Agents of Change: 2008 Faculty Awards Highlight Professors Who Transform and Inspire

The 2008 Faculty Awards at California State University, Dominguez Hills have been given this year to four individuals who are not only role models to their students, but who have also been instrumental in helping them realize their dreams. They will be recognized and honored for their achievements during the 2008 Graduate Commencement Exercises on Thursday, May 22, and the Undergraduate Commencement Exercises on Friday, May 23 (http://www.csudh.edu/commencement/).

Dr. Munashe Furusa, Excellence in Service Award

Having gone from working in a tin mine in Zimbabwe to becoming a university professor in the United States, Munashe Furusa knows well the transformative power of an education. Since 2005, he has hosted hundreds of middle and high school students from the Los Angeles Unified School District participating in the Dominguez Hills Secondary Transition Education Program (STEP). He says the program provides an invaluable experience, teaching youth “leadership skills and tolerance because of the conflict going on [in inner city schools]. We try to give them ... a sense of dignity so that they may begin to see life in a different manner.”

The associate professor of Africana studies, whose research specialties include African literature and culture, critical theories, literature and culture of the African diaspora, and women and gender in literature, considers being able to reach students from so many different cultures and exposing them to story of people of African descent his personal mission.

“I see students being changed, in terms of their attitudes and understanding, even in the way they begin to relate in my class after I have taught them,” he says. “That helps me feel that I could make a change in terms of how various cultures relate.”

Furusa has chaired several committees during his time at Dominguez Hills, including the University Curriculum Committee from 2006 to 2008. He is slated to be the chair of the Academic Senate from 2008 to 2009. He currently serves as a faculty mentor for the McNair Scholars Program and for the Graduate Student Research Conference. He is a member of the Honors Program Advisory Committee, the Faculty Policy Committee, and the Diversity Committee.

After earning a professional diploma in education at the Bondolfi Teachers College in Zimbabwe, Furusa went on to achieve a bachelor’s degree in English and African literature, a bachelor’s with honors and master’s degree in English, and his doctorate in philosophy, African literature and critical theory, all at the University of Zimbabwe.

After graduation, Furusa began teaching African languages and literature at his alma mater, serving as acting department chair in 1997. In 2000, he began his career at CSU Dominguez Hills as a visiting professor in African literature for six months at the invitation of the late Dr. William Little, then professor of Africana studies, who had met Furusa on a visit to the University of Zimbabwe. The popularity of his class inspired students to petition for the visiting scholar to stay for another six months and ultimately, to join the Dominguez Hills faculty in 2001. Furusa achieved his tenure in 2007 and has served as chair of Africana studies since 2006. In 2004, he was recognized with CSUDH’s Lyle E. Gibson Distinguished Teacher Award.

Among his numerous articles, chapters and papers, Furusa co-wrote and co-edited the 2006 book The Borders in All of Us: New Approaches to Global Diaspora Societies with Dominguez Hills colleagues Little, Selase Williams, Irene Vasquez, and Jung-Sun Park.

Since 2004, he has served as an executive board member for the National Council for Black Studies.

Dr. Maria Hurtado-Ortiz, Lyle E. Gibson Distinguished Teacher Award

The first in her immediate family to go to college, Maria Hurtado-Ortiz strives to propel her students forward in their pursuit of advanced degrees and encourages them to become role models themselves.

“I feel like [Dominguez Hills] is the place where I can help students and make a difference in their lives with a little mentoring,” says the associate professor of psychology. “Many of them are first-generation [students], so they don’t have the role models or know the ins and outs of how to get through college. They need somebody to show them... that there are minorities out there who have made it and they can do it too.”

Hurtado-Ortiz currently teaches developmental psychology with an emphasis on adolescents and older adults. She draws similarities between the two age groups, saying, “They’re both going through an identity crisis but at different points in time. The adolescents are trying to find themselves, while the older adults are revisiting some of the things they didn’t do and facing some of the [physical] changes they’re going through.”

A native of Colton, Calif., Hurtado-Ortiz graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, Riverside. She went on to earn her master’s degree and doctorate in developmental psychology from there as well. She began her teaching career at her alma mater as a lecturer in introductory psychology before holding a visiting assistant professor position at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., where she taught courses on adolescents of color, child development, and Chicanos in higher education. Hurtado-Ortiz began her career at CSU Dominguez Hills in 1999 as an assistant professor in developmental psychology and attained her tenured position in 2005.

