Letter from the Chair

This year I write to you from my home office, where I have been practicing extreme social distancing since mid-March. Like so many others in higher education, the faculty, staff and students at CSUDH have been working remotely—via email, Zoom, and telephone—with no clear understanding of when we will be back on campus. The challenges of the stay-at-home order are endless; however we persevere, and continue to provide the best experience possible within the limits of our new reality.

Despite the pandemic, our enrollment is strong. We welcomed more than 100 new transfer and first-year students to our degree programs this summer, and combined we have almost 700 majors across the three degree programs.

We held a successful virtual Student Awards Ceremony in May, where alumna Sheniece Smith (2007, B.A. in Communications: Public Relations) gave three $1,000 awards to students struggling with pandemic-related issues as part of her Hope Scholarship. We were able to provide an additional $10,000 in assistance to housing and food insecure students thanks to a generous donation from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. And again we received substantial scholarship gifts from longtime supporters Roy Nakai and Gil and Shirley Smith.

In this issue of Compendium, students from our digital magazine class share stories and images of achievement, hope, change, and the protests in support of racial justice. The department has issued its own statement about the BLM movement and our commitment to an anti-racist, inclusive and diverse education for all. One of our goals this academic year is to create a plan to ensure our curriculum is free of bias and racist connotations.

Four students on The Bulletin student newspaper staff won big at this year's California College Media Association Best of College Media 2020. Sixty-five colleges and universities from throughout California submitted a total of 940 entries, resulting in 318 winners across 39 categories. Our students won three first-place awards and one second-place award. See the story on page 15.

California Campus Compact awarded one CSU Dominguez Hills student with a $500 scholarship as part of its new initiative, Community Engagement Student Fellowship: Youth Voice-Youth Vote. The scholarship supports student leaders advancing service, service-learning and community engagement focused on some aspect of voter engagement and youth voice at California Campus Compact member campuses throughout the state. The student they selected was Journalism major Iracema Navarro, who is writing a series of stories on youth voting.

We have a new Journalism faculty member, Dr. Fernando Severino, who is finishing up his doctoral work before joining the CSUDH family in August. A native of Chile, Dr. Severino brings a rich academic and professional background to students. He worked as a news editor and anchor for CNN Chile and as a marketing professional before earning his master's of international and public affairs at Columbia and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota—Twin Cities.

Finally, it is our ongoing commitment to keep you informed about our faculty, students, events and programs. Additionally, we would love to hear about your successes and accomplishments. If you have something to share or would like to be featured in our next edition, please contact Dr. Brant Burkey at bburkey@csudh.edu. I hope to see you at a future awards ceremony, whether it's virtual or face-to-face, and you can always call or email me. As always, we look forward to hearing from you and reconnecting.

Dr. Nancy A. Cheever

Chair, Communications Department