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2000 Professional Achievement Honors Awardees

CSU, Chico's Professional Achievement Honors recognize faculty who have excelled in the last 30 months in one or more of the following areas: research, creative works, scholarship, funded projects, publications; or who have achieved national or international recognition through fellowships, prizes, invited presentations, exhibits, or awards.

Each dean of a college may nominate one or more faculty members. Nominations are then reviewed and awardees selected by the Faculty Recognition and Support Committee. The following faculty received Professional Achievement Honors in 2000.

Cindy Daley, assistant professor of integrated animal systems, is an impressive blend of teacher, grant writer, researcher, collaborator, industry leader, and champion mentor of students.

As an agriculture teacher, Daley has sponsored and mentored students in the CSU, Chico Research Competition where they have consistently placed first or second in the agriculture and biological sciences division. She has established internship opportunities for her students with nationally recognized biotechnology companies, such as Advanced Cell Technologies and Infigen, Inc.

As a grant proposal writer, Daley has won over $1million in grants and awards since she became involved with the College of Agriculture in 1995. One grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture brought resources to the college to upgrade current course offerings to prepare students for the rapidly developing field of biotechnology.

She involves undergraduate students in significant ways in her research, greatly expanding not only their learning but also their employment opportunities. Her talent for delivering complicated material in an understandable manner makes her an effective science teacher and a sought-after speaker.

Becky Damazo, School of Nursing, is committed to the application of community health nursing throughout Northern California. This commitment is reflected in her work with regional public health agencies and with agencies serving pregnant teenagers and the homeless.

Damazo, a pediatric nurse practitioner, has expertise in rural health and cultural competency. She has worked internationally and with disadvantaged populations along the delta in Mississippi, and with miners' children in rural Pennsylvania.

Damazo's grants with the Sierra Health Foundation have provided resources for students and enabled the School of Nursing to create a Health Education Center as part of their "Nursing Center Without Walls" project. In addition, she was part of a team that developed a rural RN-B.S.N. project, which allows RNs to complete the baccalaureate degree online.

Her commitment to teaching equals her commitment to direct actions and research. She has developed new courses, incorporated online resources, Powerpoint presentations, and video illustrations as a part of the classroom, and she encourages student presentations and research. She teaches online, using WebCT, and has developed an online course for the nursing distance education program.

Since coming to Chico three years ago, Professor Diana Dwyre, Political Science, has presented a number of convention papers, written several book chapters, just had her book Legislative Labyrinth: Congress and Campaign Finance Reform published by Congressional Quarterly Press (2001), and was the recipient of one of the most prestigious fellowships in the political science discipline, The American Political Science Association Steiger Congressional Fellowship Award for 1998.

Her research on campaign finance reform, congressional activity, and political parties is important to broad public policy debates as well as to the scholarly community. Major newspapers and National Public Radio have asked her to address these issues.

Dwyre received a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts to study campaign communications in the 2000 presidential primaries. She is the adviser for both the undergraduate general political science option and for the political science M.A. program. She is on the Executive Council of the Western Political Science Association and serves as an officer for an American Political Science Association Organized Section.

Dwyre has established herself as an outstanding teacher. Graduate students have spoken highly of the quality and substance of her instruction. Other instructors often call on her for guest appearances. Her distinguished record in scholarship and instruction was recognized with early tenure and promotion.

Philosophy professor Ron Hirschbein's novel and interpretive approaches to international affairs has been praised by a variety of prominent scholars, including Seymour Melman (Columbia University), Joel Kovel (Bard College), Paul Churchill (George Washington University), and Caroline Nordstrom (Notre Dame University).

His studies of war and peace, and of domestic politics, have been supported by three visiting professorships and by NEH and CSU grants, and have resulted in two books and a contract for a third, as well as numerous articles and papers. His most recent book, Voting Rites: The Devolution of American Politics (Praeger, 1999), suggests that increasing disaffection with the political spectacle occurs because participation in electoral politics is no longer a hallowed obligation. Worse yet, in a culture in which entertainment is the metier of all activity, politics no longer amuses. Hirschbein is currently researching his third book for Praeger Massing the Tropes: The Metaphorical Construction of American Nuclear Strategy.

