, on graduation. We will bring new energy to workplace-driven learning objectives such as problem solving and analytic reasoning. We will adjust the ways we teach to the many ways students learn, as identified by scholars nationally and right here at Cal State Northridge. Recognizing that active engagement is one of these ways, we already are emphasizing more the kinds of self-directed, hands-on and applied learning experiences for students at which the university already excels.

We can do all of this with a healthy mixture of the practical and the visionary, focusing less on the unknowns and imponderables than on those things we can shape and control. French writer Antoine de Saint Exupéry got it right. “Our task,” he wrote, “is not to see the future, but to enable it.”

Jolene Koester
President, California State University, Northridge

Keep up with the president by visiting her blog

Guided by Kyriakos Pontikis (back row, fifth from right), a cadre of CSUN interior design students spent spring 2009 designing beautiful and sustainable outdoor living environments for 11 Habitat families. Interior design associate professor Pontikis pitched in with fellow CSUN faculty, staff and students.

Imagine a Pacoima neighborhood where children spend afternoons in the backyard, playing ball. Imagine that neighborhood smothered by 30 landfills, surrounded by three major freeways and bisected by a railroad line. Now imagine the pollution in the air the children breathe as they play.

The graduate design students of Cal State Northridge’s Kyriakos Pontikis spent spring 2009 helping Pacoima and other communities design more sustainable and livable environments. Teaming up with the students of assistant urban studies and planning professor Zeynep Toker, they partnered with the non-profit Pacoima Beautiful organization.

“My objective is to have the students learn the theories which support the creation of socially humane and sustainable building and community environments,” said Pontikis, who leads several graduate classes in CSUN’s interior design program. “Students undertake the design and creation of real community projects while employing the theoretical and building methodology they have learned through the curriculum.”

Among several service-learning class projects on their agenda was designing the landscaping layout for 11 Habitat for Humanity family homes, an experience that provided first-hand experience with a range of budgets, schedules, programs, engineers, contractors, craftspeople, building systems and materials, ornaments and color.

As the layouts were designed, Pontikis reinforced the idea of implementing sustainability, whose green design aspect focuses on technical elements necessary for construction, and whose humane factor centers on understanding the people and developing an environment that suits their needs.

Lourdes Valdez, a CSUN cinema and television arts student, applies a smooth paint finish to the house in Pacoima. CSUN’s newly established Habitat for Humanity chapter invested an impressive share of sweat equity in the new home. (Photos by John DuBois)

More than 20 years of design experience throughout the U.S. and Europe have shaped Pontikis’ philosophy. “The more flexible and adaptable the building processes I employed, the more successful and alive my projects were,” he said. “Architects need to view buildings as living organisms which affect not only the natural environment but also the life, well-being and spirituality of people.”

In March, a newly established Habitat for Humanity chapter at CSUN was part of “Youth Build Day—Building with Celebrities,” joining the more than 300 volunteers who helped build the San Fernando Valley’s 100th Habitat home.

“It was amazing to see how many CSUN students, faculty and staff volunteered to make this event a success,” said graduate design student Kristine Tserunyan, who heads the new Habitat chapter “We had a great time, learned about construction and team work, and gave back to the community.”

Pontikis, said Tserunyan, was the chapter’s prime mover, helping recruit members and volunteering alongside of student members during the Youth Build event.

Nearly 3,500 strong, they gathered on the Oviatt Library lawn to celebrate CSUN’s 50^th Anniversary, to reignite friendships, to re-discover the alma mater that prepared them for their careers and simply to have a grand time together.

Led by President Jolene Koester, the university rolled out a welcome mat that included music for many tastes—jazz, steel drum, banjo and more—along with tents where Greeks and other groups came to mingle, a fun house for the kids, open houses hosted by campus departments, food, fellowship and dancing.

Some alumni came decked out in retro letter sweaters and jackets from the days when CSUN was known as San Fernando Valley State College, or in the red dresses of the Granny Girls spirit squads named for the late CSUN super-booster Dorothea “Granny” Heitz.

But however they dressed and whether they graduated in 1958 or 2008, the operative word for the day was “celebrate!”

What a Day!

