Hillary Griffin

Eric McCurdy: AVP/Director of Athletics

Eric McCurdy

AVP/Director of Athletics

In October 2022, CSUDH hired Eric McCurdy as its new associate vice president/director of athletics, becoming the 11^th AD in the department’s 53-year history. He succeeded Toro softball coach Jim Maier, who has served in the position on an interim basis since May 2022.

“I am very excited to be part of the Toro family,” said McCurdy. “CSUDH is a great institution. Re-entering the intercollegiate athletics space has been a tremendous blessing and honor. To see students come into our university and help guide and nurture their maturation process into productive young adults that positively impact society is exciting and rewarding.”

McCurdy spent eight years serving as the executive director of athletics and Metro League commissioner for Seattle Public Schools. Prior to that, McCurdy served eight years at the University of Houston as its men’s basketball director of operations/academics.

Most recently, McCurdy spent the last four years founding and running his own consulting firm, aiding mission-oriented organizations and advising on improving learning and working environments. He also provided guidance for potential student-athletes and their families through the NCAA recruitment and transfer process.

In announcing the appointment, CSUDH President Thomas A. Parham said, “We are excited to welcome Eric McCurdy to the Toro community. His depth and breadth of experience, entrepreneurial spirit, passion for students, and commitment to supporting and evaluating his coaching staff and team performance are welcome additions to our campus.”

A former soccer player at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), McCurdy graduated from UAB with a BS in psychology and a minor in physical education. He then graduated cum laude with a master’s degree in coaching and athletic administration from Concordia University Irvine.

A Season to Remember

A Season to

Remember

Toro softball’s incredible post-season run provided plenty of memorable moments.

After posting a regular season record that landed them in fourth place in the California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) standings, few were looking at the CSUDH Toro softball team as one that was poised for a deep postseason run. Few outside of the Toro dugout, that is.

“From our very first series, we started getting together and growing as a team,” says sophomore infielder Amara Labonog. “We always had the love for each other. I never doubted that we were going to do something good.”

That confidence proved to be well-founded. Once the postseason started, the Toros kicked their play into a higher gear, developing a relentless momentum that led them all the way to the Championship Series of the NCAA Division II Softball World Series. They ended up losing in the finals to Oklahoma’s Rogers State University, but created a lifetime of memories and historic accomplishments along the way.

Different moments resonated with each player, but everyone had a favorite story to tell. For sophomore outfielder Alex Davis, a mid-season trip to play San Francisco State stood out. “We swept them, all the food we ate was amazing, and spending time with everybody was great,” she says. “One of our teammates was a transfer from there and it felt like everybody was playing for her. That was a representation of what our team is about.”

After a hit-and-miss regular season, the Toros got off to a slow start to their postseason, falling short of the CCAA tournament final after losing to CSU Monterey Bay. The squad was selected as an at-large team for the NCAA West Regionals, and that’s where their Cinderella run kicked into high gear.

After defeating Concordia University in the West Region final 8-0 in five innings via the “mercy rule,” the Toros advanced to the fifth NCAA Super Regional in the program’s history. For head coach Jim Maier, that was when everything started to click for the team.

“In the win over Concordia, we were playing really well,” recalls Maier. “Everything was coming together that weekend, and we got through some really tough teams. We started to really gel as a team.”

The NCAA Super Regional had been the end of the Toros’ run in previous seasons, but this time they broke through by defeating CSU San Marcos two out of three games. That win was the highlight of the year for many Toros, including powerhouse infielder Raquel Jaime. “Winning the super regionals was pretty amazing,” she says. “It’s pretty tough to top that. The team had such a connection and chemistry. We all felt like we were going to do great things going into the World Series.”

The Toros entered the eight-team World Series tournament as the eighth seed. The underdog Toros showed that they meant business in their first game, handily defeating top-seeded University of Texas at Tyler 5-1. That victory was Labonog’s favorite of the season. “Beating the number one team, we showed what we came to do,” she says. “Everyone doubted that we would do anything, but we were coming in hot. That win really stepped up our energy and our will to win.”

After a loss to Rogers State, the Toros won elimination games against Seton Hill and North Georgia, which put them into the best-of-three title series. They ended up losing two straight to a red-hot Rogers State team, but their status as national runners-up was the best-ever finish by a CSUDH softball team.

Jaime turned in a performance for the ages at the World Series, winning the Most Outstanding Player award despite the Toros’ second-place finish. Jaime went 16-for-27 at the plate, batting .593 and shattering the tournament final site records for hits (16) and doubles (6).

Jaime wasn’t even aware that she was breaking the hits record during the tournament. “I had no idea until a couple weeks after. It felt pretty awesome, and is going to be a pretty tough record to beat…but this year I’m going to break it again,” she grins.

Pitcher Alyssa Olague was another star of the Toros’ run, starting four games in the World Series and finishing the season just one strikeout shy of the program’s single-season record. “Last year was an amazing experience,” she says. “Even though we didn’t get everything we wanted, it started a fire in our hearts that we want to do even better this year.”

