A University on the Move

Cal State East Bay is on the move. The university’s ongoing effort to increase both the number and diversity of tenure-track faculty provides evidence of a commitment to the university mission, the quality of academic programs and importance in reflecting the demographics of the communities we serve.

In the past 10 years, Cal State East Bay has looked to increase the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty at the university to 350. The effort has brought new faces, areas of focus, and faculty dedicated to supporting students in reaching their potential. New research has emerged from each of the university’s four colleges, and many classrooms now go beyond four walls and rows of desks. 

Instead, students are in the field, in labs and in the region, and they are building the skills they need to excel in the workforce. 

Meet a few of the faculty members hired in recent years and learn more about what they’re doing to help propel the university forward. 

Lan Wang
Time with CSUEB: 5 years 
Area of Expertise: Operations management and business analytics 

Wang recently published an article in Production and Operations Management titled “Design of the reverse channel for remanufacturing: Must profit-maximization harm the environment?” She said the project “suggests that uncertainty of returned and collected products and the cost-effectiveness of reverse channels are the major drivers of retailer’s selection on the manufacturing strategy.” 

Balaraman Rajan 
Time with CSUEB: 6 years 
Area of Expertise: Managing healthcare operations, efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare technology

Rajan recently worked on a research project on managing chronic conditions using mHealth—apps or programs that allow the user to reach out to medical professionals using mobile devices. The project analyzed the health benefit of using physician-supervised mobile applications for hypertension and investigated the role of reimbursement schemes in adopting mHealth apps. 

Anna Rose Alexander 
Time with CSUEB: 4 years 
Area of Expertise: Latin American urban history 

Alexander recently directed My Housing Story, an oral history project conducted by Cal State East Bay faculty and history students that documents the housing experiences of people living in the San Francisco Bay Area. The collection of audio recordings is available to researchers and the public through the Cal State East Bay University Libraries. Alexander is also a proud first-generation student who graduated from the California State University system and is looking forward to spending her career giving back to students similar to herself. 

Arnab Mukherjea 
Time with CSUEB: 7 years, 10 months 
Area of Expertise: Social and cultural determinants of health disparities among diverse Asian American subgroups 

Mukherjea was part of an inaugural cohort of Faculty Advising Fellows who provided proactive, intensive and targeted advising to improve retention and graduation rates among students in his department. He has also mentored students who have built values-driven careers or attended graduate programs, and connected these students with funds from the Center for Student Research to support them in health-related educational and professional pursuits.

Tony Marks-Block 
Time at CSUEB: 4 months 
Area of Expertise: Prescribed fire in California Indigenous cultures 

Marks-Block researches the ecological and cultural benefits of prescribed fire. He is excited to work with undergraduates at the university to evaluate the restoration of prescribed fire in the Bay Area to sustain Indigenous cultures and reduce the risks associated with wildfire. “To really heal from these fires, California will need to provide resources and land to Indigenous communities which retain fire relationships, to lead California toward a different form of land management that embraces fire and its benefits when applied strategically and scientifically,” he said. 

Jesús Oliver
Time at CSUEB: 4 years 
Area of Expertise: Partial differential equations; active learning mathematics 

Oliver serves as the principal investigator for a National Science Foundation grant to fund Cal State East Bay’s SEMINAL Project. The project aims to infuse Precalculus, Calculus 1 and Calculus 2 courses with active learning mathematics to support increased student success and equity. The grant has led to lower D/F/Withdraw rates and has helped create a community of instructors for the courses. Oliver also recently published a paper titled “A Vector Field Method for Radiating Black Hole Spacetimes” in a top 30 journal of mathematics. 

Izzet Darendeli 
Time at CSUEB: 5 years 
Area of Expertise: Strategic management and entrepreneurship

Darendeli became the associate director of the university’s Smith Center in 2017 and planned and executed several events featuring entrepreneurs, professionals and investors from the Bay Area. He also helped students create the first-ever entrepreneurship-oriented student association called the UP! Club, which organized the campus’ first-ever “pitch day.” 

Ruth M. Tinnacher 
Time at CSUEB: 4 years, 4 months 
Area of Expertise: Environmental geochemistry/radiochemistry 

Tinnacher received external funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Engineering University Program for two- and three-year student-involved research projects focused on uranium mobility in future nuclear waste repositories. She also initiated and currently manages the Berkeley Lab/CSUEB intern pilot program that allows three master’s students to perform research with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists and university faculty. 

Saehya Ann 
Time at CSUEB: 5 years 
Area of Expertise: Customer service; service marketing; hospitality and tourism management

Ann has published five research papers in international refereed journals and seven conference papers in four international conference proceedings since starting at the university. Her most significant achievement during her time at Cal State East Bay has been publishing “Motivating senior employees in the hospitality industry” in January 2020 in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. “I had to revise the manuscript several times based on the reviewers’ comments, and this process took 18 months until publication; however, the outcome was well worth the effort,” Ann said. 

Kathryn Hayes 
Time at CSUEB: 5 years, 4 months 
Area of Expertise: Educational leadership, including critical quantitative analysis and research practicum for social justice 

In recent years, Hayes has strived to improve her teaching and create a syllabus that better reflects her students' diversity, and has been doing research to support her development as an antiracist educator. Her research asks the following questions: How can districts build organizational capacity to support and sustain equity-based science education; what are the processes and conditions by which educators change their practice, particularly those that serve marginalized students; and how do the development and implementation of educational policy shape equity in science education? She has collaborated in writing 11 grant proposals totaling $17.7 million, including a $3.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation.