In Focus: Cal Poly Faculty

Cal Poly faculty are leading their fields. From rebuilding the higher education system in Afghanistan to tracking the smallest creatures of the oceans to saving Mayan ruins from ruin, Cal Poly professors' specialties and research interests take them around the globe -- often with students in tow. Back in the classroom, students have ready access to professors and their latest findings. Read on to find out some of the exciting things Cal Poly Faculty are doing.

International Interests | Stewarding the Environment | Practical Science | Digging History |
Artists in Residence | Building on Success | The Bottom Line |

International Interests

Ethnic Studies Professor
Aids Her Native Afghanistan
Since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, ethnic studies Professor Maliha Zulfacar has been leading a cross-continental life.She spends the academic year at Cal Poly, teaching classes about global ethnic conflict and geopolitics. She spends her summers teaching social science at Afghanistan’s Kabul University. Electricity, heat and running water remain sporadic there, walls are still pockmarked with bullet holes, books are in woefully sort supply, and female students risk kidnappings if found alone outside the university gates. Despite the challenges, Zulfacar wouldn’t trade her summers for the world. “The students are like sponges – so thirsty for knowledge. They will follow you around, asking for books and asking how to learn,” she said.
Summer 2006 Magazine Article on Professor Zulfacar
News Release on her documentary
Summer 2002 Magazine Article on Prof. Zulfacar
Read the 2006 NPR Interview with Professor Zulfacar

Rebuilding Afghanistan's Ag Economy: Professor Hany Khalil
The Cal Poly College of Agriculture is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help Afghanistan build its agricultural exports sector. Cal Poly Food Science Professor Hany Khalil presented food safety workshops for government Agriculture Ministry personnel in Kabul, Afghanistan in spring 2006. The workshops aimed to train Afghanis on meeting international food safety standards – key to building exports. Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner this week praised Cal Poly and the efforts of several USDA agencies and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for their work in providing the food safety training to Afghanistan’s dried fruit and nut industries. Khalil hopes to go back to give more sessions.
Read more about Professor Khalil's work in Afghanistan 

Exploring The Dark Side of Chocolate: Professor Tom Neuhaus
Cal Poly Food Science professor Tom Neuhaus studying whether the world’s appetite for chocolate is fueling the market for child slave labor in Africa. Neuhaus, who heads the Cal Poly Chocolates enterprise project on campus and the campus Fair Trade Club, is undertaking a long-term study of the cocoa-bean industry in West Africa (principally the Ivory Coast and Ghana). The Ivory Coast supplies 70 percent of America’s cocoa beans and close to 100 percent of the chocolate in American candy bars In his free time, Neuhaus is an avid cyclist, artisan baker and chocolatier, and has founded Project Hope and Fairness, a non-profit organization, with colleagues to raise money for and support "Fair Trade" certified cocoa-growing cooperatives in Africa.
Read more about Professor Tom Neuhaus

Stewarding the Environment

Professor Dennis Frey, the Monarch Guy
Cal Poly Biology Professor Dennis Frey is the man to talk to if you want to know about Monarch Butterflies. Frey and Shawna Stevens co-lead Project Monarch Alert. The research project, begun in 2002, studies fall migration, wintering activity and spring dispersal of monarchs in western North America. Frey is an ecologist and faculty member in the Biological Sciences Department at Cal Poly's College of Science and Mathematics and Stevens is a graduate student in the department.
Read More about Professor Frey | Visit Professor Frey's Web Site
Visit the Project Monarch Alert Web Site

Professors Helping Nature Clean 'House' at the Guadalupe Dunes
Biology Professor Chris Kitts and environmental engineering Professor Yarrow Nelson are currently studying natural environmental cleanup methods at the Guadalupe Dunes on the Central Coast. In collaboration with Cal Poly’s Environmental Biotechnology Institute, the professors are supervising a handful of grad students working on some new "bioremediation" cleanup projects funded by Chevron/ Unocal, both at the dunes and in a lab on campus.
Read about the professors' work at the Dunes

Professor Plays Key Role in Fight
Against Sudden Oak Death
Cal Poly professors and staff take to the skies in summer to help fight Sudden Oak Death, a mysterious fungus destroying valuable and scenic oak trees in California and parts of Oregon. Cal Poly Professor Walter Mark and Forest Health Technician Amy Jirka have flown over California counties annually since 2001, looking to spot any spread of the tree disease.
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Practical Science

Professor Bob Howell: Fighting Crime with the Click of a Mouse
The voices on the audiotape were muffled, nearly inaudible, yet there was little doubt: a murder-for-hire was in the making. On this Friday evening, with no time to lose, police locate Bob Howell. The mild-mannered photography professor hurries to his makeshift lab in the University Police Department, where he meticulously dissects the evidence, stopping a murder before it occurs. Seems unlikely, but this soft-spoken Cal Poly professor fights crime with a mouse – the computer kind. With his film and digital cameras, video and audio equipment, a high-powered laptop, and software he’s likely written himself, Howell has become something of a celebrity cyber- sleuth on the Central Coast.
Read about Professor Howell's Crimefighting Work