• Nearly 3,500 adults, children came during the course of the day and evening. Were you there?
• More than 40 reunion groups were represented…
• A 75^th anniversary time capsule was filled and sealed. See you in 2034!
• CSUN became the first CSU campus to produce a live streaming Web cast of an alumni event…
• More than 400 alumni and friends visited the Web cast, from the U.S., Japan, France, Canada and the Philippines…
• Facebook messages came in from Miami, New York and as far away as Sweden…
• CSUN’s Web team captured Twitter messages from alumni who couldn’t come and from reunion celebrants tweeting direct from the Oviatt Lawn…
• Some families arrived with several generations of CSUN alumni…
• A 50^th Anniversary Grand Reunion “Big Picture” caught the day’s spirit.

Visit the CSU Alumni Website at www.csunalumni.com to share Grand Reunion photos and videos. (Photos by Lee Choo, John DuBois and Dat-Tuyen Nguyen)

Honorees Curb and Fleming have in common their early and vigorous support in the effort to provide a performing arts center for the San Fernando Valley. A 2011 grand opening is set for the Valley Performing Arts Center, under construction on the campus’ southern border.

Philanthropists, arts patrons and businessmen with wide-ranging interests, Mike Curb and David Fleming for years have given Cal State Northridge and its educational mission priority status in their lives. During the pomp and circumstance of a jubilant 50^th anniversary commencement season, the university in May paid tribute to their service by conferring honorary degrees on each.

“Both are successful businessmen who recognize the importance of giving back to the community,” said President Jolene Koester of Curb, president of Curb Records, and Fleming, an attorney and civic leader. The president noted that Curb and Fleming stepped forward as early proponents of a performing arts center for the San Fernando Valley, contributing vital support to the future Valley Performing Arts Center at California State University, Northridge.

Curb Records Chairman and former California Lt. Gov. Mike Curb received an honorary doctor of fine arts degree from the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication.

Curb Records Chairman Mike Curb

Curb, who attended then San Fernando Valley State College in the early 1960s, spent hours composing songs in the campus music building. Success came early with a breakthrough song—“You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda (Go Little Honda)”—and the founding of his first record company. The young entrepreneur later launched Curb Records, which became one of the most successful labels in the United States.

Curb Records’ reputation as a hit maker is well founded: more than 250 No. 1 records have been produced there. It launched the careers of stars whose music is known to millions: LeAnn Rimes, Tim McGraw, Wynonna Judd, Hank Williams Jr. and the Osmonds.

Curb’s own artistic contributions have attracted industry accolades. He has composed more than 400 songs and produced 25 gold or platinum-selling records, in the process earning Billboard magazine’s Producer of the Year Award as well as its 2001 Country Music Label of the Year. From Radio & Records magazine, his company received a nod as 2005 Overall Gold Label of the Year.

An icon in the pop music world, Curb’s interest in other genres extends to jazz and gospel music. He has served as president of the historic Verve Records label, signing superstar Tony Bennett and working with jazz legends such as Jimmy Smith, Stan Getz, Chet Baker and Wes Montgomery.

Public service beckoned in the 1970s. Elected California’s lieutenant governor in 1978, he accepted the chairmanship of the Republican National Finance Committee in 1983.

Curb’s star was enshrined on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007, a year after he was awarded CSUN’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

Cal State Northridge named its College of Arts, Media, and Communication for Curb in 2006. That same year, in making a $10 million gift to the university, the producer/composer/philanthropist noted his special interest in CSUN’s Music Industry Studies and other music education programs. Half of the donation is an endowment for the arts college and the other half supports the Valley Performing Arts Center, whose grand opening is set for 2011.

Attorney and civic leader David Fleming was awarded an honorary doctor of law degree by the College of Business and Economics.

Atty. David Fleming

Known for the breadth of his experience in arenas both civic and cultural, the Latham and Watkins attorney has devoted himself to the cause of education in general and to the mission of Cal State Northridge in particular.

Fleming’s involvement has made a difference on so many important CSUN projects that in 2007, the university selected him for its prized Dorothea “Granny” Heitz Award for Outstanding Volunteer Leadership.

One example: Fleming led a highly successful building campaign for CSUN’s education college in the 1990s. A gender equity lecture series, an after-school outreach program, an elementary school literacy project, labs and equipment, scholarship and faculty endowments all were generated or supported by the campaign. Without Fleming, said campaign colleagues, the “goal would not have been reached.”

During his nearly 50-year legal career, Fleming has represented clients in a broad range of complex practice areas including banking, securities, real estate and estate planning.