Hurtado-Ortiz’s research interests have included projects related to child care, welfare reform, affirmative action, and acculturation and planning for college among youth of Mexican descent. Along with CSUDH colleague Dr. Silvia Santos, she is currently working on a federally funded study of Type II diabetes among Latino college students, examining diabetes-specific health behavior, physical health indicators, and health-related attitudes of this student population. They presented their findings earlier this year at the 88th Convention of the Western Psychological Association in Irvine. Hurtado-Ortiz is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society, and the Society for Research in Child Development.

Dr. H. Leonardo Martinez, Presidential Outstanding Professor Award

When asked how he hopes his students will remember him, H. Leonardo Martinez says he aspires to be described as “motivational” and “inspirational.”

“If those were the words they used to describe me, I would consider my job done,” the professor of chemistry says. “I think those are the main ingredients of teaching. [Students] can read the book and do the problems. But if they are not motivated and willing and eager to do this, it’s not going to happen.”

Of his work as the interim director of the CSUDH Center for Advancement of Diversity in Science and Mathematics, Martinez says, “We are perfectly positioned because of the makeup of our student body, so we can actually make a difference. We get more students to participate in the sciences and send them to grad school and med school to increase the representation of underrepresented students in those fields. The idea is that society is made up of percentages of different people and the workforce should be a mirror image of that distribution.”

Martinez earned his Bachelor of Science in chemistry at the Universidad del Valle in Colombia and both his Master of Science and doctorate in chemistry at the University of California, San Diego. He began his career at CSU Dominguez Hills, his first teaching position, in 1996 when he was hired as an assistant professor of chemistry.

Martinez involves his students in his research with his continuing work on theoretical dynamics and the travel patterns of particles in fractal structures and a new project focused on nanotubes. He has published widely in prestigious journals including the American Chemical Society, the Journal of Organic Chemistry, and the Journal of Chemical Physics. He has presented his own work and work done in collaboration with his students, at numerous conferences in the United States, Puerto Rico and Spain.

Martinez achieved tenured professor status in 2004 and currently serves as chair of the chemistry department. He is a member of the American Chemical Society and the Biophysical Society. He was recognized with the CSUDH Excellence in Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity Award in 2007.

Dr. Jerry Moore, Excellence in Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity Award

Although Jerry Moore often wonders why everybody doesn’t just stop what they’re doing and become an anthropologist, he would be the first to humorously admit that the average day for an archaeological anthropologist involves “long bouts of tedium, interrupted by pinnacles of excitement like you can’t believe.”

Moore’s research interests include prehistoric cultural landscapes and architecture, the origins of social complexity, and archaeology of Andean South America and western North America. His recent grants include a senior research grant from the National Science Foundation in 2005 and a research, scholarship, and creative activities program mini-grant from CSU Dominguez Hills, both of which allowed him to include his students in his investigations in Tumbes, Peru. He has written numerous professional and scholarly articles and three books: Cultural Landscapes in the Prehispanic Andes: Archaeologies of Place, Architecture and Power in the Ancient Andes: The Archaeology of Public Buildings, and Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. He was a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles from 2001 to 2002 and has been a research associate at the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology since 2001.

His archaeological fieldwork has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the H. John Heinz III Foundation, and the Curtiss and Mary Brennan Foundation.

Over the last 15 years, Moore has taken scores of students to his two areas of research: northern Peru and Baja California. Describing these places as “frontiers in multiple senses,” he says that the process of intellectual, geographical, and cultural discovery is transformational for his students.

“These experiences just resonate on so many different levels,” the professor of anthropology notes. “For many people, it was the first time they crossed an international border and the first time they had to have a passport. Just because we have this extraordinarily diverse student body and communities does not necessarily mean that our students understand why other people do the things they do that are different from the way they do things themselves.

“By having these experiences out of the country, you come back with new sorts of insights about your own life, your own cultures, and the cultures that surround you. For our students, foreign travel is one of the building blocks of a liberal education.”

Moore earned his bachelor’s degree in anthropology at California State College, Stanislaus. He went on to achieve his master’s degree and doctorate in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He taught at UC Santa Barbara, Kansas State University, and the State University of New York in Albany before arriving at CSU Dominguez Hills in 1991 as an associate professor of anthropology. He gained his tenure in 2000, and has chaired the department of anthropology since 2001. Moore was recognized as the CSUDH Outstanding Professor in 2003.

- Joanie Harmon

Photo above: The 2008 Faculty Awards honorees are role models of the transformative power of education. L-R: Dr. Jerry Moore, professor of anthropology; Dr. Maria Hurtado-Ortiz, associate professor of psychology; H. Leonardo Martinez, professor of chemistry; and Dr. Munashe Furusa, associate professor of Africana studies. Photo by GK