Spring 2024

CSUDH Receives $22 million Gift From Ballmer Group

CSUDH Receives $22 Million Gift From Ballmer Group

It will support communities of color by creating a pipeline of teachers working and staying in the area and improve their ability to create positive outcomes for their students through the use of culturally competent pedagogies.”
– Thomas A. Parham

More than 1,000 new teachers of preschool and early elementary school grades will start work in the Golden State over the next six years, thanks to two new programs being launched at CSUDH, following a transformative gift announced in August 2023.

Ballmer Group is committing a historic $22 million to CSUDH over six years, marking the largest donation ever given to the university. The majority of the gift will fund scholarships for students through the university’s Toros Teach LA program, which will help address California’s severe shortage of early childhood educators by preparing, graduating, and placing culturally competent, racially diverse teachers and leaders in schools across the Los Angeles region.

“This program will have an outstanding impact on communities with a high need for credentialed preschool and early childhood educators,” said CSUDH President Thomas A. Parham in announcing the gift.

CSUDH’s Toros Teach LA program includes two initiatives to address the need for more qualified teachers in California: Early Childhood Excellence and Black Educator Excellence. Through these, the university will build equity-embedded credentials, help districts recruit and support their Black educators and all educators of Black children, and enable educators to forge successful teaching careers with less debt and improved career retention.

It will support communities of color by creating a pipeline of teachers working and staying in the area and improve their ability to create positive outcomes for their students through the use of culturally competent pedagogies.”

– Thomas A. Parham

“We are excited to work with Ballmer Group toward educating and mentoring culturally responsive teachers for the preschool-3rd grade classrooms of the Los Angeles region,” said Jessica Pandya, dean of the CSUDH College of Education. “With this generous gift, we can offer this training to more future teachers, who can then serve the communities they come from while helping to alleviate this critical need for the state.”

The grant supports scholarships for up to 1,200 students, allowing them to earn bachelor’s degrees and PK-3 or K-8 teaching credentials. The program also includes training and upskilling for current teachers, including new units needed for the PK-3 credential once it becomes available and certificate coursework for current teachers who want to improve their ability to teach ethnically diverse learners.

Kim Pattillo Brownson, director of strategy and policy for Ballmer Group, said the gift will help the children of Los Angeles by supporting scholarships, degree programs, and other partnerships for their future educators. “Early education is a game-changer for giving kids a fair shot in school and life,” she said.

Impacting The Community

COE Alumni & Students share their stories.

Amel Kaid

Liberal Studies major

Born and raised in Algeria, Amel Kaid always wanted to be a teacher. She deferred her dream as a young woman, getting married and starting a family. It was when the family immigrated to the United States that Kaid found a chance to pursue her chosen path.

She earned an associate’s degree in child development and one in Spanish, both from El Camino College, before enrolling at CSUDH. After graduating, Kaid plans to teach young elementary school students and sees herself involved in bilingual education in some way going forward. In addition to Spanish and English, she also speaks Arabic and French.

Effective communication in any language is a key part of education, which Kaid knows from her time with preschool kids—she’s been teaching at that level since 2014, even while attending CSUDH. They begin each day with Circle Time, a daily check-in for both talking and listening. “We talk about their feelings, what they did over the weekend,” she says. “That has become a time when we sit together and talk. I hear them, they hear me. It brings us together.”

Bridgette Donald-Blue (MA, ’99)

Math Intervention Teacher
Coliseum Street Elementary, Los Angeles

Woman wearing blazer and blue patterned blouse.

How many people were named California Teacher of the Year in 2023? Five. How many of those never planned to become a teacher, and had law school in their sights after wrapping their English degree from Howard University?

That would be one: Bridgette Donald-Blue, who decided to postpone law school and join Teach for America, only to discover that she loved her role as a Compton elementary school teacher. She later moved to the Los Angeles Unified School District and currently works as a K-3 math intervention teacher at Coliseum Street Elementary School.

It was while serving in Teach for America that Donald-Blue was introduced to the CSUDH credential program. “I found that the school has great instructors who were also practitioners. They had been, or still were, in the classroom,” she says. “You didn’t get this ‘ivory tower’ feeling when you spoke to them. They were teaching us real skills and methods that they were using successfully in their own classrooms.”

Woman wearing green floral print blouse and pearls.

