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.

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When Dr. Horace Crogman joined the faculty of CSUDH as assistant professor of physics in 2019, he did so with a mission to transform traditional pedagogies. “Why isn’t learning more fun? Too often, higher education kills our curiosity, and we lose the sense of wonder and curiosity we had as children.” 

Crogman’s interest in math and physics began in his childhood on the Caribbean island of Antigua. His mother excelled in math and served as his first teacher, though her unorthodox approach set the tone for his own headstrong independence as a student at Princess Margaret School in St. John’s. “My mother taught me her way of doing math. This method would always confuse my teachers. I always got the right answers, but they couldn’t understand my process,” he said. 

This independent spirit would come to define Crogman’s academic work in higher education, a journey that began in the panhandle of Texas. Midwestern State University had no physics department when he arrived in 1994. Three years later, he had his degree thanks to a partnership with other area schools and the creative use of early distance and online learning methods. 

The two years he spent in Dijon allowed him to conduct important research in molecular physics. “My focus there was on the development of a model to better understand the high excitement state of tetrahedral molecules.” That research would later be published in 2007 in the European Physical Journal under the title “Local Modes of Silane within Stretching Vibrational Polyads.” 

As an educator, Crogman maintains a keen interest in making the study of physics much more accessible to students from underrepresented communities. This is what initially attracted him to Dominguez Hills, a diverse campus where students have a passion not just for education but for the application of that learning to solve real-world problems. 

“What good is physics if it has no application in the real world?” Crogman asks. “Physics is a subject that is supposed to help you learn how to think. If you learn how to think, then the problems you see in physics—and in the world—can be solved.” 

For several years, Crogman headed a non-profit organization called the Institute for Effective Thinking. It served primarily as a mechanism to mentor students of color who were struggling in high school and had given up on the idea of pursuing higher education. Since his appointment to CSUDH, much of that work has now become a part of his efforts on campus. 

In his three years on campus, Crogman has worked tirelessly to attract funding for the implementation of new technology and pedagogical approaches. Successful grant applications have provided cutting-edge tools for his physics lab—the kind you would expect to find supporting PhD candidates at a much larger university. 

“We have a ChemiDoc system for imaging proteins. We can do electrophoresis. We also have a Nikon confocal laser scanning microscopy imaging system,” says Crogman. He adds that the lab has attracted the interest of professors from UC Irvine and CSU Long Beach, among others. 

The Fall 2022 semester also saw the advent of a new kind of physics class. Crogman secured a grant from the Department of Education to build and equip a virtual reality lab. Students taking Physics 130 now have the option of studying in a digital twin of the CSUDH campus created by the company VictoryXR. 

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