Fleming chairs The Valley Economic Alliance and has served as board chair of both the Valley Industry and Commerce Association and Valley Presbyterian Hospital. A past chair of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, he leads the board of Project Grad, whose mission is to ensure a quality public school education for at-risk children, leading them to graduation from high school and success beyond.

Recently appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to the board of the Metropolitan Water District, Fleming heads the Los Angeles County Business Federation and co-chairs the Southern California Leadership Council, composed of members such as former California governors Gray Davis, Pete Wilson, Jerry Brown and George Deukmejian.

Reflecting his deep commitment to the arts and arts education, Fleming is vice chair of the campaign to build the Valley Performing Arts Center at California State University, Northridge. He and his wife, Jean, have committed major financial support toward construction of the facility. “This will be a milestone for our area,” Fleming told the Los Angeles Times. “It extends the great social asset of enjoyment of the arts to people who cannot usually partake of this due to travel time and distance.”

Harry Hellenbrand - Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs

The direction of math education in America is very much on the mind of Cal State Northridge Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Harry Hellenbrand. From his perspective, how our K-12 population learns math today will affect how our country competes tomorrow.

Q. Among industrialized nations, the U.S. is not stacking up well in mathematics performance. How do you see that manifested in our daily life?

A. The housing loan crisis is one example. It indicates to me that, on some level, there’s a basic problem with understanding statistics and mathematics that plagues our society as a whole.

Q. Where are we going off track?

A. If you take a look at how American kids do in math, and compare them nationally and internationally, you’ll see that up to the end of the third grade they do well, comparatively speaking. Then in the fourth grade they begin a free fall. What’s in the U.S. water that’s making them do that? There’s something we’re failing to convey at the early elementary school level.

Whatever’s going on isn’t working in English or in math. I suspect by thinking of these two problem areas separately, we’re missing something really big. I think there’s something people are not getting about symbols systems generally that pertains both to math and to English. It’s just too weird that the scores flip over in math and English at that level. We need an answer to that.

Q. So what’s the road map?

A. For one thing, we have to do a better job of helping to deliver the prerequisite math coursework for college while students are still in high school, because the schools themselves are just overwhelmed with getting students prepared to graduate and to attain college freshman competency in math… The great problem with the American system is that it’s not a system; it’s tiers of a cake placed one layer on top of the other. In Singapore, it’s a national system, a national curriculum with national standards.

A server’s colorful head wear reflects the colorful new international cuisine at the Bistro, the University Club’s main dining room, where weekly specials are a new feature. Photo by Lee Choo

“The University Club is a place about people,” said Gray Mounger, Cal State Northridge’s assistant vice president of alumni affairs, “about those who helped build it, the many who have provided it with leadership and the patrons who continue to enjoy it.”

Mounger welcomed CSUN officials and University Club founders to a March event celebrating the club’s 40 birthday and introducing the new services of its main dining room, the Orange Grove Bistro.

Founding faculty who put up the money for the club’s first building materials also invested their fair share of sweat in the bargain, pouring foundations, painting, pounding nails, framing partitions and putting up drywall.

“We demonstrated the same American know-how that helped win World War II,” said DeWayne Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning emeritus journalism professor, “the ability to come to an unknown environment and use tools to successfully build something.”

“It would have been a terrible oversight not to honor faculty whose commitment to the campus community made the University Club possible,” said President Jolene Koester at the club which neighbors the Valley Performing Arts Center at California State University, Northridge, opening in 2010.

The Tseng College of Extended Learning’s Marcella Tyler, a long-time board member, spoke on behalf of all former University Club presidents. “It is our privilege to have shared in the camaraderie and collegiality that resulted from their tenacity,” said Tyler, dedicating the event to the founding members.

Betsy Stelck, a member of the University Faculty Women’s Club, said the group donated the patio years ago “with the understanding that we could use the facilities for as long as we’re around. We still play bridge here once a month, free of charge.”

A broad spectrum of local groups use the club on any given day, President Koester said. To help serve these groups and individual patrons, new management at the club has introduced a re-vamped menu featuring weekly specials.

The club also boasts a new catering team equipped with imaginative culinary ideas, said Rick Evans, director of the University Corporation. A tempting array of international dishes and the Bistro’s cascading chocolate fountain, center stage at the celebration, underscored his point.

For University Club information: www.csun.edu/universityclub/ or (818) 677-2076.

