Informed & Inspired

San Diego State University’s community has shown its true resilience during this unprecedented and difficult time in human history. Graduates from the Class of 2020, in particular, have risen to the challenge.

Television news coverage of the early spread of COVID-19 in the United States provided an eerie backdrop for Diana Pastora Carson and Rachel Schlesinger as they passed through airport terminals on their way back from New Orleans in early March. It was a strange time to travel, but for the pair of San Diego State University lecturers, the timing was also somewhat fortuitous.

An exploration of a virtual simulation tool that may revolutionize nursing education, authored by two San Diego State University leaders and alumni, has earned a Best Graduate Student Paper award from the nation’s top professional organization for educational researchers.

From a bedroom in her boyfriend’s parents’ house, Ashley Franklin teaches second grade. The student in San Diego State University’s multiple-subject teacher credential program hasn’t seen her guide teacher or students at Halecrest Elementary in Chula Vista in-person since March 13, when the district suspended in-person classes due to COVID-19. Yet from that small room, she’s found unique ways to connect with her pupils — and gain the classroom hours she needs to teach students of her own in the fall.

San Diego State University has received a $3 million National Science Foundation-funded grant to strengthen mathematics and science teaching in high-need, urban schools throughout San Diego County.

As she conducts research into dynamics between parents and their adolescent and young adult children in immigrant communities, Dr. Vanja Lazarevic, assistant professor in the Department of Child and Family Development, finds common threads — as well as echoes of her own experience as a teenage refugee from Bosnia.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing, the San Diego State University College of Education’s community clinics are meeting the mental health needs of hundreds of San Diegans. Faculty and student clinicians in the Community-Based Block (CBB), Center for Community Counseling and Engagement (CCCE) and Healthy Early Years (HEY) have continued to provide their important services virtually.

For Dr. Sylvia Garcia-Navarrete (’91, ’12), awards season is apparently in full swing. The lecturer in San Diego State University’s Department of Administration, Rehabilitation and Postsecondary Education (ARPE) received two major honors recognizing her achievements and dedication to her home community in San Diego’s South Bay area.

Two San Diego State University College of Education faculty members were among seven local women named to the 2020 class of the San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame. Dr. Nola Butler-Byrd (’99, ’04), associate professor in counseling and school psychology and director of SDSU’s Community-Based Block (CBB), was honored in the Empowerer of Women category. Dr. Lupe Holguin Buell (’85, ’02), lecturer and program coordinator in dual-language education, was named in the Bridge Builder of Multicultural Understanding category. They will be honored on March 15.

It was early in his career as a high school English teacher in the early 2000s that Eric Ginsberg had something of an epiphany. He observed how his students at Helix Charter High School in La Mesa talked about hip-hop music — particularly the enthusiasm with which they consumed and analyzed artists’ lyrics.