CSUDH Community Connections

Center for Service Learning,Internships, & Civic Engagement (SLICE)

Community Connections

Serving our Communities

Too often we overlook the true heroes who are working every day to better our communities. This month, we would like to honor students. Although more of our students have outside jobs and family responsibilities than any other CSU, they still managed to find time to do extraordinary work in our communities. Next month, we will highlight the outstanding contributions of our faculty and staff that are serving our communities.

Thanks to the tremendous efforts of students, faculty, and staff, Dominguez Hills has received the nation’s highest honor for its commitment to community engagement. For the third consecutive year, we were named to President Obama’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll “with distinction.” Our students’ service in the field totaled more than 1.4 million hours of service benefiting the community.

• Honors were extended to 623 universities throughout the the nation, with only 110 of those (18%) additionally recognized “with distinction.”

• In California, 47 universities were honored, and CSUDH is one of just 18 to be recognized “with distinction.”

• Fifteen CSU campuses were honored, and CSUDH is one of only 7 instutions to be recognized “with distinction.”

The Honor Roll list is available at http://www.nationalservice.gov/honorroll/ Dominguez Hills was one of only 6 institutions in California and one of 115 in the nation to be awarded the prestigious Carnegie Community Engagement Classification. This means other institutions will use California State University Dominguez Hills as the touchstone by which they measure their community engagement efforts.

Remember to include these awards when writing proposals that include community based research. These awards show strong evidence to funders about o our track record for working with our local and global communities.

The Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/ sites/default/files/2010_Community_engagement_institutions.pdf

Last year, there were 331 Service Learning Classes offered with 7,575 students enrolled giving 113,625 hours of service to the community!

Dominguez Hills Students Rock!

Did you know?

STEM Community Projects GEO408, taught by Dr. Rod Hay and Michael Ferris engaged our students with the city of Hermosa Beach.

Initially, aerial photography, including near infrared imagery, was used to locate the vegetated areas. The students performed their assessments of the data following up by a visit to Hermosa Beach to verify and ground truth their analysis.

Using geographic information system (GIS) software (designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present geographical data), the initial mapping was conducted to quantify green space and to determine what different types of vegetation are located within the City of Hermosa Beach.

The mapping project will allow students to determine how much and what types of vegetation are appropriate for a coastal city like Hermosa Beach, and to introduce those green space assessment into future city planning. Funding was awarded through the Center for Service Learning, Internships & Civic Engagement (SLICE) through the Office of the Chancellor STEM Squared project.

As a result of these hands-on projects, two students from the Earth and Environment Department received opportunities this year. Daniel Pearlman received a fully funded research assistantship for a Masters degree in Geography from the University of Miami at Ohio to conduct environmental research in Kenya. Courtney Fiamengo was selected to participate in the National Science Foundation funded Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Project (GDEP) at CSU Long Beach. GDEP is sponsoring 20 students to undertake archeological research using geo-techniques on Kauai, Hawaii this summer.

Dr. John Thomlinson and Terry Dr. McGlynn traveled to Costar Rica this summer introduce students to biological research in the area.

Future plans include mapping the 55 acre site in Long Beach recently vacated by Signal Hill Petroleum known as Willow Gulch.

CSUDH students contributed over three million dollars ($3,000,000) to our communities using the skills and knowledge they learn in our classrooms to better both our local and global communities!

Dominguez Hills students ROCK!

For information on engaging with the community, contact Center for Service Learning, Internships, & Civic Engagement 310 243-2438 www.csudh.edu/csl

STEM Community Projects SLICE funding through the ECO LED ( a collaboration of Southern California Edison and the Chancellor’s Center for Community Engagement) grant was awarded to Dr. Judy King’s service-learning course Geography 380, Biogeography of Southern California. An introduction to the biomes of the southern California area involving hands on learning experiences with many field trips to local ecosystems. In the field and in the classroom, students learn about local plants, animals, insects, birds and the physical environments they inhabit.

Thanks to funding from this grant a service-learning component was added to the course by planning, preparing and installing a 20’ by 20’ native plant garden on the campus. Each of the 26 students in the class studied and presented information about one plant that was to go in the garden. The students then prepared and planted the area. The completed garden is a great source of pride for them, and they were able to show it off to the campus and community on Earth Day. From Dr. King’s ECO LED report: On Earth Day, students had a booth in the center of campus and also a second information booth and tours of the garden. In addition to working at every opportunity in the garden, Tannia Ochoa took it upon herself to get donations from Home Depot and organized the acquisition, bagging up and selling of native wildflower seeds at the Earth Day booth.