After last year’s run, the 2023 Toros aren’t going to sneak up on anyone. They’ll enter next season as one of the top teams in the nation, a target for every team they run up against. They’re ready for the challenge, though. “I like it,” says Jaime. “The team and I thrive under pressure, and that’s a big part of competing in this game. It’s fun. Bring it on.”

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Faculty News & Publications

News

Barbara Belmont

Lecturer of chemistry, Belmont was named an LGBTQ+ Trailblazer by Chemical & Engineering News, the newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. The award recognizes her excellence in teaching as well as activism with Out to Innovate, a professional society dedicated to LGBTQ+ visibility and representation in the sciences. Belmont was one of 17 Trailblazers selected for 2022.

Gilah Yelin Hirsch

Professor emerita of art, Hirsch was honored with a retrospective exhibit at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Ana. Titled “The Archeology of Metaphor,” the exhibit featured work throughout her lengthy and varied career, from her earliest 1968 paintings to the present. Hirsch joined the Art Department faculty in 1973, taught at CSUDH for almost 50 years, and is considered one of the first feminist artists. The exhibit was accompanied by the publication of a book on Hirsch’s work, also titled Archeology of Metaphor (Skira Editore).

Bianca Murillo

Professor of history, Murillo received a 2022 National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for her next book, Financing Africa’s Future: A Socio-Economic History of Ghana, 1950-1980. The awards support advanced humanities research by scholars at Historically Black Colleges, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges and Universities. Murillo’s book will focus on the nation’s post-independence period, helping readers understand how the global economy works, and how banks, multinational companies, and global financial institutions have affected the economic aspirations and autonomy of places like Ghana.

Kenneth Seligson

Assistant professor of anthropology, Seligson was elected president of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Archeology (AIA). The AIA is North America’s largest and oldest nonprofit dedicated to the discipline, and works to advance awareness, education, fieldwork, preservation, publication, and research of archeological and cultural heritage sites worldwide.

Sonal Singhal

Associate professor of biology, Singhal was honored by the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) for her research work on lizard speciation. Her 2011 paper “Strong Selection Against Hybrids Maintains a Narrow Contact Zone Between Morphologically Cryptic Lineages in a Rainforest Lizard” was named one of the 25 top works in speciation research by women authors by Evolution, SSE’s prestigious international journal. Co-authored with Craig Moritz, former director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, the paper focused on a pair of lizard species living in a “hybrid zone” of the Australian rain forest.

Publications

Allan Colman

Colman, adjunct professor of marketing, published The Revenue Accelerator: The 21 Boosters to Launch Your Startup (Made for Success/Blackstone Publishing), an essential companion guide for entrepreneurs looking to make the leap from building their product to selling it.

Jonathon Grasse

Grasse, professor of music. wrote Hearing Brazil: Music and Histories in Minas Gerais (University Press of Mississippi), the first English-language historical survey of the area’s musical traditions. The book examines Brazilian instruments, genres, social functions, and historical accounts to help reveal the cultural territory’s development.

John C. Quicker

Quicker, professor emeritus of sociology, co-authored Before Crips: Fussin’, Cussin’, and Discussin’ Among South Los Angeles Juvenile Gangs (Temple University Press) with CSUDH alumnus Akil Batani-Khalfani (BA, ’85). The book is a sociological and historical examination of the origins of street groups in South Los Angeles, and draws on more than 30 years of original research.

Kenneth Seligson

Seligson, assistant professor of anthropology, authored the book The Maya and Climate Change: Human-Environmental Relationships in the Classical Period Lowlands (Oxford University Press). The book details the most recent research on the ancient Maya’s relationship with the environment and its impact on their culture.

Laura Warrell

Warrell, Department of English lecturer, published her debut novel, Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm (Pantheon Press). The book, which focuses on the women in the life of a philandering jazz musician, was highlighted in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Vanity Fair magazine, and was named a “Best Fall Book” by People.

2022 Grants

$5.3 Million

National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)
CSUDH WORKFORCE INTEGRATION NETWORK (WIN)

CSUDH’s WIN won a two-year, $5.3 million grant from the NTIA’s Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program. The funds will support efforts to close the digital divide by supplying laptops, MiFi devices, and career-focused training materials to ten local partner organizations for distribution to the community.

$3 Million

State of California
CSUDH

CSUDH was one of five CSU campuses to be awarded part of a four-year, $18 million grant from California’s LA Region K-16 Collaborative. The university will receive a total of approximately $3 million, earmarked for programs and initiatives to encourage underrepresented students to seek out careers in fields which have traditionally been beset by systemic inequality and racism.

$2.571 Million

U.S. Department of Education
PROJECT MEDALLA

The College of Education won a five-year grant in support of Project MEDALLA (Multilingual Educator Development Advancing Language Learning Achievement/Activism), which aims to create a network of certified bilingual educators in the greater Los Angeles area.

$499,857

National Science Foundation
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY

This five-year grant will fund programs to improve professional preparedness in Toro biology students. Components of the project include integration of career content into biology courses, matching students to experiential learning opportunities, and adopting an e-portfolio system.