CSUN geology major Robin Sehler, at a rock quarry in the Vredefort crater near the Bushveld complex site where Sehler and fellow AfricaArray students collected data

Hidden beneath southern Africa, within the region’s massive, 1,800-mile thick mantle of pliant rock, the African superplume has been described as “the largest discrete structure in the Earth’s interior.” But it remains “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

“We do not really know what it is or why it is or how it fits into plate tectonics,” said noted geologist Andrew Nyblade in Sciencemode.com. “It could be a key to understanding how our planet works internally.”

In summer 2008, geology major Robin Sehler became the first Cal State Northridge student researcher to participate in the AfricaArray summer field program, part of a long-term effort by Nyblade and a team of international researchers to record and collect enough geophysical data “to explain and image the mantle under Africa.”

Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the collaboration was created by South Africa’s Council for Geoscience, Penn State University and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. It operates geophysical observatories on the African continent, and trains African and American student researchers like Sehler and CSUN senior Cristo Ramirez. In mid-June, Ramirez left for his own weeks-long stint in the South African hinterlands.

It was the first trip outside the U.S. for Sehler, who had the help of CSUN seismologist and geophysical fluid dynamicist Dayanthie Weeraratne—one of Nyblade’s research collaborators, and assistant geology professor Jorge Vazquez.

Sehler’s destination: the eastern limb of the remote Bushveld complex, an arid and hilly research outpost about five hours drive north of Johannesburg.

As one of 15 international students chosen to work with AfricaArray scientists, she collected and interpreted geophysical data at the site, where field work began at 7 a.m. and data analysis seldom wrapped up before 9 p.m.

Well prepared by Weeraratne and Nyblade, Sehler was not surprised by the technical aspects of the research. “What I didn’t expect was how much fun I’d have with my classmates. They were from South Africa, Ethiopia, Angola, Nigeria, Tanzania and the U.S. I’m still in touch with them on Facebook.”

Seismic images like this -- which may depict a hot mantle plume rising up through the Earth's interior beneath the African continent - are an attempt to decipher a profound geological mystery. (Image courtesy of Jeroen Ritsema, H.J. van Heijst and J.H. Woodhouse. from Science Magazine)

AfricaArray participants are “exposed to important techniques such as seismology, gravity studies, radar and electromagnetics as well as to the geological and cultural aspects of South Africa,” Weeraratne said, calling CSUN a “critical link” in the collaboration.

The program is in synch with the CSUN Geological Sciences Department’s internal Catalyst program to introduce Hispanic, African American and other minorities to the geosciences.

Marsaglia and University of Massachusetts micropaleontologist Mark Leckie share observations about lengths of core sample from below the ocean floor. The soft sediment core, housed in a plastic tube or liner, was sliced into sections of about 150 centimeters, to facilitate description of its color, texture and structure.

The probability of high winds and stomach-churning swells, said the captain, was zero. But CSUN sedimentologist Kathie Marsaglia, a seasoned sailor who nonetheless suffers from sea sickness, was prepared for the willful sea. Her Scopalomine anti-motion sickness skin patch was in place.

It was her seventh voyage aboard the JOIDES (Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling) Resolution, the 20-year old U.S. sub-seafloor research vessel that operates as part of the international Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). So Marsaglia took it in stride when a big February storm that blew through Hawaii sent swells across the sea to rock the JR, its seven scientists and crackerjack crew en route to waters just north of the northwestern Pacific’s Solomon Islands.

Marsaglia and her colleagues put the JR’s equipment through its paces on the ship’s first voyage as a renovated research vessel. In one of the gleaming new shipboard labs, she tries out a dated microscope held over from earlier expeditions. Her team recommended it be replaced.

Marsaglia and colleagues had been summoned to conduct the trial run of the JR after its $100 million National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded renovation. Handpicked for their expertise and experience, the scientists’ task was to assess the transformed vessel’s readiness to help researchers “go do science,” as Marsaglia puts it.

Aboard the floating laboratory, scientists “investigate the deep biosphere and the sub-seafloor ocean, environmental change, …solid earth cycles and geodynamics.”

The science they “do” is critical, said Jon Corsiglia of the Corsortium for Ocean Leadership, part of the implementing organization for IODP. It informs the climate debate, for example, determining what’s up with global sea levels and sea surface temperatures. “This is one of the biggest science programs around. Given its scale, it’s amazing that not a lot of people have heard of it.”

