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2013-2014 Academic Affairs Research Fellows

Susan Auerbach

Susan Auerbach (Educational Leadership & Policy Studies) – Auerbach’s research topic is “Shaping a New Common Sense of Education Reform: Policy Discourse on ‘Parent Trigger’ Laws and Turnaround Schools.” Her research will address issues of equity and access within the social context of urban education and will build on her previous work on parent empowerment and school-community relations, extending it in new directions to critically examine the policy and media discourse on parent trigger laws and corporate reform in K-12 schools. She has been teaching at CSUN since 2003.

Maia Beruchashvili

Maia Beruchashvili (Marketing) – Beruchashvili’s research program examines how marketplace offerings contribute to consumer well-being. In the context of weight loss and obesity, her research projects encompass social construction of emotion, overweight identity and consumer goals. She has been teaching at CSUN since fall 2007.

Vibhav Durgesh

Vibhav Durgesh (Mechanical Engineering) – Durgesh’s research will focus on the experimental study of fluid flow in an aneurysm, the abnormal ballooning or bulging of the wall of a weakened blood vessel. His research will aid in developing accurate simulation models of blood flow inside an aneurysm, which is a complex and widely studied fluid dynamics problem. He has been teaching at CSUN since fall 2012.

Martha Escobar

Martha Escobar (Chicana/o Studies) – Escobar’s research involves a book manuscript entitled “Criminalization of Latina Migrants and the Construction of Irrecuperability.” In the book, she maintains that imprisonment serves to construct migrants as socially irrecuperable under a hegemonic governing logic by which migrants marked as “criminal aliens” are deported and banned from returning to the United States. She has been teaching at CSUN since fall 2011.

Ellen Jarosz Steve Kutay

Ellen Jarosz (Special Collections and Archives) and Steve Kutay (Digital Services) – Jarosz and Kutay’s research project involves the creation of the Guided Resource Inquiry (GRI) Tool—a learning tool that provides a means for teaching faculty to assemble content drawn from Oviatt Library primary sources as a comprehensive approach to coursework and information competency objectives. This content will form the context for assignments that are constructed using the Document-based Question (DBQ) format, which allows for knowledge synthesis through resource analysis, rather than pure memorization of texts. Jarosz is a librarian of special collections and archives librarian at the Oviatt Library and has been at CSUN since fall 2011. Kutay has been a Digital Services Librarian the Oviatt Library since fall 2011.

Alexandra Monchick

Alexandra Monchick (Music) – Monchick’s research focuses on completing her book, “Opera as Film.” She will examine how film, film theory and film music influenced opera during the beginning of the 20th century. She has been at teaching at CSUN since 2011.

Scott Plunkett

Scott Plunkett (Psychology) – Plunkett’s research involves making cross-cultural comparisons on parenting related to academics and mental health. The project includes combining data that has been collected in numerous states in the United States and many countries using the same parenting scales, academic outcomes and mental health outcomes. He has been teaching at CSUN since 1998.

Ben Yaspelkis

Ben Yaspelkis (Kinesiology) – Yaspelkis’ research on diabetes is titled “Skeletal Muscle Insulin Resistance: The IKK pathway’s impact on insulin signaling” and will seek to resolve exactly how impairments in skeletal muscle insulin signaling are manifested and if the defects are reversible, either partially or entirely. The research will focus on inflammatory responses to nutrition and exercise and will add to his body of research on diabetes while seeking approaches to treatments that may improve the condition. He has been teaching at CSUN since 1996.
(written by Stephanie Colman; photos courtesy of @CSUN)