• Over 40 funding awards to SST faculty and students totaling nearly $5M including:
  • NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Award. $308,454. The funding will bring a high-power nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer to SST and allow the enhanced study of the physical and chemical properties of molecules. PI: J. Whiles Lillig, co-PIs: C. Works, J. Fukuto, and S. Farmer.
  • NSF STEM Talent Expansion Program (STEP). $990K over 5 years. Grant focuses on the development of an interdisciplinary first year STEM curriculum. PI: L. Stauffer, co-PIs: L. Cominsky, J.Qualls, C. Luke, and N. Rank.
  • NSF Collaborative Research: "The role of calcifying algae as a determinant of rocky intertidal macrophyte community structure at a meta-ecosystem scale," $1,119,999 ($370,000 to K. Nielsen/SSU).
  • B. Lahme, B. Ford, and K. Morris (Education) worked with local education agencies to obtain a 3-year, $980,000/year grant (SSU portion: approximately $92,000/year) to provide intensive 3-year mathematics professional development to 120 Sonoma County teachers of grade 3 through high school.
  • L. Close, Nursing. Director and Educational Advisor, Collaborative Nursing Education Continuum Model (CNECM), partnership with five SSU service area community colleges, five medical centers, and two regional simulation centers to refine and enhance an ADN-MSN (with BSN "stop out") curriculum model in the SSU service area (2009-2012). Kaiser Permanente/East Bay Community Foundation Award ($251,262).
  • "GLAST Education and Public Outreach", NASA through Stanford University, PI: L. Cominsky. Mod 39: $214,832, Mod 40: $200,000, Mod 41: $100,000, Mod 42: $127,645.
• SST faculty received several awards including:
  • Dr. Matt James, Geology, received the 2011 Karl Kortum Award for Maritime History for his work detailing the 1905-06 research expedition to the Galapagos Islands of a team from the California Academy of Sciences. The award is administered by the San Francisco Maritime Museum.
  • Liz Close, Nursing. Nominated for NLN Outstanding Workforce Development Award, National League for Nursing (2010).
• SST faculty published over 60 articles, gave over 50 invited presentations, and participated in over 30 professional conferences, meetings and workshops including:
  • Wilkosz, M.E., et al. 2010. Gender and ethnic disparities contributing to overweight in California adolescents. Journal of Public Health, 18(2); 131-144.
  • Buckley, T. N., et al. 2011. The role of bundle sheath extensions and life form in stomatal responses to leaf water status. Plant Physiology 156:962-973.
  • Crocker, D.E. ,et al. 2010. Approaches to studying climatic change and its role in the habitat selection of Antarctic pinnipeds. Integrative and Comparative Biology. 50(6): 1018-1030.
  • Fukuto, J. M., et al. 2010. Reactions of HNO with heme proteins: New routes to HNO-heme complexes and insight into physiological effects, Inorg. Chem., 49, 6283-6292.
  • Ledin, G. 2011. The Growing Harm of Not Teaching Malware, Communications of the ACM, Vol 54, No 2.
  • "Gamma-ray Light Curves and Variability of Bright Fermi-detected Blazars " A. Abdo and 171 authors, including L. Cominsky, Ap.J., 722, pp. 520-542 (2010).
  • Sökmen, B., et al. 2011. Effects of upper-body resistance training on bone turnover markers and mineral density in young pre-menopausal women. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 43(5):246.
• The SST community participated in many community service efforts including:
  • Experience-based educational opportunities for K-12 students. For example, the Biology Department participated in fifty-six community outreach activities in 2010-11 serving more than 19,000 people. Activities range from high school laboratory and instruction in biogas production and biotechnology to larger events including Insectapalooza, Sonoma County and Cloverdale Ag Days.
  • Promoted health and wellness and provided a plethora of health services throughout the community including the Jewish Community Free Clinic, the Community for Spiritual Living, Doctors without Borders, and community health fairs.

Highlights from 2009-10:

• Seven grants were awarded to Biology faculty totaling $5.35 M including:
  • Dr. Dan Crocker was awarded a $500,000 grant from the National Institute of Health to study mechanisms of oxidative stress in elephant seals.
  • Dr. Karina Nielsen was awarded $288,677 to lead the "Sandy Beaches and Surf Zone Ecosystems" study as part of a $4 million grant to the North Central Coast Marine Protected Areas Baseline Program.