Marsaglia’s dissertation synthesizing data from the old Glomar Challenger, the JR’s storied ancestor, and her subsequent expeditions aboard the JR made her uniquely qualified to join the drillship’s Readiness Assessment Team.

She joined the team in Guam, but there was little time to admire the vessel’s gleaming new labs and equipment before it set off to drill core samples in the Ontong Java Plateau.

Intimately familiar with the JR’s ways and habits, Marsaglia and her peers worked 12-hour shifts putting the retrofitted drillship through its paces. “I was on the 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. shift,” she said. “We’d give info and assessments to the noon to midnight shift, go to bed, get up the next day and the problems would have been fixed. Things were changing that rapidly.”

There was constant activity as the team sent downhole instruments deep into the seafloor to bring up rock and sediment core samples, carried out scientific tests, and evaluated every major piece of the ship’s equipment.

“Essentially, it’s the equivalent of taking one of CSUN’s new science buildings and its labs, putting them on a ship and being asked to assess all that,” Marsaglia said. Not even the food escaped their scrutiny. “The pasta dish with the recycled sauerkraut was memorable,” she said, drily.

Bowl of ooze, anyone? Chock full of nanofossils, this is an Ontong Java Plateau core sample before it hardens into chalk. “If you take a piece of chalk to write on a chalkboard, this is what it looks like when it starts out,” said Marsaglia. “Pretty amazing, huh?”

Over the course of 20 years, the scientist has eaten her share of eyebrow-raising ship fare. Since 1989, more than a year of her life cumulatively has been spent in expeditions on the old JR: off the Bonin (a.k.a. Ogasawara) Islands due south of Tokyo, off the shore of southern Chile, in the Atlantic off the Iberian Peninsula, in the western Mediterranean Sea, on a Shatsky Rise exploration in the northwest Pacific, and off Newfoundland in the north Atlantic.

Marsaglia’s students are the direct beneficiaries. Sub-seafloor core samples brought back from her voyages have served as bases for the publication of students’ master’s theses and research results. A number of her students have accompanied her on scientific cruises off New Zealand, as part of the Geological Sciences Department’s NSF-sponsored Catalyst program encouraging minority students to push their boundaries.

“My work at sea gets integrated back into the classroom at all levels, from the introductory levels all the way to graduate level classes,” said Marsaglia, who recently worked with one student to produce a DVD/CD of core photographs classifying sediment and lithologies from more than 100 IODP drilling cruises, including her own.

But it is work that requires concentration in the vortex of storms and crises. Marsaglia was aboard the JR in the Pacific, for example, during 9/11. News of the attack came via satellite from the Voice of America and PBS. “It was very unnerving because there were scientists who had or could have had relatives in the Twin Towers and at the Pentagon. There was a lot of angst.

“We came back and it was a new world. It was very strange,” she said. “Life goes on when you’re at sea; you can’t just get off.”

CSUN sedimentologist Kathie Marsaglia (center) studies New Zealand rock samples and ocean floor sites in preparation for her eighth scientific expedition aboard the JOIDES Resolution, off New Zealand in November 2009. Grad students Julie Parra and Kevin Rivera, whose master’s theses examine New Zealand sand provenance and stratigraphy, have been encouraged to “push their boundaries” in the Geological Sciences Department’s NSF-sponsored Catalyst program. (Photo by John DuBois)

The JOIDES Resolution drillship. Its name combines an acronym for Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling with an homage to the HMS Resolution, the vessel that served Captain James Cook on his second and third Pacific voyages of exploration. (Photos courtesy of Consortium for Ocean Leadership)

CSUN’s Damian Christian is the instrument scientist on the team that discovered gargantuan solar twists, called Alfvén waves, in the sun’s lower atmosphere. (Solar corona image copyright 2004 by Fred Espenak, www.MrEclipse.com)

In the ordinary scheme of things, a cup of coffee starts out steaming hot and gradually cools. The reverse might strike a person as…well…odd.

In the cosmos, the ordinary need not apply. One might expect, for example, that the sun’s 5,800 degree surface would be much hotter than its corona, the wispy, low-density halo visible to earthlings only during a total eclipse. Not so. The solar corona, which extends more than 1 million kilometers into the solar system, pulsates at more than 1 million degrees. The sun’s surface seems cool in comparison.

In Sunspot, N.M., new camera instruments at the National Solar Observatory could further develop research on the sun’s activity.