Lynne Sheffield (MA, ’99)

Assistant Superintendent of Education Services
Santa Barbara Unified School District

Sometimes one decision changes your whole life. Lynne Sheffield had been accepted at a chiropractic school when she realized that wasn’t the career she wanted. Aware of a teacher shortage at the time, and with her mother’s experience as a teacher in Compton in mind, Sheffield took the California Basic Educational Skills Test, moved into a classroom position, and began her credential program at CSUDH.

She attended classes while working—and more. She also got married and had her first child while attending CSUDH. “I literally had my baby in my arms during my last credential class,” she remembers. She earned her CSUDH master’s degree after that.

Now, Sheffield is the assistant superintendent of education services in the Santa Barbara Unified School District. That’s after a decade of classroom teaching, followed by administrative roles in districts across Southern California—which have given her perspective on her own training as an educator.

“I learned to work with diverse students, which was important to know and understand,” she says.  ”I don’t think a lot of student teachers or new teachers are coming in as well-prepared. I think Dominguez Hills did an amazing job of that.”

Jhey Crisostomo (BA, ’03)

Academic Advisor
CSUDH

Woman in beige sweater with long brown hair.

Within two years of earning her bachelor’s degree at CSUDH, Jhey Crisostomo was back on campus, teaching in the Liberal Studies program. She’d earned a master’s and teaching credential at the University of Southern California, and was also teaching at an elementary school in Los Angeles. And serving as an intervention coordinator. And teaching a technology course at an adult extension school. Sound hectic?

These days, Crisostomo is a full-time academic advisor in the CSUDH College of Education. She works with graduating Toro seniors, helping them make sure they’re meeting all their requirements and tracking their progress toward graduation. She also stays active as a faculty member. “What I really like about the program here is that the faculty were teachers. We were educators. We have that experience, so we’re not teaching from a textbook. We’re teaching from real life.”

For her part, Crisostomo helms the Responsive Teaching and Classroom Management course at CSUDH—her favorite class. “Classroom management is one of the key elements of teaching,” she says. “You can have an amazing lesson plan, but if you don’t have that management aspect down, it’s not going to matter.”

Woman with hair styled in ponytail wearing white cardigan and orange shirt.

Jessika Villalva

Multiple Subject Teaching Credential Student
CSUDH

As a first-generation college student raising two young children on her own, Jessika Villalva is focusing on early teaching and learning. She’s currently finishing up the requirements to earn her multiple subject teaching credential, and plans to work in early childhood education upon graduating.

The creativity and often unexpected thinking that younger students display is what drew Villalva to their age group. “I like their curiosity about everything, and seeing how their minds work and create their own reasoning behind things. It’s fun to see how they’re able to connect certain ideas.”

Villalva’s experience as the daughter of a Mexican immigrant mother who raised four children on her own colors how she sees her own educational experience through her children’s eyes. “I want to be able to show my kids that I’m able to do this,” she says. “I want them to know what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and show them that they can do anything they put their minds to.”

John Alexander (MS, ’21)

Social-Emotional Learning Specialist
Washington Elementary, Lynwood

John Alexander spends his days counseling students, performing one-on-one check-ins, working with small groups, and conducting “restorative mediations” between students in conflict. He’s a social-emotional learning specialist at Lynwood’s Washington Elementary School, who says the self-reflection skills he learned in the CSUDH school counseling program still help him today.

“So much of counseling is looking inward,” says Alexander. “When you’re working with people, you have to be cognizant of your tone, your body language, your posture—and you only can realize that if you’re self-reflective.”

“My courses also helped me realize that every student is different. How I counseled one student may have worked, but the same techniques may not work with the next one. I really learned how to meet each student where they’re at and understand the needs they have in that moment.”

You Are Always Learning

You Are Always

Learning

College of Education Dean Jessica Pandya on training the next generation of educators.

Read Story

Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Jessica Pandya moved to California soon after graduating from the University of Chicago. She earned her multiple-subject teaching credential from the New College of California and started teaching kindergarten in the San Francisco Unified School District.

Wanting to learn more about how kids learn, she went on to attain a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Education in Language, Literacy & Culture from UC Berkeley. Pandya decided to use her knowledge to become a teacher educator, passing on what she learned from her studies and years of classroom experience.

She moved to Southern California and spent 16 years as a professor, including six years as the Liberal Studies Department chair at Cal State Long Beach. Eventually, she says, “I wanted to become one of the people who was making decisions. When the dean position opened up at CSUDH, the vision and mission of the College of Education spoke to me. This is the place I really wanted to work.” Pandya began her role as Dean of the College of Education in 2021.

