Achievements

Rosemary Sherriff

Geography

Micah Wright and Rosemary Sherriff published a new article on climate change impacts in forests in Southwest Alaska with National Park Service collaborators in the open-access journal Ecosphere. Results suggest that historically productive forests in Southwest Alaska are showing declines in growth under warmer conditions, with important implications for future forest conditions and productivity. Our results corroborate climate change model forecasts for the region. Article weblink: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2462

Joshua Frye

Communication

Dr. Joshua Frye, Communication, recently published an article entitled “Teaching future doctors to communicate: a communication intervention for medical students in their clinical year” in the Journal of Communication in Healthcare. Frye was a member of a communication consulting and research team alongside his colleague Dr. Joshua Hammonds from Rollins College that worked with Columbia University Medical School and Bassett Healthcare to develop a communication curriculum for third-year medical students during clinical training. The communication intervention was successful in improving the students’ communication skills, especially information giving, which is critical to enabling patients to make informed decisions in shared decision-making.

Matthew Derrick, Rosemary Sherriff

Geography

Geography professors Matthew Derrick and Rosemary Sherriff co-edited the 2018 issue of The California Geographer, the flagship peer-reviewed journal of the California Geographical Society. The volume—weighing in at more than 270 pages the largest in journal’s nearly six-decade history—features articles from HSU Geography faculty, including Derrick Nicholas Perdue, and former students, including Nathaniel Douglass and Eric Fowler, as well as academic geographers from throughout the state. The 2018 issue marks the second year of Derrick and Sherriff editing the journal; it can be accessed at the following link: http://scholarworks.csun.edu/handle/10211.3/203086

Eugene Novotney

Music

Dr. Eugene Novotney, Professor of Music, had eight new steelband arrangements published over summer 2018 by MauMau Music, the premier publisher of steelband music worldwide. Three of these publications are arrangements of compositions by Trinidadian artist, Ray Holman, who performed at HSU with the Calypso Band in Spring 2018, and two others are by Trinidadian legend, Clifford Alexis, who performed at HSU with the Calypso Band in Spring 2016. The other three publications are steelband arrangements of classic Trinidadian calypso and soca compositions by David Rudder, Len "Boogsie" Sharpe, and Clive Bradley of the Desperadoes Steelband.

Amy Beltran, Sammi Stowe, and Dr. Troy Lescher

Dance, Music & Theatre

Amy Beltrán (Theatre major), Sammi Stowe (Theatre major), and Dr. Troy Lescher (TFD) researched, edited, and published the "Doctoral Projects in Progress in Theatre Arts, 2018" report in the June 2018 edition of Theatre Journal [Association of Theatre in Higher Education].

Dan Aldag

Music

Dan Aldag has had two of his arrangements for jazz band published by Really Good Music. The arrangements are "Shimmer", composed by Allison Miller, and "Smack Dab", composed by Bobby Previte. Both compositions were originally written for small jazz groups and have been arranged for big band by Aldag.

Jared D. Larson

Politics

Jared D. Larson has just returned from the 40th Annual Conference of the Association for Contemporary Studies, of which he was co-organizer of the tri-lingual academic program, held at the School of Law of the University of Barcelona (5-7 Sept). Jared was the sole presenter of a co-authored paper (with Dr. Juliette Tolay of Penn State-Harrisburg) entitled "The Comparative Politics of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment: The Curious Cases of Spain, Portugal and Turkey."

Marcy Burstiner

Journalism & Mass Communication

This fall, HSU journalism students will be able to take an in-depth reporting class from someone who wrote the book on investigative reporting – Professor Marcy Burstiner.

Burstiner’s second edition of “Investigative Reporting: From Premise to Publication” was published by Routledge in July. For this updated version of a text first published in 2009, Burstiner includes tips from not only veteran investigative reporters but also college students who had carried out successful investigations for their campus news organizations. The new edition includes extensive discussion of data reporting and analysis for investigative stories. It also directs readers to free, collaborative tools for collecting, organizing and analyzing information, and it guides readers through the process of public records requests, as well.
"So many guides to investigative reporting are geared to experienced journalists and scare away students," Burstiner said. "I felt it important to show students that they can do investigations themselves right out of beginning reporting, by introducing them to their own peers who have done just that."

This semester, Burstiner is teaching an investigative reporting course, during which students will look at housing issues for renters in Humboldt County.

“The need to train journalists to do accurate in-depth reporting on complex topics is fast becoming one of the most important tasks of our era," said JMC chair Deidre Pike. "We're fortunate to have a national leader like Marcy teaching this class."

HSU journalism alumnus Matt Drange, a reporter at The Information, calls the book “illuminating” and “accessible.”

“This book provides the building blocks for students to conduct and publish their own investigative reporting with or without the support of a traditional classroom environment,” Drange wrote. “The bullet-proof methodology and straightforward approach Burstiner outlines provide guidance for first-year reporters and veteran journalists alike.”

Humboldt County residents may best know Burstiner from her long-running Media Maven column in the North Coast Journal.

Before coming to HSU, Burstiner worked as a reporter and editor for a series of publications including the San Francisco Business Times, thestreet.com and The Deal financial magazine and website.

Here’s a link to the book’s page on Routledge: https://www.routledge.com/Investigative-Reporting-From-Premise-to-Publication-2nd-Edition/Burstiner/p/book/9781138572164

Professor Mary I. Bockover

Philosophy

Dr. Bockover gave an invited presentation at the "Beyond Comparisons" conference held at East China Normal University in Shanghai in August 2018. The presentation was given in honor of her late teacher and mentor, Henry Rosemont, Jr.

Barbara Klessig

Anthropology

Barbara has been accepted to the University of Exeter for her PhD. Her research will focus on textiles, tools, and experimenting with recreated tools and how they functioned.