For more than 50 years, the phenomenon has tantalized astrophysicists. In March, a team including Cal State Northridge astrophysicist Damian Christian published a paper announcing its discovery of the process that causes the phenomenon.

At a speed exceeding 20 kilometers per second, gargantuan twisting magnetic Alfvén waves spread upward from the sun’s surface to its corona, packing enough energy to send the temperature up there rocketing past that of the surface.

“Scientists knew they were there, but couldn’t detect them,” said Christian of the waves named for Swedish Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén, who first proposed their existence. “We’d never found a wave that could transport sufficient energy from the surface out to the corona.”

Completely invisible to the naked eye, the presence of the tube-like Alfvén waves finally were confirmed only by examining and measuring the motion and speed of structures in the turbulent photosphere on the sun’s surface.

Christian serves as instrument scientist on the team including Mihalis Mathioudakis of the Queen’s University Belfast Solar Group and David Jess of the Queen’s University Belfast, lead author of the team’s paper.

Taking advantage of a relatively quiet period in the sun’s activity cycle, the scientists were able to zero in on “a bright spot on the surface of the sun about the size of the state of Arizona,” a feat that has been compared to standing in Tokyo and reading the time on London’s Big Ben. Examination of that spot with the mighty Swedish Solar Telescope, the largest in Europe, detected the waves within so-called “flux tubes” that convert energy from inside the sun to the corona.

The findings could contribute significantly to scientific understanding of how the sun produces energy and to our understanding of other stars.

There are plenty of earth-bound uses as well, Christian said. “The sun sends out lots of charged particles that interrupt communications satellites,” he indicated. “Back in 1989, there was a big solar flare that actually knocked out power in important satellites, so if we could study the sun in more detail, we might be able to understand when those things are going to occur. This is a piece of the puzzle in understanding the sun and the big picture.”

Telecommunications companies—with millions of texting, tweeting and cell phoning clients—would find it helpful to be able to anticipate when solar activity could potentially damage their satellites, said Christian. The military needs to “keep an eye on the sun as well. They would not want to be off trying to fight a battle and not be able to communicate with the troops.”

The Swedish Solar Telescope was used to detect the waves within so-called “flux tubes” that convert energy from inside the sun to the corona.

Christian is a familiar figure in the resort town of Sunspot, N.M., where he works at the National Solar Observatory with new camera instruments that could further develop the team’s research. “Hopefully, the results in our published paper will be only the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “With the new camera system, we can take solar images even faster than 30 images a second.”

Fortunately, CSUN has bought 30 terabytes of storage for the many images Christian must file as part of his research. “You can imagine,” he said, “we take about 1,000 CDs worth of data every hour. You’re talking two megabyte images, 30 images a second, 100,000 images an hour.”

For Christian’s Introductory Astronomy students, his research has resulted in a bonanza of information on “the latest, greatest results” in the field. His graduate students benefit in their studies of planets around other stars “because we try to apply what we learn about the sun to other stars, and vice versa.”

For a man hooked on the stars since the age of 12, this focus on the sun is a relatively new twist. “My first love is still stars,” he said, but the sun, whose sudden eruptions can release more energy than 10 billion atomic bombs, has its charms. “You might think the sun is kind of a boring, average star, but it’s actually very active. Its surface is bubbling away like a cauldron.”

CSUN alumni Dawn and Jeffery Thomas’ company has the exclusive distributing rights for the Singapore math curriculum textbooks. The book Thomas holds is a new title they launched April 21 at the Singapore Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Slim, bright-eyed Dawn Yuen was looking for Sierra Hall. Jeffery Thomas was the lucky guy who happened along and helped her find it.

Had Thomas ‘89 (Humanities), ‘92 MA (History), and Yuen ’90 MBA, not stumbled upon each other that day, it is anyone’s guess whether a certain math curriculum out of Singapore would now be making inroads—however embryonic—into the U.S. math education landscape.

The Thomases have played a significant role in raising U.S. consciousness about what has come to be known as Singapore math, in which children learn math by using exercises and diagrams that emphasize meaning rather than uninspired repetition. Their company, Singaporemath.com Inc, has the exclusive distributing rights for the curriculum textbooks.

Long story short, Yuen and Thomas’ chance meeting resulted in their marriage and the events that led to the creation of Singaporemath.com Inc. First, their daughter, Echo, was born. Second, they moved to Singapore. There, Echo and the 41 other students in her Singapore classroom were exposed to a curriculum that focused heavily on “mental math” to help them master the basic skills and facts of mathematics. Quite early, she was introduced to word problems that required her to use logic in order to solve them. “We were pretty impressed with the results,” Thomas said.

