Student Achievements

Ryan Bibler completed his BA and was named as the History Department's top honor's student. He will be enrolling in the Ph.D. program at the University of Virginia in Fall 2007.

Paul Sandul won a fellowship from History Associates.

Brent Rogers has completed his thesis, "Facing an Uncertain Future: Electronic Records Preservation and California State Government," and he will enter the PhD program at the University of Nebraska to study Western American history and Digital history under Dr. Douglas Seefeldt this Fall 2007.

Graduate student Michael Hibma has just accepted a position as an Architectural Historian with LSA Associates in Point Richmond.

Steven J. “Mel” Melvin has been promoted to Historian at JRP Historical Consulting.

Susan Hotchkiss completed her thesis titled, "The Worthy and the Noble: Disadvantaged Widows and Military Widows in America from Colonial Times to 1915."

Ty Smith was admitted to the joint UCSB-CSUS Program in Public Historical Studies, and he received the UCSB Doctoral Scholars Fellowship (2007-2012)

Karen Raines completed her thesis, "The Rise of Feminism Under the Contagious Diseases Acts (1864-1886)" with Dr. Siegel (advisor) and Dr. Kluchin (second reader). She has also accepted a 10-month position with Shanghai University in Shanghai, China where she will be teaching English.

Paul Sandul won the Kenneth N. Owens Award for Excellence in Public History for 2007. He will be continuing his Ph.D. studies at CSU, Sacramento next Fall.

Todd Holmes completed his thesis, "Politics in the Fields," and he will be entering the Ph.D. program at Yale University in Fall 2007.

Stephen Campbell completed his M.A. Thesis, "Hickory Wind: The tale of Andrew Jackson's Bank War in Missouri, 1831-1837" and will begin his Ph.D. studies under economic historian John Majewski at UC Santa Barbara this Fall 2007.

Tory Swim, a student in the CSUS-UCSB joint Ph.D. program in Public Historical Studies will be in residence at UCSB this Fall.

Rachel Winslow completed her M.A. Thesis, "Good Samaritans or Baby Brokers? Conflicting Responses to the Holt Adoption Program, 1956-1964" and will begin her Ph.D. work at UC Santa Barbara in Fall 2007.

Troy Crowder is completing his thesis, a comparative study of British and American public policy and scientific responses to BSE, or Mad Cow disease, and he will begin Ph.D. Program at UC Santa Cruz this Fall where he plans to study environmental history.

Stephanee Ruiz is beginning thesis on the history of acupuncture in California.

Lola Aguilar, public history graduate (Spring 2007), is now the lead archivist for managing the Roseville City Library’s history collection.

Gary Link is now a researcher for the California State Republican Caucus, which, among other things, requires intense historic research on state law, bills, and congressional activities.

Spring 2006

Sophomore history major Katie McCoy received All-Academic honors from ESPN: The Magazine in January. McCoy, who plays for the Sacramento State women’s soccer team, holds a 3.7 GPA.

Senior history major Grey Rachel Esser spent a portion of the winter holidays in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast working on housing reconstruction for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Abbey Thompson Feely (MA, December 2005) has accepted an offer as an adjunct at American River College. She will be teaching US History since 1865 and the History of American Women this semester. She credits having taken History 400 (Teaching College History) as a key to getting her job.

The Department of History is pleased to announce that Public History graduate student Nathan Hallam received the first Lawrence A. Brooks Graduate Conference Grant Scholarship. The scholarship honors the memory of Larry Brooks, a CSUS graduate student who died last spring. Larry was an active participant at academic conferences, and Prof. Joan Moon generously has funded this scholarship in Larry's honor.

Two Sacramento State history majors are presenting papers at the 34th annual conference of the National Association for Ethnic Studies, to be held in San Francisco on March 30-April 1. Both students are completing the BA in History, which makes their acceptance at this conference even more exceptional. Susan Snider will be giving a paper titled "William Alexander Leidesdorff: Perspectives on a Pioneering Enigma in Pre-Gold Rush California." April Farnham will present a paper titled, "'Their Sleep Is To Be Desecrated': The Central Valley Project and the People of the Winnemen Wintu and Wintoon Tribes, 1938-1943."

A team consisting of Prof. Chris Castaneda and graduate students Katie Nipper (Standard Program) and Devyn Henry (Public History) will begin researching the history of the California Attorney General's Office for a history booklet that will be printed next fall.

Former MA student Mark Bernhardt has an article on western films forthcoming in the Journal of the West.

History major Derek Hamilton has been accepted to study law at the University of Virginia, one of the top ten law schools in the United States.

Alma Shaykhani (who graduated in December) has been accepted into the History PhD program at UC Irvine to pursue Middle Eastern and Iranian Studies. She will be among the first students in their newly established Center for Persian Studies.

Graduate student Eric Kenagy has been accepted into the University of California, Riverside’s doctoral program in history for the 2006 autumn quarter. His major field will be Early Modern Europe with a focus on the history of Christianity and a probable research emphasis on the sixteenth-century Continental Reformation. He has received the “Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship Award,” which pays the cost of tuition and housing for the first two years. He will be studying under graduate coordinator and professor, Dr. Randolph Head.

April Farnham was awarded the prize for the best graduate paper presented at the 34th annual conference of the National Association for Ethnic Studies, held in San Francisco on March 30-April 1, 2006. Her paper, "'Their Sleep Is to Be Desecrated': The California Central Valley Project and the People of the Winnemem Wintu and Wintoon Tribes, 1938-1943," was selected over graduate papers from students enrolled in the PhD programs at UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Davis, Arizona State University, and other universities.

Public history graduate students Paul Sandul and Tory Swim have signed a contract with Arcadia Publishing to produce a book on Orangevale for the popular Images of America series. Work will begin this summer and the book will most likely be out by Christmas.

Christopher Chance was selected by the CSUS Institutional Scholarship Committee to receive the Dr. Suzanne Snively Graduate Scholarship award for the 2005-2006 academic year. The award provides full tuition and fees for the upcoming academic year.

Todd Holmes has an article forthcoming in the Southern California Quarterly. The article, titled "The Swing of the Political Pendulum: Congressman John Moss, the Democratic Party, and the UFW's Grape Strike and Boycott, 1965-1970," is a revised version of a paper that won the department’s 2005 McGowan Award. It will appear in the fall 2006 issue of Southern California Quarterly.

The Cesar Chavez Public Library in Stockton is hosting a reception in honor of Annie Rapaport’s master’s thesis project on the Mexican-American community in Stockton on Monday, May 8th. Oral history interviews from the project are being donated to the Cesar Chavez Library, and Annie will be presenting an introductory movie with clips from her digitally recorded interviews. Community members who participated in the project will be in attendance.