Fall 2010 - California State University, East Bay

faculty
i n d e p e n d e n t
From a kernel of a concept
great faculty research grows
From its earliest days, Cal State East Bay has boasted a reputation as a place where
professors know students by name and provide first-rate, firsthand instruction in the
classroom. Increasingly, University faculty members also are earning recognition for
conducting leading-edge research and publishing original findings in fields from the
sciences to business and economics.
When Associate Professor Stevina Evuleocha stumbled upon her first Nollywood-produced movie, she
wasn’t satisfied to sit back passively and enjoy the homegrown African films. She wanted to know more, a quest
that made her one of the first academics to publish about an emerging film phenomenon. Associate Professor
Jerry Liu also took action when the object of his research, Google stock, revealed a disturbing, potentially
criminal pattern. He turned over his findings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which later made an
arrest substantiating Liu’s study.
In the College of Science, colleagues laboring in neighboring laboratories in disciplines as divergent as
physics and geology are making discoveries that could alter accepted wisdom about how the world works,
potentially shaking up our understanding of Einstein’s theory of gravity and the origins of life.
In the following pages, meet a handful of faculty members whose thought leadership is pushing
scholarship — and students’ minds — into compelling, previously undiscovered territory.
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