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Volume 59, Number 4    September 6, 2011         

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Newsmakers

A small world
Political Science Lecturer David Lee provided insight for an Aug. 24 San Francisco Examiner piece on the interim mayor's choice of legal counsel for his campaign, which some pundits read as evidence of political lobbying. "People in this town are in small political circles, so it’s not surprising," Lee said.

Toxic mystery
Biology Lecturer Bill Cochlan remarked on a new strain of toxins released by phytoplankton in Washington state's Puget Sound for an Aug. 25 Vancouver Sun story. "I personally have knowledge of it being here since the 1960s. The algae isn’t new. Just the toxin is new,” said Cochlan. "But we don’t know enough about the biology of the organism itself to know what caused it to change."

Contending coasts
An Aug. 25 NPR report on the U.S. East Coast-West Coast rivalry reignited by recent earthquakes in Virginia featured commentary by Associate Professor of Geography and Human Environmental Studies Jason Henderson. "On the West Coast, there are hills and mountains within and/or immediately proximate to cities. This means that people out here can readily observe their surroundings from above," Henderson said. The vistas "enter into the stronger environmental discourse in places like San Francisco, West Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle. But I'm not sure you can really quantify it. It's really anecdotal."

A question of priorities
President Robert A. Corrigan explained his concerns about public higher education in an Aug. 26 KQED Forum interview. "We spend over 9 billion dollars a year on the prison system and less (than) 3 billion for the UC, less than 3 billion for California State University," Corrigan said. "…for the first time in or history students are paying more than fifty percent of the cost of the instruction. We've turned from higher education seen as a public good to one seen as a private good."

 

For more media coverage of faculty, staff, students, alumni and programs, see SF State in the News.


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Last modified September 1, 2011 by University Communications.