college of natural Sciences
Robert Carlson, dean

Spring/Summer 2005

Funding the Fight Against Disease

The rash of reported cases and deaths from the West Nile virus last summer reinforced a problem that health officials have dealt with for years — the shortage of Spanish-speaking environmental health professionals to work with non-English-speaking residents. Now efforts are being made to turn that problem around.

Lal Mian, associate professor of environmental health at Cal State San Bernardino, has received a $296,354 Hispanic Serving Institution grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop and implement a program to recruit and retain bilingual students into the environmental health science field.

The USDA funding is for three years for the Recruitment and Retention of Bilingual Pre-Professionals in Environmental Health Science Program. The grant will provide funding for paid internships, tuition stipends and book allowances for deserving students, based on a combination of academic standing and financial need. Workshops will also be arranged for those facing deficiencies in the basic sciences.

“Our program recently received both state and national accreditations,” said Mian. “It prepares students to become registered environmental health specialists for career options as health inspectors (food and water) and air pollution, hazardous material or vector control specialists at local, state, and federal agencies and in the private sector,” Mian added. “We want to recruit potential students to environmental health-related jobs and careers. Our program will work with local high schools, community colleges and health agencies to identify and recruit new students into the program at CSUSB and to enroll them to become registered environmental health specialists.”

Mian, who is the university’s coordinator of the environmental health science program, said the West Nile virus outbreak pointed out the need for more professionals to work with minority and ethnic communities in prevention and treatment efforts. “We need to meet the people where they are, and in our community that means we need more Spanish-speaking public health professionals in the field,” Mian said. “This grant will help us to recruit and retain those future workers.”

Mian said more Spanish-speaking environmental health professionals would ensure that more residents would receive necessary preventative information to avoid the West Nile virus and other environmental health hazards because of air pollution and poor handling of food, water and hazardous materials.

“For example, we could tell them more effectively in Spanish that spraying water ponds to kill mosquitoes or even what to wear and repellents to use to avoid mosquitoes would cut down the risk of the virus spreading. That’s the type of information we have to get out to the Spanish-speaking community. Effective communications on environmental health hazards would avoid causing panics or misinformation from being sent to the minority and ethnic communities,” Mian said.

The Victory Diet

Scientifically speaking, winning in athletic or academic competitions probably doesn’t do much to rid the body of toxins or bad cholesterol. But you can bet it’s good for the old confidence. Riding that competitive high in April was Cal State San Bernardino’s team of nutrition students. The team captured the 2005 College Nutrition Bowl held at the Riverside Convention Center.

Up against teams from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Chico State, Cal State Northridge, Pepperdine University, San Diego State University and UC Berkeley, the team began preparing last December. The competition, held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the California Dietetic Association, was CSUSB’s second foray into the three-year-old annual contest. The team practiced for weeks in a tourney style modeled on the old national TV series, “GE College Bowl.”

Stella Carlos served as team captain, leading teammates Marlisa Pitchford, Dawn Price and Marina Savelyeva. All four are senior nutrition majors who will graduate this June. They are all aspiring “registered dieticians,” who will work at nine-month internships followed by an examination to gain the title, Chen-Maynard said.

“I’m very proud of our students. We had a wonderful time getting ready and competing in the contest,” said faculty adviser Dorothy Chen-Maynard, assistant professor and program coordinator of the department’s nutrition and food sciences program.

Quick Takes

CSUSB is giving people a chance to shoot for the stars — or perhaps just get a better look at them. The university has launched fund-raising efforts to help finance construction of a modern astronomy observatory at the university. Rising several hundred feet above the northern edge of campus, the observatory is to be built on Little Badger Hill.

The project is being sparked by a $600,000 challenge grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, a world-renowned supporter of scientific research and education. However, the grant is contingent on the university raising additional funds to finance construction.

The observatory will cost about $1.4 million. It will include two observatory towers, facilities for astronomy equipment and an array of instrumentation for laboratories and research to complement both telescopes.

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