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Papa Receives One of Eight 2005 Sally Casanova Memorial Awards
The monetary awards distributed through the CSU System office allow faculty to pursue research projects that would otherwise prove impossible to find the time and resources to complete. Each award winner received $5,000, which allows them to teach one class less than the minimum, freeing up time in the process for them to focus on their projects. While they delve into their work now, the awards committee will begin poring over applications for $4,500 summer fellowships – the second batch of the annual awards – with the deadline for applications closing today. Both seasonal opportunities for the awards can be critical for research at CSUDH, considering there is little state funding allocated for research in the teaching-focused CSU. Speaking of their significance, Ray Riznyk, director, Research and Funded Projects, who serves as chair of the RSCAAP Awards Committee, says, “These awards are critical. At Research 1 (a classification by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, designating institutions where faculty are required to do research) universities like the UCs, faculty members are often hired with $50,000 or more in start-up money for research. But here, our focus is on teaching. We don’t have such funds, so these awards are the only source of state funding immediately available to them.” The CSU divides up $2.5 million to the 23 campuses based on full-time faculty for the program. CSUDH receives approximately $65,000 of that pie, and given the value of such awards, the competition among faculty is quite healthy. For the fall awards, more than 20 faculty members applied. Riznyk also explains that preference is given to junior faculty members in the hope the awards will serve as seed money for them to begin their research on campus. This jumpstart has historically led to further funding from outside sources, an approach that has paid off in the past with both Danny Brassell, assistant professor of teacher education, and Molly Youngkin, assistant professor of English. The two each used their previous RSCAAP awards to secure book-length projects which have since been accepted for publication. Papa, who completed an economic impact study last year evaluating the value of CSUDH to the surrounding communities and its graduates, has launched a similar study to evaluate the relationship between campuses like CSUDH, the K-12 school districts they serve, and the people who receive college degrees compared to those who do not in these communities. “The idea is that a university like CSUDH might create upward mobility, perhaps more so than other more well-known universities. I plan on looking at people who go through Los Angeles Unified School District, and then focusing on those who do go to college versus those who don’t,” says Papa. To do so, he’s pulling together data and research from the Office of Institutional Research, California Department of Education, and the National Center for Educational Statistics. The data will allow him to quantify his findings on a local and national level while also looking ahead to what CSUDH can do to retain such students. |