The Thomases returned to the U.S. in 1997 and enrolled Echo in a suburban Portland, Ore. primary school. The school was an award winner, Thomas said, but “in mathematics it had no coherent program. We saw the contrast.”

Her parents began supplementing Echo’s math schoolwork with the Singapore curriculum and saw the youngster’s skills get back on track. “That got us thinking about the possibility of bringing the Singapore curriculum to the U.S.,” Thomas said. “Had our daughter’s school here had a great math program, we probably would never have done this.”

Exquisite timing

CSUN’s Ivan Cheng (middle) prepares math programs using robotics, working with middle school teachers Wendy Schroeder (Nobel) and Ron Bibb (Maclay).

Their timing was exquisite. Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) scores were consistently placing Singapore at or near the top of international math comparisons and the U.S. scandalously low in the rankings of industrialized countries.

CSUN mathematics professor Joel Zeitlin said adoption of the Singapore texts would be “a good direction” for math education. He observed that “Americans introduce many topics, then cover and re-cover them…The Singapore program starts off with a smaller number of topics, covers them and moves on, assuming that students can use them.”

But beyond the Singapore curriculum, Zeitlin sees the need for K-12 math specialists, better tests that measure deeper student understanding, and a keener focus on “actual mathematical knowledge for teaching…

In the search for ways to better prepare future teachers, faculty in the Michael D. Eisner College of Education and the College of Science and Mathematics work together closely. One example, said Zeitlin, is assistant secondary education professor Julie Gainsburg’s practice of inviting faculty from the Math Department to serve as research project reviewers for the master’s degree in mathematics education.

“Our projects are always trying to improve math education, whether developing brand new or veteran teachers,” said Gainsburg, who with colleague Ivan Cheng works on credentialing future math teachers and helping experienced math teachers in the Secondary Education Department’s math education masters program.

Gainsburg’s ears are always open to the concerns of math teachers on the front lines, including the challenges of teaching math to English language learners and requirements that have them teaching increasingly more math topics on a tight, “if-it’s-Tuesday-this-must-be-Section-D” schedule.  A recent requirement that eighth graders take Algebra I is affecting both middle school teachers who may not feel prepared to teach it, she observed, and students who may not feel prepared to master it.

Algebra’s the target

Algebra, a major culprit in district dropouts, is in fact the target subject of DREAMS (Developing Resources and Engaging Activities to Motivate Students), designed to ”help students before they fail.”

Backed by a grant from a consortium that included the CSU chancellor’s office, the Educational Roundtable, the UC president’s office and others, Cheng and colleagues created the summer program for eighth graders who were unsuccessful in math.

By integrating pre-algebra with robotics, mathematics was opened up to them in a way the youngsters never would have imagined. Children responded readily to a problem involving, say, the speed of a Lego robot, Cheng said. “They began to see education as relevant.”

Cheng met daily with the participating middle school teachers to focus on the learning needs of the kids. “We took a good hard look at what was going on in their heads,” he said.

In the fall semesters following DREAMS, students who ordinarily would not have been placed in algebra passed the subject at the 86 and 90 percent rates. “What happened was, teachers began to teach differently, working on getting through to the kids rather than just getting through the book.” said Cheng. “My mission has been to help teachers teach for understanding. If teachers just give the answers and the students don’t know what to do with them, then they can’t solve the problems of life.”

Michelle Katz, a CSUN math ed alumna, works with her students at Northridge Academy High School. Math chair at the school, Katz focuses on how students learn math.

Math teachers Michelle Katz ’04 MA (Math Education) and Wendi Williams ’04 MA (Math Education) agree. The two are National Board certified master teachers at Northridge Academy High, designed in collaboration with CSUN faculty and located on the CSUN campus. Their alma mater, they said, demonstrated “the practice of looking at how students learn math,” making content “accessible and relatable,” and building a connection with the learner.

As their students conducted investigations recently, their adjoining classrooms buzzed with activity. “It’s almost like science lab, but with math-themed problems,” said Katz, who like Williams was drawn to the new academy and its research-based innovations because she “wanted to be part of looking toward the future of education.” For Williams, the “mile wide, inch deep” approach to education has no place in that future.

Take a look at Provost Hellenbrand’s P.O.V. on math ed.