The College of Education’s mission is centered on equity and social justice. How does the college prepare its students to be advocates for social change?

Primarily, that work is accomplished by our great faculty in the content of their courses. If you look at the curriculum from Liberal Studies all the way through to our brand new doctorate, you can see it in what things are called, the framing of assignments, and the way syllabi look. We have a diverse faculty who’s really interested in these issues. That’s why they’re here.

The social justice pieces are there in the kinds of programs we offer. We know that people in our community want these things. We’re at the forefront of issues like inclusion—we have a dual language certificate and a bilingual authorization program in Spanish, with those classes taught in Spanish. We’re building a Korean bilingual authorization, too. In the COE, there’s a huge focus on inclusion, disability justice, and disability rights, as well.

A lot of people don’t know what else the College of Education does besides teacher training. What are some other areas that the COE is responsible for?

Half our students are Liberal Studies majors and most of them will enter into one of our credential programs to become teachers, so it’s understandable that many people don’t know what else we do. But many of those students will then go on to get their master’s in education in Curriculum & Instruction, Dual Language Learning, Special Education, or School & College Counseling.

Eventually, some of those alumni come back to CSUDH to get their administrative credentials—after teaching for a while, they want to become school leaders or principals. So they’ll return for their administrative services credential and an MA in School Leadership, which is one of our largest graduate programs, not only in the COE but in the university.

We’ve got a great School and College Counseling MS program, which also offers a Pupil Personnel Services credential and a child and welfare authorization, which is offered in very few universities. Those are for people who want to be high school or college counselors and advisors.

We have programs in special education, dual language learning, and curriculum instruction as well, which are pretty much for frontline teachers. Most of the students in those programs are actively teaching. And starting in May 2024, we will have our first cohort of Educational Doctorate students in our Educational Leadership for Justice Doctoral program.

We started the Academic Research and Evaluation Center last year, and several partners in the community and the wider university are already taking advantage of the Center’s program and grant assessment services. And, of course, we offer several programs through the College of Continuing and Professional Education, like the Community College Teaching Certificate and the Assistive Technology Certificate.

California and the nation are facing a severe teacher shortage. Why do you think young people should consider entering the profession?

As a classroom teacher, you get to interact with 30 different kids every day who look up to you and want to learn with you. It’s a profession in which you grow all the time, because you’re never doing the same thing twice. You might do the same lesson with your first graders one year, then the next year do it again and it goes very differently. You’re always learning, you’re always adapting. For folks who like to be active learners, going to a classroom and trying to engage a room full of learners all at once is pretty great.

There’s a lot of talk about how teachers change lives, and that is certainly true. If you ask most people, “Who was your favorite teacher?” they have very specific memories and reasons, like a teacher who believed in them. The teacher who saw that they needed this particular inspiration and gave it to them, or the teacher who inspired them to ask questions, or the teacher who inspired them to become who they are now. You actually change lives all the time as a teacher.

There are also some practical reasons people like teaching. You get your summers off, so you have time to regroup. Many teachers do professional development in the summer, while others do different things—relax, take vacations, do a variety of fun activities.

It’s a pretty great job. There are great benefits. Also, there are lots of jobs in the areas where our students come from. So if you want to teach in special education, there are jobs for you. If you want to support kids with mild or extensive support needs, you can get a job. As soon as you finish your credential, you’ll likely be hired.

If you can speak Spanish and teach in Spanish, you’re going to get hired. If you are interested in becoming a math teacher and get your credential, you’ll be hired. These are high-need areas. I think sometimes people go to college and think, “What am I going to do with this degree?” You know what you can do with your teaching credential, because you can get a job very quickly.

When I decided to pursue leadership positions, two key words attracted me to this campus and its mission. CSUDH is devoted to access and transformation through education. Those words mean a lot to me, because that’s what I went through in my own journey. Education helped me open my eyes to my potential and aspirations, and really transformed me from a little girl in a male-dominated society, helping me start to think beyond what I thought I could do and turning me into who I am.”

How does the College of Education support aspiring teachers and other students?

We support our students in lots of different ways. We support them through our faculty teaching, in what we teach, how we teach, and the availability of faculty, who are always willing to guide and support students. We support them in our Student Success Center, which advises undergraduates on their progress toward a credential. We support them in graduate programs with excellent advisors.