Sydney Carnahan designed our banner, put together two photo notebooks and made beautiful plant stakes for each plant. Tim Okazaki took pictures of every aspect of the project. Sonny (Santiano) Riviera using his construction experience was able to show the other students how to use the tools and how to load and unload materials and efficiently spread gravel and mulch. Kelley Dawdy, a landscaper by occupation working on her Master’s Degree in Biology, showed students how to put native plants into the ground. She helped organize the purchase of bulk gardening products and gave the garden the polish of a real expert.

The most successful component of this project was turning 26 students from five different majors into a “team” of enthusiastic plant experts. This group is still committed to restoration and cannot wait to begin the restoration involved in re-introducing the endangered PV Blue Butterfly to a reserve in Palos Verdes.

At Earth Day the students had many interested visitors they could communicate their newly learned information to, and it was clear we had done a good job.

Evidence that student learning was clearly enhanced came when final reports and presentations were done. Each student’s understanding of the interconnectedness of nature and the importance each and every organism plays was clear.”

Students help make the public aware of the importance in planting sustainable lawns and gardens through the use of California Native Species. Dominguez Hills is the home of the Center for Urban Environmental Research (CEUR) and a native California species propagation site for plants, animals and insects.

Jumpstart for Young Children Shirly Brice-Heath’s seminal work, “What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School.” introduced us to the importance of story reading to young children as important literacy events. She reminds us that “ways of taking from books are as much a part of learned behavior as are ways of eating, sitting, playing games, and building houses.”

Research from Jumpstart for Young Children show that children who develop preliteracy skills are not only more likely to go to college, but they are more likely to graduate.

Building Future Leaders Our students who join Jumpstart for Young Children commit to over 300 hours of service to mentor our Compton preschoolers, so they are already reading when they enter kindergarten. Research has repeatedly shown that children who are reading by kindergarten are not only more likely to enroll in college, but they are more likely to graduate! Our students enroll in a child development course and participate in over 30 hours of training before setting foot in the preschool.

As if this weren’t enough, our Jumpstart members volunteered for campus and community projects throughout the year. They worked to build a house for a struggling family through Habitat for Humanity. The provided a reading area for the young children of the 50,000 community members who partipated in “Es El Momento” event promoting education to our Latino Community. Our Jumpstart students also provided United Way with the most volunteers to read to school children in honor of Dr. Suess’ birthday. They have volunteered for many special events on campus including the Habitat for Humanity Homeowner Conference, the Instructional Technology Conference, Operation Shoebox for the Downtown Homeless Women’s Center , Earth Day, and many more. In addition, they started a student organization dedicated to pre-literacy efforts, “Jumpstart Readers.” Each student recieved a medal for this year’s President Obama’s Community Service Award.

JusticeCorps Another amazing program funded through an AmeriCorps grant, JusticeCorps is a collaborative project of: The California Administrative Office of the Courts , Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles and five local universities including California State University Dominguez Hills, California State University Northridge, California State University Long Beach, Cal Poly University Pomona and University of California, Los Angeles, several local legal aid agencies and the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer Affairs Students provide assistance in 10 L.A. area Self-Help Legal Access Centers and with the L.A. County Department of Consumer Affairs Small Claims Advisor. Members make a 300 hour commitment.

Our students are trained by experts in the field of family law, housing law and small claims law throughout the program year. Members serve the public by providing legal assistance through one-on-one direct contact with the public, legal workshops, and computer terminals designed to assist the public in completing legal forms.

Students have the opportunity to network with the legal community, such as judges, attorneys and court administrators and learn more about the law and the courts. After completion of 300 hours, JusticeCorps members will receive an educational award/stipend of $1,000 which can be used for up to 7 years.

I had the good fortune to shadow one of our students while she was working with a litigant in the Compton Courthouse. The litigant had been frustrated in that he could not see his children although he had been awarded visitation rights. Consulting with the onsite attorney, our student had his paperwork completed and attorneyreviewed filing instructions within 20 minutes. I asked the litigant to rate his experience working with our student on a scale of one to ten. The litigant gave our student a 12 and stated he had never found anyone so helpful in the court system.

