Affiliated Faculty

Arnold P. Kaminsky

Professor, Department of History

Email: akamin@csulb.edu

Arnold P. Kaminsky is Professor of Asian Studies and History at California State University, Long Beach, and former Chair of the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies. Dr. Kaminsky received his Ph.D. in Indian History from UCLA in 1976. 

 A strong advocate of linkages between university and K-12 educators, he is the recipient of awards from the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education Award, sponsored by NEA for enhancing understanding and curricular development of Asian history and culture in the Middle School; a NEH Focus Grant for “Infusing Southeast Asia into the Middle and High School World History Curriculum,” and a Freeman Foundation Grant to infuse Asia into the teacher education curriculum. In recognition of his efforts and the outstanding success of these projects, Dr. Kaminsky received one of the National Education Association’s highest honors, the William G. Carr Memorial Award.

For four years, Dr. Kaminsky headed a U.S. Department of State Colleges and University Affiliations Grant establishing a Faculty Development and Research Center at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia.  This effort helped reestablish higher education in Cambodia in the aftermath of the “killing fields,” and guided Cambodian faculty in achieving international standards of teaching, research and publication.  Most recently, he has been working with the National Knowledge Commission of India in establishing Teacher Education and Academic Leadership programs between the CSU, the Knowledge Commission, and Indian universities.

Jyotsna Pattnaik
Professor, Department of Teacher Education
Phone: 562-985-9370
Email: jpattnai@csulb.edu
Webpage: http://www.ced.csulb.edu/people/detail.cfm?id=307

Dr. Pattnaik received her doctorate in Early Childhood Education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1996. Her research interests include multicultural and international education, preprimary/primary education (early childhood education), and children's issues in developing countries.

As a member of the academic advisory board for the Yadunandan Center for India Studies and co-chair of the South Asia committee at CSULB, she is currently involved in facilitating collaborative activities between California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) and selected universities in India.

Shireen Pavri
Associate Professor, Department of Educational Psychology, Administration and Counseling
Phone: 562- 985- 5646
Email: spavri@csulb.edu

Dr. Pavri coordinates CSULB’s Education Specialist credential program that prepares beginning level special educators, and also serves as Project Director for the Education Specialist Intern Program, an alternative certification program for special educators that works closely with 32 different school districts in Southern California. Dr. Pavri brings an international perspective having taught in cross categorical and multilingual special education programs, and provided remedial and consultation services to students with learning disabilities and their families in Mumbai, India.

She earned her Masters and Education Specialist degrees in school psychology from Miami University in Ohio, and her Ph.D. in Special Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Pavri’s expertise and research interests are in the areas of preparing teachers to facilitate the social and emotional functioning of students with disabilities, and effective assessment of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

John J. Attinasi
Professor
Chair, Department of Linguistics
Advisor, BCLAD, Teacher Education
Phone: 562- 985-4955
Email:  jattinas@csulb.edu
Webpage: www.csulb.edu/~jattinas

Dr. John Attnasi holds a Ph.D. in Linguistic Anthropology from the University of Chicago (1973). His research interests include minority community demographics and language attitudes, higher education collaboration in an international context, and the role of language in racism and discrimination.

Dr. Attinasi speaks Spanish, French and Chol Maya fluently, and has studied several other languages, including German, Bengali, Tarascan and Yucatec Maya. He is also a member of the Asian BCLAD Consortium, which has developed a multi-campus path for bilingual Asian and Pacific language bilingual credentials in Southern California.

Sophia Pandya

Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies

Phone: 562- 985- 7982

Email: spandya@csulb.edu

Dr. Pandya specializes in women, religion, and globalization. She received her B.A. from UC Berkeley in Near Eastern Studies/Arabic, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from UCSB in Religious Studies, with a focus on women and Islam.  She has special expertise in Sufism in India and South Asia.  A Fulbright scholar, she researched Muslim women’s changing religious practices in Bahrain, looking at the impact of education on women’s religious activities, which became the topic of her dissertation. After spending the summer of 2006 in Sana’a, Yemen, she is currently working on a project which examines religious change among educated Yemeni women, and the implications of modernity, globalization, and education on their practices.