We also support them financially. We give out a fair number of scholarships. This coming year, we’ll have even more to give, thanks to the generous Ballmer Group gift (see next page). That will give us another $17 million in scholarships to give away over the next six years. That’s mostly going towards students entering the preschool-third grade credential that we are building to open in Spring 2025, but that means that the scholarship dollars we have for other degrees will stay and hopefully grow as donors see the impact we’re having.

We host a variety of professional development activities like speakers’ series and workshops, and this semester we started study halls in our interior courtyard. We have a team of clinical practice faculty—once students get into student teaching, the faculty consult with them, place them in schools, and help with serious problems they might encounter.

We also have several faculty members whose jobs aren’t to teach, but instead are to support our students’ clinical practice, which is a huge piece of most of our programs.

We keep our curriculum very current, and constantly assess what we’re doing by asking ourselves: Are we doing a good job? Are we meeting our standards? Are our degrees valuable? We maintain really good relationships with our local school district partners, who help us keep things aimed in the right direction.

Do you get a lot of feedback from local school districts on what they need going forward?

We invite our district partners to campus once a semester, look at data with them, then have listening sessions. We ask them what kinds of students do they want to hire, what’s going on with clinical practice, what do they need from us? What professional development can we provide? Where are your shortages? All those conversations inform the direction of our college. We had over 20 partners at our last meeting this fall.

What does the future hold for the College of Education?

We’re hiring six tenure-track faculty this year, which is a lot for us, and have recently hired six new staff positions. So we’re growing. We hope to grow all of our programs. But we need to build our college faculty and staff first, because we are at capacity in almost all of our programs.

We’ll continue to see increased grant activity, and we’re going to be working on all of our financial processes and improving them. We’re also going to be intensely involved in bilingual education—we’ve already got a lot of Spanish language courses, and we’re planning to add some Korean bilingual courses, too.

We’ll continue to work on expanding technology access from a social justice perspective and on developing truly inclusive education through work in our Snap, Inc. Institute for Technology and Education.

What would you like Toro students to know about the college that they may not know?

I’d like students to know that if you like learning, you might want to consider being a teacher.

And if you didn’t like learning, you might also want to consider becoming a teacher, because you could do a better job. I mean, you can become the teacher you wish you had! There’s a lot to do in education and we are an open place for folks to come learn.

Maureen McCarthey Gives Education Students a Boost

Maureen McCarthey

Gives Education Students a Boost

Alumna’s foundation enters its third decade supporting CSUDH students.

Read Story

She changed my life.”

That’s how Michelle Soto Garcia describes the impact that CSUDH alumna and philanthropist Maureen McCarthey has had on her. Garcia, a former Paramount Unified School District Teacher of the Year, is currently the principal at the district’s Roosevelt Elementary, and she is quick to credit McCarthey and her philanthropic foundation for that success.

Since 2001, the Maureen McCarthey Foundation has donated more than $1 million to graduates of Paramount schools who are interested in going into teaching and attending CSUDH. Each year, the foundation grants graduating seniors a full scholarship, and McCarthey and her team continue to support them throughout their academic journey.

“I don’t know where I’d be without the foundation,” says Garcia. “Ms. McCarthey is a mentor to me. She’s like family. I don’t know what I would have done without her guidance, her support, and her generosity. This doesn’t come from company money, this is her personal money that she’s investing in Paramount and the community.”

Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, McCarthey graduated from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., before moving to Southern California in the late ’80s. She earned a teaching credential from Cal State Long Beach, then got a job as an elementary school teacher in Paramount. While there, she participated in a program at CSUDH to earn a master’s degree while still working, joining other teachers from the district in the endeavor.

“We got very attached to Dominguez Hills,” says McCarthey. “It was a great program, with a great education department behind it. It was a great experience.”

McCarthey’s parents were devoted philanthropists in the Salt Lake City area, and when they passed away, she took the opportunity to continue in their spirit of giving. She retired from teaching and formed a philanthropic foundation, with the idea of giving back to the communities that had so inspired her during her teaching career.

“When I left Paramount, I wanted to help students in the district, because I fell in love with the community, and I wanted to encourage them to go to Dominguez Hills.” With that in mind, she created the Maureen McCarthey Scholarship, which has been providing scholarships to prospective educators for over two decades.