Professor Nikki Adams: Turning the Tide Against Skin Cancer
Spiny, purple sea creatures the size of your palm may someday lead scientists to a cure for skin cancer. That’s what Biology Professor Nikki Adams and her student research assistants hope to discover with the experiments they are conducting on sea urchins at the Cal Poly Pier at Avila Beach. Sea urchins, it appears, produce eggs that contain natural sunscreens. The students and Adams want to find out how these sunscreens protect the eggs and embryos. Adams came to Cal Poly in 2002 with a wealth of experience in the field of marine biology, including a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship to study the molecular effects of sunlight on sea urchins at UC Santa Barbara. Experience isn’t all she has brought to Cal Poly, though. Adams, 40, also has an enormous talent for grant-writing. Since her first year on campus, she has helped acquire more than $650,000 in grants for marine science programs, faculty support, and equipment, including a $375,000 National Science Foundation grant for the sea urchin project.
Read More about Professor Adams | Visit Professor Adams' Web site

Professor Kenneth Hoffman: (Paleo) Magnetic Man
Cal Poly Physics Professor Kenneth Hoffman is a pioneer in the study of reversals of Earth’s magnetic field. He has been published nine times in the prestigious weekly science magazine Nature, and his studies have helped push back the date of the earliest known human migration in China (to 1.7 million years ago). He is an expert in the history of the earth's magnetic fields and their periodic reversals -- when the north and south 'magnetic' poles exchanged positions. When archaeologists around the globe want to know how old a dig is -- Professor Hoffman gets a call.
Read More About Professor Hoffman | More Background on Professor Hoffman
Visit Professor Hoffman's Web site

Presidential Science Award Winner, Ocean Explorer: Professor Mark Moline
Cal Poly oceanographer and Biological Sciences Professor Mark Moline won the 2001 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, It's the nation's highest honor for professionals at the outset of their research careers -- and comes with a five-year research funding grant Moline is employing at Cal Poly's new Marine Science Education and Research Center. Moline, a specialist in microscopic marine plants called phytoplankton, has conducted extensive research projects in the Atlantic, Pacific, and in waters surrounding Antarctica. Thanks to Moline, Cal Poly students participated in the development of LEO-15 off New England's Atlantic coast, considered the most technologically advanced coastal research site in the world. NASA recommended Moline for the presidential award for his study of "upwelling events" -- upward currents of water in the ocean --  and their impact on phytoplankton. "Phytoplankton, the 'forests' of the ocean, fuel the marine food web," Moline explains. Moline is one of two recently named Unocal Professors of Marine Science who are guiding a variety of projects at Cal Poly's new Marine Science and Education Research Center in Avila Beach.
Read about Professor Moline's Presidential Award | Visit Professor Moline's Web page
Read about the opening of the Marine Science Education and Research Center

Really Digging History

Making Waves: Archaeology Professor Terry Jones
Cal Poly Archaeology Professor Terry Jones is making waves with his research into possible contact between ancient Polynesians and California's Chumash Indians. Jones co-authored and linguist Kathryn A. Klar of UC Berkeley have published studies in the archaeological journal American Antiquity on their studies. Jones and Klar's research and assertion that Polynesian explorers reached North America nearly 1,000 years before Columbus has reignited debate over the theory.
Read more about Professor Terry Jones | Read the SF Chronicle Story on Jones

Jurassic Park For Real: Professor Raul Cano
In 1995, Cal Poly Microbiology Professor Raúl Cano and colleagues in his lab stunned the world when they announced they’d revived 30-million-year-old bacteria from spores taken from the belly of an ancient bee entombed in amber. (Yes, that is part of the plot of the hit 1993 movie "Jurassic Park" -- but the professor's research efforts predate the film and Michael Critcheon novel on which it's based.) In October 2000, another research group used many of the techniques developed by Cano’s lab to revive 250-million-year-old bacteria from spores trapped in salt crystals. Cano has received several awards for his outstanding teaching skills and is recognized for his laboratory training of undergraduate students. He is currently the Unocal Chair for Environmental Studies at Cal Poly and Director of the University's Environmental Biotechnology Institute.
Visit Professor Cano's Web site | Visit the Environmental Biotechnology Institute Web site
Read the Microbe.org profile of Professor Cano