Bradley Hawkins
Lecturer, Department of Religious Studies
Email: bhawkins@csulb.edu

Dr. Brad Hawkins is a specialist in the early religious history of South and Southeast Asia.  He received his Hons. B.A. in Islamic and Asian Studies, and a Master’s degree in South Asian Studies from the University of Toronto where he studied under such teachers as A. K. Warder and A. L. Basham, a Master’s degree in Catholic theology from Loyola University and his doctorate in comparative religions with an emphasis in Southeast Asian religions under the supervision of Ninian Smart. 

Currently teaching in the Department of Religious Studies at California State University Long Beach, he is the author of a number of books including Buddhism: Many Paths, One Goal and Introduction to Asian Religions.  He is working on a new book, The World Religions and the Challenge of Modernity, to be published by Longman.

Warren Weinstein
Lecturer, Departments of Philosophy and Asian Studies
Phone: 562- 985- 4335
Email: wweinste@csulb.edu
Webpage: http://www.csulb.edu/~Ewweinste/

Warren Weinstein received his M. A.in Philosophy from Columbia University. His areas of research revolve around ethics, philosophical psychology, and mysticism. His teaching interests include Tao reasoning, philosophy, ethics, and critical reasoning.

Sebouh Aslanian

Assistant Professor of History

Email: saslania@csulb.edu | Office: FO2-224

Sebouh Aslanian received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. From 2009-2010, he was a Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of History at Cornell University. He specializes in early modern world and Indian Ocean history. He is the author of numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of World History, the Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient, the Journal of Global History, and Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies. His book, entitled From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa, Isfahan, will be out at the end of this year from the University of California Press (California World History Library Series). Dr. Aslanian's book has been selected as the first book to appear in the UC Press's new "Authors Imprint" series.

Ali F. Igmen

Assistant Professor, Department of History
Phone: 562-985-8765
Email: aigmen@csulb.edu

Ali F. Igmen joined CSULB in Fall 2006 as an assistant professor of Central Asian and Soviet History. Dr. Igmen is, also, the director of the Oral History Program. He received his doctorate from University of Washington in Seattle in December 2004. His dissertation is entitled Building Soviet Central Asia, 1920-1939: Kyrgyz Houses of Culture and Self-fashioning Kyrgyzness.  During the 2005-6 academic year, he was the Kemal Karpat Visiting Assistant Professor of Central Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. 

With the support of the Yadunandan Center of India Studies, and the assistance of Arnold Kaminsky, Bipasha Baruah and Sophia Pandya, he organized an interdisciplinary and transnational conference entitled “Eurasian Women and Self-Reliance: Religion and Education in the Contemporary World.” The conference took place on March 22, 2007, which included twenty scholars from seven universities who work on issues related to gender and women in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Yemen, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Burma.

Carl Lipo

Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

Phone: 562-985-2393
Email: clipo@csulb.edu

Website: http://www.csulb.edu/~clipo/

Web blog: http://evolutionbeach.blogspot.com

Dr. Carl Lipo received his B.S. and M.A. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he worked with Dr. J.M. Kenoyer on excavations at Harappa, Pakistan.  He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Washington in 2000.  At CSULB, Dr. Lipo is a member of the archaeology faculty that forms the basis of a Program in Archaeology and a founding member of IIRMES, the Institute for the Integration of Research on Materials, Environments and Society.  At CSULB, he teaches classes in introductory archaeology, world prehistory, evolutionary theory, eastern North American prehistory, quantitative analyses, ceramic and lithic analysis, anthropological method and theory, field research design, geophysical techniques, and the scientific study of origins. Dr. Lipo’s research focuses on the use of evolutionary theory to explain human cultural change in the archaeological record. 

His publications include articles in Science, American Antiquity, Antiquity, Anthropological Archaeology, and other peer-reviewed journals.  Most recently, Dr. Lipo was the editor of Mapping Our Ancestors, a book focusing on the development of phylogenetic methods for studying the human past. In addition, he was co-author (with George F. Dales) for the book Explorations on the Makran Coast, Pakistan.

