This project is a collaborative initiative focused on strengthening the STEM pipeline in our community by partnering with the Sonoma County Civil Air Patrol (CAP) to engage K-12 students in aerospace education and hands-on activities. By leveraging CAP's Aerospace Education Program, which covers a wide array of aerospace topics, the initiative aims to spark curiosity and enthusiasm for STEM subjects among students. The implementation plan emphasizes the use of project-based learning (PBL) and other active learning techniques to enhance student learning outcomes.

For over a decade, the MESA statewide grant has been supporting Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) as one of thirteen university academic support programs in public and private California Universities. The goal of MESA at SSU is to increase the number of historically underrepresented students who pursue and persist in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) related degrees and ultimately, careers.

This project will meet the needs of rural, high-poverty, and emergent-bilingual Spanish-English communities to increase student achievement in science by scaling a moderate-evidence-based, three-component model. The components are i) three units of hands-on, injury, and standards-based STEM curriculum, ii) evidence-based Professional Development (PD), and iii) sustainable teacher support.

The California Mathematics Project: North Coast (CMP:NC) is one of 19 sites of a statewide network of University-based professional learning providers.  As a collaboration between SSU's Department of Mathematics and Statistics and School of Education and the Sonoma County Office of Education, CMP:NC has provided extended, multi-year professional learning opportunities to K-12 mathematics teachers from Marin County to the Oregon border since its founding in 1999.

Dr. Lisa Bentley is the faculty-lead Principal Investigator (PI) alongside graduate student PI, Monica Delmartini.  In the western U.S., more than a century of fire suppression, logging, and cessation of Indigenous burning has led to significantly altered forest stand conditions. Utilizing 3D data derived from terrestrial laser scanning and a physics-based fire model, this project will investigate if thinning prescriptions in mixed hardwood and hardwood/conifer vegetation communities lead to decreased future fire intensity.

The Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) is an NSF sponsored program designed to broaden participation in science, mathematics, engineering and technology (STEM) disciplines and contribute to the national agenda to increase the number of Underrepresented Minorities (URM) receiving baccalaureate degrees, and ultimately Ph.D.s, in STEM disciplines.  The CSU-LSAMP program at SSU provides:

          • Reimbursement for required STEM textbooks and materials

The Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) is an NSF sponsored program designed to broaden participation in science, mathematics, engineering and technology (STEM) disciplines and contribute to the national agenda to increase the number of Underrepresented Minorities (URM) receiving baccalaureate degrees, and ultimately Ph.D.s, in STEM disciplines.  The CSU-LSAMP program at SSU provides:

          • Reimbursement for required STEM textbooks and materials

The Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) is an NSF sponsored program designed to broaden participation in science, mathematics, engineering and technology (STEM) disciplines and contribute to the national agenda to increase the number of Underrepresented Minorities (URM) receiving baccalaureate degrees, and ultimately Ph.D.s, in STEM disciplines.  The CSU-LSAMP program at SSU provides:

          • Reimbursement for required STEM textbooks and materials

The Russian River, a vital watercourse in Northern California, faces challenges related to its estuarine ecosystem's health, particularly in sustaining salmonid populations. The river's mouth frequently forms a sandbar during the summer, impacting the merging of freshwater and saltwater, crucial for salmonid migrations. Limited prior research focused on the river's estuary due to methodological constraints, which resulted in data collection at only a few locations. This proposal outlines the deployment of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) to autonomously survey the Russian River estuary.

This project will be conducted by Sonoma State University to support restoration of kelp forests by the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. Specifically, we will build on existing grants to develop a kelp culturing program for the GFNMS, this award will allow us to add kelp restoration via transplanting of our laboratory-reared kelp to field sites within the Sanctuary targeted for restoration.