Dr. Kim-Phuong Vu

Psychology

Dr. Kim-Phuong Vu’s research is making air traffic safer, websites easier to navigate, and devices with displays and controls easier to use.

Recognized internationally as an expert on stimulus-response compatibility, Dr. Vu’s research focuses on:

• How performance improves with certain mappings of stimuli to responses, which has implications for how displays and controls should be organized and mapped in order to achieve efficient performance with minimal errors;

• Human-computer interaction, which is concerned with designing computer interfaces and products with users in mind so that they are most effective;

• Human factors issues in operating advanced air vehicles, air traffic management concepts and automation technologies and evaluating interface design solutions for the advanced displays and controls associated with new technologies.

Since she arrived at CSULB in 2005, Dr. Vu has served as principal investigator, co-investigator or senior personnel on eight grants or funded projects totaling more than $8 million from NASA, NSF, The Boeing Company, Northrup Grumman Corporation and the CSU Chancellor’s office.

Dr. Vu has authored or co-authored 29 peer-reviewed journal articles and was lead editor for a major handbook, the Handbook of Human Factors in Web Design (2nd ed), which was released this month. She has co-authored one book, Stimulus Response Compatibility Principle. She has published 12 book chapters/encyclopedia entries and 31 conference proceedings papers. Her work has been positively received nationally and internationally, being cited by researchers 251 times in 40 journals. She has been invited to give five talks and has had over 40 spoken or poster presentations at professional conventions.

“Dr. Vu is conducting a wide-ranging, integrated and exceptionally productive research program that not only pulls in collaborators from other institutions, but also incorporates training of CSULB students at graduate and undergraduate levels,” said Psychology Department Chair Ken Green. “She has been a key figure in obtaining an impressive amount of grant support and has already achieved international prominence through her accomplishments.”

Asha Nettles

Sociology

For the past year, senior Asha Nettles has volunteered with the YWCA, helping victims of sexual assault.

As a sexual assault advocate, she has handled a wide variety of tasks, like manning the 24-hour hotlines, helping her supervisor prepare for presentations, sitting with sexual assault victims through physical exams and accompanying them to the police station or courthouse. In the past few months, she has volunteered to serve as on-call supervisor for an assigned week, in which she provides support to her fellow advocates during their work.

“Over the course of my training and time as an advocate, I have learned the value of the service I provide,” Nettles said. “One night as I was sitti ng with a young lady through her physical exam, she shared that she thought that because she had no family around during this difficult time, that she would be alone. She cried knowing a complete stranger cared enough to give up two hours during the night to just be there and support her. It was then, only a few weeks into my service, that I realized it would never be about what I’m not paid or how I benefit, it would always be about giving someone a moment of peace and comfort.”

Nettles also serves as a student representative for the Association of College Unions International for which she develops the student workshops session track for the association’s annual regional conference and provides support and input to the rest of the regional leadership team. She is also a campus ambassador for Stop Child Trafficking Now.

In addition, Nettles serves as the chair of the University Student Union Board of Trustees, the vice president of the Criminal Justice Student Association and a student leader for Ethnos Campus Ministry.

Nettles will graduate in May with her bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in criminal justice. She plans to pursue her master’s in counseling this upcoming fall, as she has recently been admitted to the student development and higher education program at CSULB.

Dr. Kristine Zentgraf

Sociology

What may be above and beyond the call of duty for other faculty members is business as usual for Dr. Kristine Zentgraf. She has been a strong supporter of immigrant students and families in the greater Long Beach area as well as an advocate for comprehensive immigration reform and economic justice issues.

Her special relationship with immigrant students, including those who are undocumented, began six years ago, long before there was a formal faculty-staff AB 540 student ally program. Immigrant students began to seek her out because they’d heard her give talks about the effects of U.S. immigration policies on youth and families. A member of the Sociology Department since 1998, Dr. Zentgraf works tirelessly with the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition (LBIRC) to help provide a path for legalization for undocumented students and has helped to organize community fundraisers that benefit immigrant students at CSULB.

As part of her work with the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition, Dr. Zentgraf has reached out to the larger community at a number of public events including Long Beach’s Latin American Festival, and its Cesar Chavez Festival and she regularly speaks to community and religious groups about immigration and the importance of immigration reform. She served as co-organizer of the first Interfaith Service on Immigration held in 2010 at the First Congregational Church. Dr. Zentgraf has also played a vital role in LBIRC’s free immigrant legal clinics and “Know Your Rights” trainings for undocumented immigrants. Dr. Zentgraf was a founding member of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community from 2008 to 2010.

She received the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award in 2005. She received her bachelor of arts in sociology from CSULB in 1986 and went on to UCLA where she earned her master’s in 1988 and her doctorate in 1998.

Dr. Ali Iğmen

History

In the past five years, Dr. Ali Iğmen has established himself as an expert on Central Asia, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Oral History, as a dedicated instructor who has enhanced the World History curriculum and as a strong collaborator, working closely with colleagues at CSULB and universities throughout the world.

Since he joined the History Department in 2006, Dr. Iğmen has established a new Central Asia and Afghanistan curriculum and is working to create a Central Eurasian concentration in the History Department. He is co-director of the Middle Eastern Studies program and director of the Oral History Program, which he has enhanced by redesigning courses to meet students’ needs. Since Dr. Iğmen took over the program, there has been an increase in the number of students enrolling in oral history courses.

Dr. Iğmen has been highly active on campus, serving on 10 committees within CSULB, seven graduate master’s thesis committees, two committees in the Central Eurasian Studies Society and on the organizing committee for CSULB’s “Modern Genocides and Global Responsibility” Conference in 2007. He is especially proud of the conference he organized at CSULB in 2007 titled “Eurasian Women and Self-Reliance: Religion and Education in the Contemporary World” which addressed women’s positions and roles in forging contemporary identities in several Eurasian societies during the 20th century and today.

Dr. Iğmen’s research has taken him all over the world. He has been invited to participate in conferences and workshops at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, Harvard University, San Francisco State, UCLA and the Middle Eastern Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, where he joined a roundtable on the April Uprising in Kyrgyzstan. Since 2008, he has invited to CSULB four young Kyrgyz scholars, specializing in American Studies, through the Junior Scholar Development Program.

His recent book entitled Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Craft ing Culture in Kyrgyzstan is under review by the University of Pittsburgh Press. It explores the Soviet processes of establishing cultural policies in “Soviet Houses of Culture, National Festivals and Theater” in the 1920s and 1930s. His most recent article “Kyrgyz Houses of Culture, 1920s and 1930s” in “Reconstructing the Soviet and Eastern European Houses of Culture,” will be published by Berghahn Press of Germany in 2011. Dr. Iğmen is currently working on his second project “Daughters of Kyrgyzstan: Gender, Power, and National Politics in Twentieth-Century Central Asia.”