The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Dr. Lisa Patrick Bentley, associate professor in the Biology Department at Sonoma State University, a $1.1 million grant to research fire and ecosystem ecology in California and develop educational outreach activities. The funding will enable Sonoma State biology students to employ state-of-the-art remote sensing equipment to collect biological data essential to furthering our understanding of forest structure, from determining its impact on past wildfire intensity to predicting how it affects future wildfire risk.

Working with graduate and undergraduate biology students, Sonoma State Biology professor Lisa Patrick Bentley will use a terrestrial LiDAR scanner (TLS) to capture extraordinarily detailed 3D images of local forests. Combining TLS data of tree size with, measured leaf traits and climate data, Dr. Bentley and her team will be able to determine how much carbon is stored in the forest study sites. The research is also critical to help predict how altered forest structures — ones that have gone through timber harvests or been burned by wildfire — affect future wildfire risk. Dr. Bentley and her team will conduct their research at Pepperwood Preserve in Sonoma County and three CALFIRE Demonstration State Forests: Latour in Shasta County, Jackson in Mendocino County, and Mountain Home in Tulare County. Read more.

The NASA’s Neurodiversity Network (N3) program, led by SST’s EdEon STEM Learning (EdEon) team, aims to provide opportunities for autistic learners. N3 seeks to demonstrate that there is a place in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers for these students. This year’s program will engage autistic youth in rocketry and building experimental payloads as a means to introduce these youth to NASA science. Leveraging NASA’s investment in EdEon’s educational activities, the N3 team is working with autistic learners and their instructors through a process known as “codesign” in which all aspects of the draft curriculum are reviewed to ensure optimal engagement and clarity. Rocketry payload projects utilize STEM skills in each of the four areas: technology and engineering skills are needed to build the model rockets and payloads, and science and mathematics skills are required for experimental design, payload development and data analysis.

Drs. Yonjoong (YJ) Ryuh and Poram Choi in the Department of Kinesiology, assistant professor and lecturer, respectively, have launched a brand new service learning program called Seawolf Fun & Run with 36 participants from our neighboring community. Many SSU students are also actively engaging in the program as their course laboratory activity, and as volunteers. The program invites community children with developmental disabilities and offers individualized exercise programs to improve their motor skill proficiency. The Seawolf Fun team focuses primarily on fundamental movement skills and the Seawolf Fun team focuses more on advanced sport-related motor skills. In addition to the children's program, it also offers parental wellness programs including guest speeches, fitness training sessions, and breathing and relaxation exercises. The program will be offered every semester for 8 weeks.

Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) graduate student Scott Parmley (pictured left making some last-minute tweaks to the code in the field) has been developing an artificial-intelligence-based rover that self-navigates through a vineyard using ultrasonic sensors and a global positioning system (GPS). In its current prototype, the rover counts clusters after navigating a vineyard, but with a stronger CPU this count will happen during navigation, as the software utilized is a real-time-object-detection algorithm, YOLO (You Only Look Once).

The rover is designed to help grape growers estimate yields better without having to count them with labor-intensive manual processes. Currently many vineyard managers are hand-counting a few rows, and then extrapolating the data to estimate their crop. You can imagine the downside of hand counting as it requires more time, money and manpower, and will be less accurate if only counting a few rows. This in turn will affect a growers ability to properly predict how much tonnage they could be expecting from a year's crop. The project is entitled, Autonomous Yield Estimator (AYE) and it is Scott’s Master’s project.

To summarize, this project involves developing and testing a semi-autonomous rover that can drive through a vineyard with minimal input parameters. Once it has finished driving through a vineyard, a grape estimate will be produced using a trained computer vision algorithm. This project was inspired by the Data Mining class that Scott took in Fall 2019. The class was taught by Dr. Shahrad Jamshidi, who is also an advisor to the project. Scott is graduating in May 2022 and hopes that one day the rover will help growers estimate their yields better, while increasing efficiency in vineyard practices. --Shahram Marivani

The Department of Physics and Astronomy has an exciting new degree offering: a Bachelor of Arts in Physical Science. This is an interdisciplinary STEM degree with a strong Liberal Arts basis that allows students to follow their individual interests via intentional pathways. Students in the major will be required to choose one of the following: a concentration in Teaching, a concentration in Foundational Health, or have no listed concentration. The concentration in Teaching will satisfy the requirements for a Foundational Science CSET waiver, which is required for those who are hoping to become K-9 science teachers. The Foundational Science concentration is intended for students with a broad interest in science, but want an emphasis in Health. This concentration can only be declared by students who have already completed BIOL 115 or 110, BIOL 220, and BIOL 224. Finally, the Physical Science degree with no listed concentration is an incredibly flexible STEM degree, allowing students to take a wide variety of courses in different fields that will help them meet their individual goals. Interested students are encouraged to reach out to Dr. Alexandra Miller (millerale@sonoma.edu) with general questions about the degree or to the Physics Department Administrative Coordinator, Marissa Reichenberg, (padept@sonoma.edu) to declare.

For decades, introductory computer science courses have focused on fundamental approaches to problem-solving, constructs to control processing, means to organize and structure solutions, and ways to test programs. In recent years, SSU’s Computer Science Department, along with many colleges in this country, has utilized Python as a supporting language and followed a traditional class format involving two 1.5-hour lectures and a 3-hour lab each week.

However, the teaching of introductory computer science throughout the world also has been marked by substantial experimentation with the supporting language, class formats, and pedagogy. In this spirit of exploration, SSU’s Computer Science Department asked me to teach a variation of CS 115, Programming I, during Spring 2022. In this effort, the current course (CS 115.005/006) draws upon introductory courses that I have developed at Grinnell College, the University of the South, Williams College, and Willamette University since fall 2011.

This new variation covers all topics stated in SSU’s published course description. However,

If interested, course materials are available online. For this work, Dr. Walker gratefully acknowledges the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE) for making the robots available.

Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) is an academic support program that provides a resilient learning community and strong base to students in the School of Science and Technology. The goal of MESA is to increase the number of historically underrepresented students who pursue and persist in a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) related degree and ultimately, career. Despite the changes and impact that COVID-19 has had in our community within the last two years, our MESA community remains resilient and continues to grow today.

In Fall 2021, we welcomed Christina Thao to our team as our new MESA Lead. Prior to this role, she was a Professional Academic Advisor in The Advising & Transfer Center at Sonoma State for almost 3 years.

This year also brought us Alyssa Cooper, our current Mentor Program Coordinator. Alyssa is working on her Biology Masters degree studying Leopard Sharks in the Hughes Lab.

Sarah Tucker, MESA’s Administrative Coordinator is entering her fourth year working in our school. Sarah earned her Bachelors in Psychology from Sonoma State last spring and is wrapping up the first year of her Masters program in Equity & Social Justice at San Francisco State University.

We support MESA students in the following ways:

Thanks to the support we’ve received from Genentech, we are on track to distribute $143,150 to our students who participate in our Mentorship, Honors, and Genentech Fellows programs!