The information from the JusticeCorps program highlights the importance of the work our students are doing: California is experiencing an explosion in the number of individuals appearing in court without legal representation on a variety of matters from family law to housing issues. The majority cannot afford legal representation, and resources to meet the needs of these “selfrepresented� individuals are sorely lacking. The ratio of litigants to legal aid attorneys in California is 10,000 to 1!

Self-represented litigants face many obstacles, such as a lack of familiarity with legal terms and mandatory forms, and an inability to follow or fully comprehend court proceedings or orders given in court. This jeopardizes their ability to obtain guardianships, or to avoid domestic violence and elder abuse. It also has far-reaching societal impacts including family instability and resultant increases in numbers of children involved in the juvenile dependency and delinquency system; a general lack of public trust and confidence in the court system; increased challenges for law enforcement officers; and increased rates of homelessness.

Student Service Projects The majority of the women who drop in to the DWC Day Center live on the streets, in encampments, or in night-to-night shelters.

The Day Center provides a respite from the rigors of street life in a nurturing and safe community environment. On average, 140 women a day drop in to the Day Center where three meals -- breakfast, lunch and a hearty afternoon snack -- are served seven days a week. Women come to use clean, private bathrooms and showers. They rest in day beds, use laundry facilities, make phone calls, secure a mailing address, or get a fresh change of clothes.

Operation Shoebox Students, faculty, and staff with the Office of Student Life and SLICE came together over the Holiday Season to assist the homeless women of the center through Operation Shoebox. They collected over 400 shoeboxes decorated with holiday season paper and ribbon and filled with grooming and hygiene supplies such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, small shampoos, combs, mirrors, and other personal products, things that we usually take for ganted.

Throughout the year, students collected several hundred pounds of hygeine supplies and clothing to supplement Dr. Sophia Momand’s monthly visits to Skid Row to give free medical care to the homeless.

Other highlights of the year include the Office of Student Life Student Food Pantry, the Theatre Departments production of “For Colored Girls” (which raised $2,000) for homeless women, Habitat for Humanity Home Ownership Workshop (700 participants), Our students volunteered for Es El Momento children’s reading room for small children of the 50,000+ attendees, rehabilitating a local preschool, fundraising activities to buy books for preschoolers, and the Native Story Telling $2,000 Target Grant providing cultural/educational events to Compton preschoolers.

Student cast from the Departments production of “For Colored Girls” (which raised $2,000) for homeless women. For the DH Dateline article: http://www.csudhnews.com/2012/02/ for-colored-girls-play/

These are only a few of the wonderful service projects our students have been doing throughout the year.

If you or your students want to be involved in community engagement activities, call the friendly people at SLICE at 310 243-2438 or go to: http://www.csudh.edu/csl/

Dominguez Hills Second Annual Pow Wow Honoring the Indigenous People of the Americas On Mothers’ Day Weekend, May 12, and 13, 2012, Dominguez Hills held its second annual pow wow.

Over 80 students volunteered from the Anthropology Club, the Earth Science Club, and various majors such as Psychology, Criminal Justice, Business, and Occupational Therapy.

Navajo Student Donna Kaybah James assisted the CSU External Relations Office in outreach to American Indian Students.

On a followup survey, students overwhelmingly agreed that the experience of working on planning and coordinating the pow wow gave them a much stronger sense of current issues facing Southern California American Indians today.

Pow wow photos courtesy of Joanie Harmon

Top left, intertribal dancing.

Bottom left, back row, student Steve Rosales, Yaqui/Huichol Front row, Jeanett Castillo, Cheryl McKnight, Tongva Spiritual Leader Jimi Castillo

Host Southern Drum Sooner Nation Sooner Nation drums for American Indian events throughout Southern California.

Until the DH Inaugural Pow Wow in 2011, Dominguez Hills had not hosted a pow wow since 1981 when Sooner Nations Head Singer Steve Bohay’s mother Mamie Daughomah Bohay, Kiowa, coordinated the Los Angeles All Indian Fair and American Indian BiCentennial at Dominguez Hills. (See the 1981 program cover below)

Robert Silent Thunder, Southern Straight Dancer