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Remember those “Amazing Sea Monkeys?” You add a little
water and suddenly they spring to life and the fish bowl is teeming
with them. Sac State has its own artificial fish bowl—a man-made vernal pool. It’s a new fixture in the arboretum and is the brainchild of biology professor Jamie Kneitel. He and graduate student Carrie Lessin are using the vernal pool to study the ecosystem growing in it, and yes, it includes species related to sea monkeys.
A vernal pool is a shallow temporary pond that forms when water collects on impermeable soil. In nature, vernal pools can vary in size from a puddle to an entire wetland. Kneitel’s vernal pool is somewhere in between. It consists of 30 wading pool-like buckets filled with soil and water.
Temporary ponds are found throughout the world, but Kneitel says the ones in California’s central valley are unique. “They contain many endangered species found nowhere else including a variety of fairy shrimp, salamanders and frogs.”
Since natural pools contain endangered species, Kneitel had to build his own in order to conduct manipulative studies. Still, he wasn’t sure the soil he received had any life in it. That is, until the rains came.
“We were excited to see that vernal pool organisms had emerged from the soil,” says Kneitel.
Natural vernal pools eventually dry out and are then occupied by grasses and other herbaceous plants, also threatened or endangered. Many of the plant and animal inhabitants survive by going dormant with seeds or cysts in the soil until rain again fills the pool.
But the ecosystems in vernal pools are fragile and their presence increasingly reduced. Kneitel hopes to find out what impact development and farming are having on them. “We’re trying to mimic the large inputs of nitrogen and phosphorous water runoff that may occur from agricultural and urban settings. Most vernal pool organisms require nitrogen and phosphorous, but in high amounts they can be quite deadly.”
Nitrogen and phosphorous cause naturally growing algae to “just skyrocket,” Kneitel says. When the algae dies, bacteria starts decomposing it and the bacteria “sucks all the oxygen out of the water and everything dies.”
Governor Schwarzenegger’s 2008-09 budget identified $4.8 million in California State University capital outlay funds to support design and planning for the facility. The new multi-story, 135,000 square-foot Science II building will include classrooms, labs, and the departments of Biological Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics, and Chemistry. A separate wing for the Space and Science Center is expected to feature a planetarium, an observatory and an instructional solar lab.
The campus already has received nearly $2 million in public and private funds for the Space and Science Center, including $1.5 million in federal funds secured by both U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui of Sacramento and by her late husband, Congressman Robert T. Matsui.
“This is an exciting opportunity for our campus and for the community,” said President Alexander Gonzalez. “Our students deserve the best classroom and laboratory experiences, and with our current facilities that has been an increasingly difficult challenge.”
“Science II will allow students to work in state-of-the-art science labs using the latest equipment. It’s an important step toward our Destination 2010 goal to provide excellent academic programs.”
“This is great news for Sacramento,” said Congresswoman Doris Matsui. “The new planetarium, and Space and Science center will help spark the interest of the next generation of students in the science, technology and math fields. An investment in these fields will help our country stay competitive in the global economy.”
Though earlier they had been thought of as separate facilities, pairing Science II and the Space Science Center allowed a “best of both worlds” solution. In November, the Board of Trustees for the California State University system voted to approve the use of the Public Higher Education Act funds for the combined facility. The action moved Science II up significantly on the CSU’s priority list for state-funded capital outlay program, which allows the campus to begin drawing up preliminary plans and creating working drawings.
It’s not easy being green, but Sac State
is doing its part when it comes to thinking
globally and acting locally.
The University is basing its sustainability
efforts on the three Rs (and no, not reading,
‘riting and ‘rithmetic). “Reduce, reuse and
recycle is our motto,” says Mike Christensen,
assistant vice president for Risk Management
Services. “Sustainability has to
be a community effort to be successful.
In a perfectly balanced
system, we wouldn’t waste
anything.”
The University
is succeeding
there. In 2006,
the campus was
able to divert more
than 62 percent of its
non-hazardous solid
waste, which includes
office paper, recyclables
such as beverage containers,
and leaves and grass clippings. “The
State of California’s goal for institutions like
ours is diverting 50 percent of waste from
landfills,” says Kathleen Reynolds, manager
of Integrated Waste Management. So Sac
State is ahead of the game.
Meanwhile, newly constructed campus
buildings are in line with sustainability. The
new campus additions are using natural gas for heating, and emergency
generators for
these buildings
are powered
by natural gas,
reducing air
pollutants associated
with diesel-powered generators.
The new buildings—including the
planned Recreation and Wellness Center—
are striving to meet LEED (Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design) certification
standards, which ensure construction
and building maintenance benchmarks are
set for high-performance “green” buildings.
“You’ll get a return on the money that’s
spent to meet LEED standards,” Christensen
says of the cost savings energy efficiency
provides.
And the University’s Facilities Services’
electric vehicles are getting a boost from
the sun. The vehicles are recharged using a
system which coverts solar energy to electricity
through the use of solar panels. “This
technology is also used to power lights in
parking lot 10,” says energy conservation
coordinator Nat Martin.
To reduce the amount of water run-off from
the campus, and improve the water quality of
the American River, Christensen
says the grounds crews have reduced their use
of fertilizers. Moreover, “The grounds-keepers
are also paying high degrees of attention to
watering times and are repairing broken sprinklers
immediately,” he says. “Our drinking water
comes from our local rivers. What people put
on the ground, such as cigarette butts, contributes
to the pollutants that must be removed
from our water prior to its use for domestic
purposes,” says Christensen.