His visiting professorships at UC, San Diego, UC, Berkeley, and the United Nations University in Austria have allowed him to teach a wide variety of courses, many of them focused on political issues surrounding war and peace. He was recently invited to appear in a forum "Interpretive Approaches to Politics" along with academics from Harvard and the University of Colorado. He is currently serving as the president of Concerned Philosophers for Peace, the largest national organization devoted to philosophic studies of war and peace.

Professor Donald Holtgrieve's work as director of the University Lands Program and the Office of Watershed Projects during the past four years has brought millions of dollars in grants to CSU, Chico. More important, he has been able to assemble teams of faculty, students, and staff to be involved in more than 50 federal and state funded projects in watershed planning, habitat restoration, and lands acquisition.

In addition to managing three other ecological preserves, Holtgrieve has been instrumental in the creation of the 2,700-acre Big Chico Creek Ecological Preserve. He has established himself as a highly regarded and respected environmental planner in Northern California. He has worked extensively with nonprofit organizations including The Nature Conservancy, the Center for Natural Lands Management, and the Parks and Preserves Foundation as well as several environmentally sensitive land development companies. In particular he worked with the River Network and the Big Chico Creek Watershed Alliance to secure the Simmons Ranch property for the preserve.

Holtgrieve also teaches historical geography, has written Valley for Dreams, a book about the historical geography of the Sacramento Valley, and is currently researching and preparing a set of GIS-based maps of land cover of the valley from 1900 to the present.

Since coming to Chico in 1998, Professor Kristina Schierenbeck has presented her work at eight national and international meetings and gained a reputation as a world expert in the area of plant hybridization and its role in invasive species.

Her three National Science Foundation research awards have allowed her to provide valuable research experiences for undergraduate and graduate students. Her research in invasive non-native plant species addresses a problem that costs the U.S. economy $220 billion nationally as non-native species compete with native crops. Her interest is in the hybridization and a back-crossing of the hybrid into native species that swamps out the genetics of the original native species.

For the last three years, Schierenbeck has served as a National Science Foundation panel member to review grant proposals. Currently she is editor-in-chief for the botanical journal Madrono.

Kristina Schriver, Communication Arts and Sciences, has distinguished herself as the director of Forensics, bringing national recognition to the students and the program. Currently, the national standings have the CSU, Chico debate program ranked in the top 10. She has taught courses ranging from an introductory class in communication theory and research, to a writing proficiency course in communication criticism, to a graduate seminar in feminist rhetorical theories.

In the past two years, Schriver has presented seven papers at professional conferences and has an essay forthcoming in Performing Community, Performing Democracy: International Perspectives on Urban Community-based Performance published by the University of Michigan Press. The latter is an examination of the rhetorical functioning of community-based theatre groups. Recently, Schriver presented a conference paper titled "A Conversation with Susan Jeffords about 'Bad Boys' and the (RE) Examination of Masculine Icons," at the National Communication Association Conference. Schriver's paper was one of three papers used by renowned gender studies scholar Susan Jeffords (The Remasculinization of America) to promote discussion about the current trajectories of masculinity found in film, the media, and political institutions. Shriver has been elected to the executive council of the Cross Examination Debate Society and as vice president of the Northern California Forensics Association.

Tony Waters, Sociology, has had two books published in the last two years: Bureaucratizing the Good Samaritan: The Limits to Humanitarian Relief Operations (Westview 2001) and Crime and Immigrant Youth (Sage 1999). Bureaucratizing is about how refugee relief operations work (and don't work), and is in part based on his work with Rwandan and Burundian refugees in Tanzania in 1994-96. Crime and Immigrant Youth is about how waves of youth crime pass through some of California's immigrant communities, and not others. In addition, articles were published in Human Organization and Africa.

He is also co-director of Resources in International Studies Education, which works with K-12 teachers, and chair of the sociology department's curriculum committee. He won an award from the Graduate School to facilitate research in Katavi National Park in Tanzania. In summer 2001, he will go to Tanzania to initiate a project in the ecological history of the area around this park.