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After a summer of travel, work, research, and staycationing—and, for some, summer classes—students returned to the CSUN campus in force last week, and the Biology Department is bustling. Freshmen and new transfer students are finding their way around class schedules distributed through three different buildings, while upperclassmen, grad students, faculty, and staff are settling into the pace of another academic year.
Multiple Biology faculty are coming out of summer with new grant support, including Chhandak Basu, Gilberto Flores, Virginia Oberholzer-Vandergon, Cheryl Van Buskirk, and Jeremy Yoder. The recent study by Kathryn Scafidi, Prof Peter Edmunds, and collaborators at Mo’orea Long-Term Ecological Research site, which showed that the skeletons of corals killed in a bleaching event may prevent recovery from bleaching earned in-depth coverage in Inside Climate News. If you or your lab group have news from the summer—from publications to field trips—let us all know via the Biosphere contribution form!
The Biology Colloquium Seminar Series officially kicks off the fall semester on Friday, with a talk by Eric Wood, Associate Professor of Biology at California State University Los Angeles. Dr. Wood studies urban ecology, especially bird ecology, and his talk will be entitled “The effects of over a century of urbanization on the avifauna of Southern California.” Colloquium seminars are held most Fridays this semester at 2:30 pm in Chaparral Hall 5122; after his talk, Dr. Wood will join a meet-the-speaker gathering with students in Chaparral Hall 5201.