And, according to Christensen, “New parking
structures have been equipped with
clarifiers that remove debris from water runoff
prior to releasing it to storm drains leading
to the river.”
A newly formed Sustainability Committee
is also working to implement practices campus-
wide, including adding them to course
curricula in the form of good business practices
and engineering concepts.
DESCRIPTION: The online syllabus for Geology Professor Barbara Munn’s class grabs you immediately with a striking view of spewing lava from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano. In the class, she uses traditional lectures and reading materials, plus breaking news about natural disasters. This provides students an understanding of various hazards and disasters occurring in the world, the processes involved, the role of science in mitigating disasters and how mushrooming human population growth intensifies the effects of disasters. Students study hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanoes, landslides and meteorite impacts and the probability and risks of each. They learn about the processes of plate tectonics, continental drift and climate change, and study the role of basic earth materials— water, rocks and air—in natural disasters. CLASS WORK: During class lectures, students are asked to confer with neighbors about the topic and be called upon randomly to answer a question about it. Students view videos of natural disasters, and then are called upon to provide written answers about what they’ve seen.
STUDENTS SAY: “The most interesting thing I learned and that everyone will remember is to curl up and stand on the balls of your feet whenever you are caught in the middle of a thunderstorm, and never ever get by a tree,” said student Maria Ortiz.
ASSIGNMENTS: Students search for news items about various natural disasters, then write analyses of the items using information learned in class to determine what actually occurred, what scientific process were involved and the effects of geography and population.
“Many of the children weren’t aware there was a university in Sacramento until they became involved in the Writing Partners Program,” says English professor Cathy Gabor. “After, they begin to see themselves as college-bound.”
More than 80 University freshmen from the Educational Opportunity Program exchanged letters with 120 fifth- and sixth-graders.
The children commonly ask what college life is like and whether or not there is recess. “When they hear the answer, they often express how sorry they are for their college writing partners,” Gabor says.
The letter-writing relationship ended with a tour of the campus conducted by the Sac State students, followed by a face-to-face meeting between the writing partners.
Sheila Macias, director of the Community Engagement Center, notes additional benefits to the University students in the program besides improved writing skills. “Freshmen, who are usually trying to find their place in the University, feel empowered by the leadership opportunities provided in mentoring these children.”
Melinda Draeger, whose class participated in the program, says, “My students would cheer when they found out letters from the Sac State students had arrived. And replying to the letters was an assignment I never had to force them to do.”
When Professor Andrew Anker asked
his design students to create full-size,
functional chairs out of corrugated cardboard,
his students may have thought he’d
gone mad. But they ended up surprising him
with the variety of styles and construction
techniques they developed.As part of the Interior Design 25 class, Anker, along with Professors Carolyn Gibbs, Michelle Duff, David deLaPena and Sarah Ellis, asked students to design one-eighth-scale models, and then as teams of three create a full-size version of one of the designs.
It was a chance for the students to learn about the relationship between the dimensions of the human body and a chair’s design, and what makes a chair comfortable. They also learned how the choice of a material— cardboard in this case—affects design.
The students labored on the chairs after class hours in Mariposa Hall’s gallery. “They came up with shapes and textures that I would not have expected,” Anker says. Students stacked the cardboard. They cut it into strips and layered it. Some even soaked the cardboard so they could roll it and form rounded recliners.
The 24 chairs were then put on display in the gallery. “It was a crowd pleaser,” Anker says. The project was difficult but interesting, sophomore Sergio Mondragon says. He never expected to work with cardboard because it’s not an element normally used in everyday living and working spaces. “Simply making a chair that would hold a person was kind of challenging,” he says.
His full-sized version almost looks like a large, cardboard throne. It took a lot of teamwork to produce it, and a lot of long nights. “On the last night we were here, we saw the sun rise,” Mondragon says.
 Mohammad Sialvi Junior, Criminal Justice "I usually don't have time to go anywhere, I just work." |
 Tim Vang Freshman, Liberal Studies "I'll be babysitting my first child." |
 Shelly Pyles Senior, History "Probably work - I'm going into the credential program ." |
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 Brent Thibodo Junior, Electrical Engineering "Usually I go back home to San Diego, maye take a trip to Mexico. This year I have a free round-trip ticket, so I might head to Florida or somewhere I've never been before." |
Megan Caldwell Jump in applications—Applications for fall 2008 increased 6.7 percent over 2007. The number of admitted students also rose dramatically, with 10,030 admitted students by Jan. 31, as opposed to 4,441 at the same time last year. The increase in fall 2008 admission was primarily due to increased efforts from Admissions and Records to shorten the turnaround time from application submission to admission. The goal is to let students know within a few weeks of their application submission if they have been admitted, so they know what their options are.
Signs up “welcome factor”— The installation of 17 “You are here” signs marks the last phase in a University project to create a more welcoming campus. The new signs are the final step in the University’s Way-Finding Program, which was the result of nearly two years of research and design by Sac State design students. The first phase of the project included parking lot signs and pedestrian and vehicle directional signs. The second phase of the project saw the completion of building and department identification signs. The 17 new signs are part of approximately 100 new signs throughout the campus.
Judicial insight—Students are getting a rare glimpse into the inner workings of California’s court system. A new internship program matches students with Sacramento Superior Court judges. The students spend at least eight hours per week in court. The idea is not to teach law, but to give students a sense of how the judiciary system works. It is also expected to give them a leg up when applying to law school.
Actors compete— Students from the Theatre and Dance department—including two from each of the last five stage productions—were invited to compete in the regional Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in February. Students from the production of North Star also did a scene at the festival’s opening ceremonies. The students competed for a chance to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in April.
