MEDIA RELEASE

Fellowship Program Marks Cal State Northridge’s Vibrant Research

(NORTHRIDGE, Calif., March 5, 2008) — Citing the university’s move into more advanced degree programs and its "increasingly vibrant research focus," Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Harry Hellenbrand has announced the creation of the first California State University, Northridge Research Fellows program.

The program affords honored fellows the opportunity to pursue compelling research or creative activity during the 2008–09 academic year. Fellows will have a reduced teaching load during the year, but will continue committee and service activities.

Emerging from a competitive selection process that began in fall 2007, the first Research Fellows in the program include Vicentiu Covrig of the College of Business and Economics; Owen Doonan of the Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication; Adele Eskeles Gottfried of the Michael D. Eisner College of Education; Xiyi Hang of the College of Engineering and Computer Science; Lindsay Hansen of the Oviatt Library; Rick Mitchell of the College of Humanities; Suzanne Scheld of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences; and Ben Yaspelkis III of the College of Health and Human Development.

"Faculty here do a tremendous amount of research and creative work that enlightens, delights, and enriches," Hellenbrand said. "Such pursuit of knowledge is a good in itself, even as much of it is practically useful. We want to recognize these achievements."

The best way to do that is to link the research program to the library, said Hellenbrand. "Even in the age of the Web," he said, "we depend on the library for the organization of knowledge so that, as scholars and artists, we can add to it."

With this new program for tenured and tenure-track faculty, said Library Dean Sue Curzon, the exceptional range and diversity of research and creative activity on the campus will be highlighted. Importantly, said the dean, the Research Fellows program will provide faculty with new opportunities to contribute to their fields of study. "All of society benefits," Curzon said, "when new knowledge is generated."

Fellows will report the results of their research or creative activity to their deans and to the provost. Once a year, the Oviatt Library will host a colloquium in which the fellows will share their work with the campus community.

Faculty committees reviewed proposals for the projects, which reflect a diverse field of scholarship:

• Vicentiu Covrig (Department of Finance, Real Estate and Insurance). Covrig will study how U.S. and foreign professional money managers suffer from the behavioral biases of overconfidence and "herding," the concerted movement of large investor groups into or out of a security based on fear. His will be the first systematic examination of non-U.S. investors’ behavior.
• Owen Doonan (Department of Art). In addition to organizing an international workshop in Turkey on the archaeology of ancient Greek Miletus and its colonies, Doonan will edit volumes on the archaeology project he leads in the Black Sea region, a "Dictionary of Black Sea Antiquity," and will expand the catalog for the CSUN exhibition, "Post-Colonial Arts of Tunisia," into a major publication.
• Adele Eskeles Gottfried (Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling). Recognizing high school course selections as a "gateway" to student success, Gottfried will use a longitudinal study from elementary school through college to examine the hypothesis that academic intrinsic motivation, achievement and parental involvement positively impact course selections and academic attainment.
• Xiyi Hang (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering). Using sophisticated microarray technology, Hang will develop and apply to the diagnosis of cancer an important new "machine learning-based classifier" of genetic data from cancerous and normal cells. The accuracy of cancer diagnosis depends greatly on the selected classifier, Hang said.
• Lindsay Hansen (Oviatt Library). Hansen will pursue her research in the former East Berlin, conducting personal interviews with Volkmar Andrä and Peter Wicke, pivotal popular music figures during the Cold War. Hansen also will investigate the production of Weisses Gold, an important work about the history of porcelain.
• Rick Mitchell (Department of English). Mitchell will write and "workshop" a new, full-length play called "Anthropology." Through the plight of an anthropologist embedded in Iraq, the play will theatrically examine cultural differences and historical conflicts related to the Iraq War and—significantly—the battle over the control of scientific knowledge and technology.
• Suzanne Scheld (Department of Anthropology). In light of China’s much-debated presence on the African continent, Scheld will produce two papers: one exploring the political, economic and socio-cultural underpinnings of Chinese landownership in Senegal, and another on the emergence of racial discourse as a response to China in Senegal, class conflicts and related contradictions.
• Ben Yaspelkis III (Department of Kinesiology). In his research on diabetes, Yaspelkis will utilize two rodent models of insulin resistance (high-fat diet induced vs. genetic) to assess why insulin action in skeletal muscle is impaired. He then will determine whether aerobic or resistance exercise can reverse the defects in skeletal muscle insulin signaling.