Education

CSUSM art exhibit showcases creativity through April

Call it From the Mountain,” an art exhibition by Cal State San Marcos students, faculty and community, is currently on display and runs through April 6 in the School of Arts gallery. The exhibition, which showcases sculpture from students’ creative activities and research along with data visualizations by students developed in collaboration with service-learning partners in conservation research, features work that extends from CSUSM’s pollinator…


UCSD model: SD housing prices to fall 12 percent

A new model of forecasting home prices based on consumer demand predicts that prices for housing will decrease by 5% nationally and 12% in San Diego County by the end of this year. The model, which highlights online search activity, was recently published in a new study from the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management. The model’s predictions have a proven accuracy rate of…


Creative artist Jayne Spencer gets teaching

Don’t tell award-winning watercolor, portrait and landscape artist Jayne Spencer that art is best executed and appreciated only by fellow artists. An award-winning creative artist and teacher, like TV’s father, knows best. “Anybody can be an artist,” Spencer said. “Anybody can learn to paint once they learn the skills and techniques. Find something that inspires you. Paint what you love. Art is subjective” Art is…


Climate change affects brains, UCSD NEATLabs says

Psychological trauma from extreme weather and climate events, such as wildfires, can have long-term impacts on survivors’ brains and cognitive functioning, especially how they process distractions, my team’s new research shows. Climate change is increasingly affecting people around the world, including through extreme heat, storm damage and life-threatening events like wildfires. In previous research, colleagues and I showed that in the aftermath of the 2018…


CSUSM biotech students turning Japanese

Fourteen students in a biotechnology course at Cal State San Marcos traveled to Tokyo this month to visit impressive laboratories, attend insightful lectures and interact with professionals from widely successful industries. The trip featured students in the class BIOT675: Bioscience Beyond the Borders, within the Professional Science Master’s (PSM) in Biotechnology program. It was led by Betsy Read, program director and a biological sciences professor;…


Palomar College building new football, softball stadiums

Erickson-Hall Construction has broken ground of new football stadium and softball fields of Palomar College at San Marcos, California. The $22.8 million facilities were designed by HMC Architects and funded by the $694 million Proposition M (Maintain & Modernize Palomar College) which was approved by voters in Nov. 2006. The proposition was passed for $694 million to be given to Palomar College in a series…


Paw Paw, Maw Maw, getting stoned, going to emergency rooms at record levels, UCSD research doctors say

As a growing number of older adults are experimenting with cannabis to help alleviate chronic symptoms, a new University of California San Diego School of Medicine study has identified a sharp increase in cannabis-related emergency department visits among the elderly. The study, published Jan. 9, 2023 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, identified a 1,808% relative increase in the rate of cannabis-related trips…


Cal State San Marcos presents its top 2022 stories

As the end of the year approaches, many are already looking ahead to 2023. But before putting the finishing touches on your list of New Year’s resolutions, let’s take a look back at some of the most-talked-about stories of 2022. CSUSM Ranks First in the Nation in Social Mobility SUSM ranks first nationally out of more than 1,400 schools measured in the ninth annual Social Mobility…


SDSU biologists reverse engineer beer hops genetics

SDSU population geneticist Arun Sethuraman and evolutionary biology Ph.D. student Alex Adame are an unlikely pair to be studying how the genetics of hops have changed throughout 12,000 years of history: neither of them drink beer. “I might have a hops allergy,” said Adame, which, in addition to her being pregnant, makes systematically sniffing (for science) dozens of pungent pellets of the key beer ingredient a little nauseating. But…


CSUSM history professor makes past come alive

It’s difficult for Kasandra Balsis to count the ways that Cal State San Marcos history professor Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall has helped her in her academic journey. When Balsis entered CSUSM’s history master’s program in the fall of 2020, the virtual format made it challenging for her to find her way, but Sepinwall aided the transition by using Zoom breakout rooms to facilitate deeper discussion and…