$499,140

U.S. Department of Defense
COLLEGE OF NATURAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

This grant provides funding for the Department of Chemistry to purchase a high-resolution, high-accuracy mass spectrometer to help accelerate small-molecule analysis.

$375,264

U.S. Department of Education
CSUDH CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER (CDC)

This grant provides four years of funding for the CDC to provide fully-subsidized child care for children of Pell-eligible CSUDH students, with a special focus on single parents, as part of its Child Care Access Means Parents in School Program.

$293,517

National Science Foundation
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

CSUDH was one of six CSU campuses chosen to receive funds to establish programs that will integrate socially responsible computing curriculum in early student computing experiences, with the goal of improving retention of Latinx students.

$264,431

U.S. Department of Education
McNAIR SCHOLARS PROGRAM

This grant will allow CSUDH to provide low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented students in the McNair Scholars Program with an array of academic and support services to effectively prepare them for entry into PhD programs nationwide.

$190,000

$150,000 – National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC)
$40,000 – John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation
GERTH ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

The university won an NHPRC grant and its third Haynes Foundation grant in five years to support the cataloguing and digitization of the Gerth Archives’ L.A. Free Press collection. The collection contains the entire print run of one of Southern California’s first community newspapers.

$100,000

California State Library
GERTH ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Awarded to the Gerth Archives’ LGBTQ History Access Project, these funds will enable the archives to catalog, arrange, and describe several collections related to the Southern California LGBTQ community, and to stage a related speakers’ series.

Research Grants

$532,936

National Institute of Food and Agriculture
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY

This three-year grant will fund exploration of how wildflower species that bloom later in the growing season could aid in the ecological restoration of grassland ecosystems threatened by human activities.

$441,000

National Institutes of Health
DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY

This three-year grant will fund research to probe for small molecules found in nature, particularly those produced by fungi cultured from underexplored marine environments, and screen their ability to inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria that have developed resistance to traditional antibiotics.

$250,000

National Science Foundation
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS

This grant will allow researchers to investigate how the implementation of culturally responsive practices in afterschool programs can promote math skills and increase motivation for minoritized students, with the goal of getting more Latinx youth into STEM careers.

$125,000

Los Angeles County
MERVYN DYMALLY AFRICAN AMERICAN POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INSTITUTE

The L.A. County Anti-Racism, Diversity, and Inclusion Initiative provided funds to the Dymally Institute to assist in co-authoring an annual report on the state of Black Los Angeles.

Message From the President

The dawn of every new year brings new possibilities, along with a measure of excitement and anticipation. I am enthusiastic for what 2023 has in store for CSUDH. Much of my excitement has to do with the achievements of our faculty and students, as well as the continued implementation of our university’s new strategic plan, titled “Going Far Together.”

Going Far Together positions the university as a social justice-focused and inclusive model urban university, and will serve as a blueprint for the institution’s future. The plan reaffirms our commitment that the educational pathway Toro students travel will not be walked alone. At CSUDH, we learn together, we journey together, and we thrive together. You will see this spirit of Going Far Together reflected throughout this issue of CSUDH Magazine.

This issue also celebrates CSUDH’s 50 years of providing health-related courses and programs. Our very first health course opened its doors in 1973, and as CSUDH has grown and evolved over time, our dedication to developing skilled health care workers, researchers, and administrators has also grown. Dean Mi-Sook Kim of the College of Health, Human Services and Nursing details what makes CSUDH programs stand out in a wide-ranging interview.

CSUDH has been in the news quite a bit recently due to our alumni’s outsized influence on Southern California politics. November saw two Toro alums elected to impactful mayoral positions—Karen Bass in Los Angeles and Rex Richardson in Long Beach. I am proud to welcome them to their new roles as they join other Toro leaders at the local, statewide, and national level. Indeed, CSUDH’s mission of public service and community engagement continues to manifest itself in ways both large and small, as we have truly transformed lives that are transforming America.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention that this is the final issue of CSUDH Magazine to be produced under the leadership of Director of Communications and Public Affairs Amy Bentley-Smith. She is leaving the university after 15 years of stellar and dedicated service. I thank her for her tireless work on behalf of the university.

Communicating with all of you via this periodical is both a pleasure, as we keep you informed about your CSUDH, and an invitation for each of you to stay engaged with us. I hope you enjoy this issue of CSUDH Magazine and look forward to Going Far Together with the entire Toro family!

Sincerely,
Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D.
President

Hillary Griffin

Eric McCurdy

AVP/Director of Athletics

More Stories

A Season to

Remember

More Stories

Faculty News & Publications

News

Barbara Belmont

Gilah Yelin Hirsch

Bianca Murillo

Kenneth Seligson

Sonal Singhal

Publications

Allan Colman

Jonathon Grasse

John C. Quicker

Kenneth Seligson

Laura Warrell

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2022 Grants

$5.3 Million

$3 Million

$2.571 Million

$499,857

$499,140

$375,264

$293,517

$264,431

$190,000

$100,000

Research Grants

$532,936

$441,000

$250,000

$125,000

More Stories

Message From the President

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