Stephanie Brown

Assistant Professor, Department of Human Development
Phone: 562-985-5914
Email: sbrown6@csulb.edu

Dr. Brown is a cultural anthropologist who earned her M.A. (1995) and Ph.D. (2000) from the University of Texas, Austin. Her research focuses on the relationships between families and institutions, especially as normative ideas about families and child-rearing are put to use in governing practices. Her doctoral research focused on the idea of “adolescence” and management of teenaged behavior in institutions in the United States, primarily through ethnographic research in a crisis shelter in northern California.

Dr. Brown is also interested in the emergence, historically, of the idea of childhood and adolescence as developmental stages. Her most recent work considers the relationship between international child rights discourses and local ideas about childhood, looking especially at changing public discourses about childhood in India. Dr. Brown plans to localize this research in Hyderabad, examining the impact of the white collar economy on the status of youth and children in the area, considering both changing social roles for children and changes in local and national ideologies about childhood. She currently teaches courses in approaches to childhood and adolescence, cultural foundations for human development, the acquisition of culture, and an interdisciplinary research seminar on identity and achievement.

Rachna Soni
Lecturer, Department of Human Development
Phone:  562.985.2124
Email:  rsoni@csulb.edu

Dr. Soni received her doctoral degree in Human Development from the Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests are personality and social development during adolescence, particularly the role of temperament in adolescent stress and coping. She currently teaches courses on childhood and adolescence, adulthood and aging, and research methodologies in human development. Dr. Soni also teaches a course on child development and learning in the School of Education.

Pia Bandyopadhyay
Associate Professor, Department of Finance
Phone: 562-985-2466
Email:  pbandyop@csulb.edu

Dr. Bandyopadhyay earned her doctorate at University of Texas at San Antonio in 2005. Her teaching interests include corporate finance, investments, international finance, and theory of finance. Her research expertise revolves around corporate finance, investments, market microstructure, and international finance. Dr. Bandyopadhyay is currently a member of the South Asia Committee at CSULB.

Mohammed Khan
Interim Dean, College of Business Administration
Phone: 562- 985-5307
Email: mkhan@csulb.edu
Webpage: http://www.csulb.edu/~mkhan/

Dr. Mohammed Khan received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering/ Business from Texas A&M University in 1976. He has previously served as the Associate Dean for the College of Business Administration at CSULB. Prior to that, he was Chair of the Department of Information Systems for seven years.

Dr. Khan’s research interests include information systems management, information systems education, and information systems professionals. He is currently partnering a research with Micheal Chung titled MIS Students’ Perceptions of Ethical Issues in Information Systems – A Comparative Study between US and Asia.

Praveen Soni
Professor, Department of Marketing
Email:  psoni@csulb.edu

Dr. Soni earned a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. Currently he is the chair of the CSULB Academic Senate and has previously served as the chair of the University Graduate Council, the University Scholarly and Creative Activities Committee, and the Committee on Grading Options. He is keenly involved in re-accreditation activities at both the college and university levels.

A recipient of CSULB’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 2006, Dr. Soni’s teaching interests include marketing principles, strategic marketing management, business marketing and international marketing. Areas of research entail innovation and diffusion, business marketing, marketing relationships, advertising effectiveness, and direct marketing.

Sarath Gunitalake
Professor, Department of Health Science
Email: sarathg@csulb.edu

Dr. Gunitalake holds both a medical degree and a doctorate in Public Health from the University of Hawaii. His professional and research interests include international health, community health and health administration. He has worked for the World Health Organization in South and Southeast

 Asia.

Simon George
Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Senior Advisor
Phone: 562- 985- 4924
Email: georges@csulb.edu
Webpage:  http://www.csulb.edu/depts/physics/people/george_s.shtml

Dr. George, senior advisor to the Yadunandun Center for India Studies, earned his PhD from University of British Columbia, Canada in 1962. In spite of being an emeritus faculty member he continues to remain active in the academic circuit, attending international conferences to present invited talks and workshops in Lasers Physics and Holography. He is also interested in studying the role of laboratory education in physics in many other countries.