Professor Joe Donaldson:
Trekking through Mud to Save Mayan Ruins
Landscape Architecture Professor Joe Donaldson is working with colleagues and students to protect ancient Mayan ruins in Honduras. Copan is an ancient village of hand-hewn houses and cobblestone streets set in the steep terrain of Northwest Honduras. Once isolated, this rain forest community’s culture and natural resources are now threatened by civilization. Roads and dwellings sit on top of 1,500-year-old Mayan ruins. A two-lane highway rumbles through the heart of the ruins. Land along the Copan River, once shaded by dense rain forest, is almost void of vegetation and wildlife due to deforestation. Devastating landslides are common.To help with some of Copan’s problems, the Honduras Ministry of Tourism asked the Cal Poly crew of six students, landscape architecture Professor Donaldson, and a handful of other faculty to create a plan for protecting the area’s vast cultural and natural resources and sustaining the area environmentally, economically and socially. The World Bank provided funding for the project.
Read about Donaldson's adventures in the rainforest around Copan

Artists in Residence
From Baroque to Bop:
Music Professor Craig Russell Knows It
Music Professor Craig Russell is a renowned expert on Baroque and early California music. He has combed through the historic Missions of California, recovering and reconstructing centuries-old musical arrangements from the Mexican colonial period. His musical expertise also fast-forwards to the 1960s. The professor is also an expert on the protest and pop songs that reflected the tumultuous decade. Russell earned high marks in 2006 rom Los Angeles music critics for a concert he helped create at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. At the concert, the Los Angeles Master Chorale performed early Latin American music discovered and reconstructed by Russell. The professor also performed on the Baroque guitar with the accompanying orchestra. Much of the music was the direct result of Russell’s investigative work in colonial archives and in his reconstruction of these works. For all his academic efforts, he was one of the recipients of the CSU's annual Wang award for 2006, which carries with it a $20,000 award. | Read about the Wang Award for Professor Russell
Read more about Professor Russell and his restoration of Mexican colonial music

Ethnic Studies Professor Charise Cheney Wraps Up Rap
Cal Poly Ethnic Studies Professor Charise Cheney has published a book on the history of rap and hip-hop music. The Ethnic Studies professor also teaches a popular course on the history behind hip-hop. Cheney took time off in 2004 to write the book thanks to a grant from the Ford Foundation. Titled “Brothers Gonna Work It Out: Sexual Politics In The Golden Age Of Rap Nationalism,” it was published by New York University Press and released this summer. She says the book illustrates "the potentially powerful and transformative powers of rap music" and examines the political expression of rap artists within the historical context of black nationalism.
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Gloria Velasquez:
'Roosevelt High School' Novels Focus on Teens
Cal Poly Modern Languages and Literatures Professor and award-winning writer Gloria Velasquez is the author of the popular Roosevelt High School Series of young adult novels. The books focus on a group of multiracial teenagers who are confronted with a variety of social and cultural issues such as violence, sexuality and prejudice. The RHS Series is widely read throughout the United States and Europe. Velasquez has so far written seven books for the series. She is also a published poet and San Luis Obispo's current poet laureate.
Read more about Professor Velasquez' Novels
Read a profile of Professor Velasquez

Building on Success

Annual 'PolyHouse' Project
Teaches Students, Serves Community
Since 2003, Industrial Manufacturing and Engineering Professor Roya Javadpour has shepherded her two-quarter upper level Project Management class as they perform an "extreme makeover" on a Central Coast home belonging to a needy family. The students raise money and in-kind sponsorships to cover the cost, work with local social service agencies to chose a family home to renovate, generate plans, get permits -- and then do all the work over two consecutive weekends each spring in a culmination of the project. The students have so far renovated the Nipomo home of an elderly disabled couple, the Templeton home of a musician forced into a wheelchair in an auto accident, and the San Luis Obispo home of an elderly disabled blind woman, her caretaker daughter, and disabled granddaughter.
Read More about Professor Javadpour and her annual PolyHouse project
Visit the PolyHouse Web site

Architecture Professor Mueller is a National Teaching Award Winner
Cal Poly architecture Professor Alice Mueller received the 2005 American Institute of Architects Education Honor Award for her “Cal Poly Downtown Studio” project. The award was made during the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture annual conference, in Chicago in early 2005. "The purpose of the awards program is to discover and recognize the achievement of individuals who serve the profession as outstanding teachers,” said AIA Education Director Catherine Roussel. The award honors instructors for excellence in architectural education as demonstrated in classroom, studio, and/or community work, or in courses offered in various educational settings.
Read more about Professor Mueller's Award

The Bottom Line

Professor Jap Efendi: Eyeing CEO Salaries
Companies that give their chief executives lavish stock option packages as part of their compensation are more likely to wind up in accounting trouble later on, according to research by Cal Poly Accounting Professor Jap Efendi and colleagues. Efendi worked with Texas A&M Business Professor Edward Swanson and Texas A&M doctoral candidate Aup Srivastava to study the issue. Their study has already received attention in the financial press, including Business Week Online, CFO.com and the Financial Times of London. Efendi and colleagues studied data from 100 publicly traded companies regarding the relationship between their chief executive officer compensation packages and subsequent accounting restatements.
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