Another grateful scholarship recipient is 2020 Paramount Teacher of the Year Brittany Esnayra. She currently works as a Resource Specialist Program teacher at Paramount High School, helping students with special needs develop the study skills they need to thrive.

”As a 17-year-old high school student with a full scholarship, I didn’t even know what to do with myself. I was so excited,” she recalls. “At first, I was just thrilled to be able to go to college and not have to worry about how I was going to pay for it.”

“It’s way more than that, though,” Esnayra continues. “Ms. McCarthey and her board became like family. During my first interview for the scholarship, they said, ‘This is not a scholarship where we’re just going to hand you money and say good luck to you. We want to be involved. We want to know about your life and where you go.’

“Over the course of the last 20 years, I have definitely hit some bumps in the road, and Ms. McCarthey and the foundation have been there for me every step of the way. They’re not only mentors, they’re also like aunts, in the sense that it’s truly more than the money. They’ve been involved my whole life and got to celebrate all of my accomplishments with me.”

McCarthey usually shies away from publicity, but received some rare public acclaim during 2023, when she was invited to join President Thomas A. Parham to throw out the first pitch at the annual at Toro Night at Dodger Stadium.

“The invitation took my breath away,” says McCarthey. “At first I didn’t think I could do it, but once I decided to, I took it really seriously. I went to the park with a friend and practiced so that I could at least get the ball over the plate!”

“It was really an experience that I can’t even explain. It was just so cool and so much fun.”

McCarthey credits her philanthropic nature to the values her parents instilled in her. “They were both very generous people. Now, the inheritance they left behind enables me to have this foundation. When I meet with candidates or their families, I always bring them up. I may be the one giving the money, but none of this would be happening if not for my mother and father. They were charitable, philanthropic people, and education was really important to them.”

As McCarthey’s foundation enters its third decade supporting CSUDH students, Garcia is happy that she is getting recognized for her work. “She’s changed so many lives,” says Garcia. “She doesn’t give to any other university—she just loves Dominguez Hills and Paramount and really wants to help in every way she can. I’m proud to be a part of that legacy.”

It was a great program, with a great education department behind it. It was a great experience.”

Night Shift

For 23 years, Byron Hudson has supported student success by ensuring they learn in a safe and clean environment.

Explore Gallery

Byron Hudson has given 23 years of service to California State University, Dominguez Hills, working until quite recently as a custodian on the third shift—a vital contingent of the campus community that often gets overlooked and taken for granted.

Custodial Services gave Hudson a long-deserved promotion to assistant manager this past spring, Until that time, he cleaned, swept, mopped, and through the COVID-19 pandemic, completely sanitized about 25,000 to 35,000 square feet of campus each night.

Hudson has also raised two daughters with LeShawn, his wife of 30 years. They have a home in nearby Compton, and they travel the world when they can—Hawaii, St. Martin’s, and Jamaica are among their favorite destinations. Byron also serves as a pastor at his church and umpires local little league baseball games when his schedule permits.

As a manager, Hudson works tirelessly to ensure that his custodial crew embodies the same values and work ethic he brought to the job for so many years. He’s also helped Danny Morphin, the manager of Custodial Services, create a new strategic plan for the department to increase efficiency and improve conditions for the staff. Something that past CSUDH president and current CSU Chancellor Mildred Garcia said years back has stuck with him, says Hudson. “She reminded us that we’re all educators no matter what role we play on campus. We’re all educators because we’re all a part of the learning environment, and our top priority is our students.”

Spring 2024

CSUDH Receives $22 Million Gift From Ballmer Group

More Stories

Impacting The Community

COE Alumni & Students share their stories.

Amel Kaid

Bridgette Donald-Blue (MA, ’99)

Lynne Sheffield (MA, ’99)

Jhey Crisostomo (BA, ’03)

Jessika Villalva

John Alexander (MS, ’21)

More Stories

You Are Always

Learning

The College of Education’s mission is centered on equity and social justice. How does the college prepare its students to be advocates for social change?

A lot of people don’t know what else the College of Education does besides teacher training. What are some other areas that the COE is responsible for?

California and the nation are facing a severe teacher shortage. Why do you think young people should consider entering the profession?

How does the College of Education support aspiring teachers and other students?

Do you get a lot of feedback from local school districts on what they need going forward?

What does the future hold for the College of Education?

What would you like Toro students to know about the college that they may not know?

More Stories

Maureen McCarthey

Gives Education Students a Boost

More Stories

Night Shift

More Stories

Social