• The Cycromagnetic 17 tesla superconducting magnet system came online in Darwin Hall and is being used by students for research and coursework with Professor Jeremy Qualls. This instrument is extremely rare among undergraduate institutes around the world and signifies high-end infrastructure capable of projects and intensive research normally reserved for graduate institutions or national labs.
• Dr. Michael Cohen received the Theodore Roosevelt Environmental Award from the Association of California Water Agencies.
• Over 20 students from the Chemistry Department presented their work at the Northern California Undergraduate Research Symposium in Santa Clara under the guidance of Professors Carmen Works, Jennifer Lillig, Steve Farmer and Jon Fukuto.
• Two applications written by computer science students were accepted into the Apple App store (iRovio - iPhone/iPad controls for Rovio mobile webcam and Forsaken - fantasy arcade adventure).
• May Commencement included the first graduates from the Engineering Science program and the Statistics degree.
• In the Nursing Department, the first-time pass rate for the national RN licensing examination for 20 DEMSN graduates was 100% and for 32 prelicensure BSN graduates was 97% (continue to exceed the national and state averages of 85-86%).
• Prof. Scott Severson and collaborators were awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for over $630,000 to develop an astronomical adaptive optics system. The system, to be installed at Pomona College's Table Mountain Observatory, will be built with substantial student involvement. SSU students will work with Prof. Severson during the four-year duration of the grant in his Darwin Hall Laboratory and at the telescope site in Southern California.
• Professor Lynn Cominsky was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, through the Forum on Education. The citation reads "For her seminal work to promote student and teacher education using NASA missions as inspiration." Cominsky was also elected Vice Chair of the APS California section, and a Member-at-Large of the Executive Committee for the APS' Division of Astrophysics.
• Biology faculty published 18 peer reviewed submissions and gave over 20 professional talks/seminars/presentations.
• Dr. Hall Cushman of the Biology Department received the SSU Goldstein Award for Excellence in Scholarship.
• Graduate student Alexandria (Zannie) Dallara won second place at the 24th Annual CSU Student Research Competition for her work on the "Effects of Incubation Temperature on Development and Phenotype in the Western Pond Turtle, emys marmorata".
• Michael Cohen is an active contributor to a $1.5 M award to the CSU for STEM service learning. SSU is one of 5 CSU campuses involved in developing STEM service learning initiatives in the curriculum.
• Dr. Suzanne Rivoire received funding for "Modeling the Power Consumption of Computer Systems with Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)" from the Computing Research Association.
• Two SSU teams competed in the internationally recognized Mathematical Modeling Competition the weekend of February 18, 2010.
• The NASA EP/O group was awarded new funding totaling nearly $500,000 from NASA to develop an on-line curriculum in Cosmology for college students. This three-year program is a partnership with Chicago State University and University of Nevada, Las Vegas, under the direction of Principal Investigator Lynn Cominsky.
• Prof. Cominsky (along with at least 150 other people) has been a co-author on about 30 peer-reviewed papers resulting from the first year of science data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
• Six SSU math majors competed in the Putnam Mathematical Competition (a national competition held for the past 72 years) on December 5, 2009.
• The Family Nurse Practitioner Rural Distance Program with CSU Stanislaus and Chico continues to receive Federal funding and Song-Brown funding to support a total of 114 nurses currently enrolled in this graduate program.
• The Collaborative Nursing Education Continuum Model (CNECM) with the five SSU service area Community College Nursing Programs, five area medical centers and two regional human simulation centers successfully piloted the specially designed streamlined academic path for community college nursing students to begin BSN and MSN coursework while enrolled in their prelicensure nursing programs.
• Professor Hongtao Shi's laboratory experiments have yielded honeycomb-like regular arrays of nanometer (nm) sized pores in aluminum substrate. Facilities in the Keck Lab show that these pores are less than 100 nm in diameter and can be tuned by manipulating the fabrication parameters. This work has huge potential in applications such as data storage as different materials can be filled in these pores to demonstrate quantum-size effect.
• Prof. Qualls and students synthesized a number of organic superconductors and ferromagnetic colloidal suspensions in Darwin 303. The synthesis required very inert working atmosphere and growth conditions, which were provided by a Vacuum Atmosphere glove box and vibration isolated optical table. Samples are being shipped to numerous researchers around the world, promoting SSU's visibility as a leader in material science.