NEW STAFF
This semester, we are pleased to announce that we have welcomed three new lions to the CURes Project and Marketing Team!
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Roya Shahnazari has joined the team as a Project Specialist! Roya is a graduate student working towards earning her MBA . Roya works with the CURes team to support administrative, financial, and marketing efforts, among others, within the organization’s various projects and initiatives. Roya is involved in projects centered around diversity, community engagement, philanthropy, and sustainability.
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Madison Chang is a senior Screenwriting and Environmental Studies major who has joined the CURes marketing team. She grew up in the Bay Area and spent her time exploring the wildlife around her home. She is passionate about combining her love for writing and the environment to tell engaging stories about various wildlife issues. She enjoys reading, playing piano, and spending quality time with her loved ones.
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Kylie Walgrave is a senior Screenwriting major with a double minor in Business and Philosophy who has joined the CURes marketing team.
Kylie is originally from Minneapolis, MN where she discovered her
interest in biology. She is a proud parent of three guinea pigs and an
equal number of plants. When she isn’t writing screenplays, Kylie enjoys spending time with friends and family, reading, and going for hikes.
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NEW RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
We are pleased to announce the new research assistants working with CURes!
- Anna Maria Brodkey — Culver City Coyotes
- Marceline Burnett — Culver City Coyotes
- Grace Foreman — Restorative Justice Project
- Gwyneth Garramone — Culver City Coyotes
- Emily Gehringer — Annenberg PetSpace Research
- Madina Inagambaeva — Culver City Coyotes
- Lily Maddox — Culver City Coyotes
- Prestin McHugh — Independent Study, Nature Assisted Therapy
- Anna Monterastelli — Culver City Coyotes
- Sarah O'Riordan — Culver City Coyotes
- Jaime Luis Villa — Culver City Coyotes
- Sarah Villalobos — Culver City Coyotes
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| Restorative Justice Project
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HIGHER EDUCATION PARTNERSHIPS
The RJ Project offers Restorative Practices trainings at LMU and other universities to improve social interaction among students, professors, university staff, and administrators. Building stronger relationships amongst academic institution stakeholders can positively impact the academic learning environment. The RJ Project continues to provide RP trainings for staff and faculty across several units and divisions at LMU, and to partner with the Office of Student Conduct and Community Responsibility (OSCCR) to provide restorative conferencing facilitation services for student conduct cases.
Over the past year, the RJ Project has developed new partnerships at USC. We’ve entered into a three-year partnership with the USC Chan Division of Occupational Therapy as part of their ongoing commitment to supporting the health of their collective community, and furthering their work supporting justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. The first year has focused on building the skills among faculty and staff before extending training to students. Also at USC, the RJ Project offers restorative conferencing facilitation services in partnership with Dr. Christopher Manning, Vice President and Chief Inclusion & Diversity Officer.
K-12 PARTNERSHIPS AND TRAINING
As part of an Education Innovation and Research grant, and with support from the Collins Foundation, we are working with Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) to implement RP at four of their schools using the whole school approach. We are providing RP implementation supports and training at Blair Middle and High School, McKinley Middle School, Pasadena High School, and Sierra Madre Middle School until May of 2023. In addition, Riverside Unified School District (RUSD) has contracted with the RJ Project to provide RP training to district-wide stakeholder representatives including administration, mental health professionals, faculty, and staff.
SO CAL RESTORATIVE JUSTICE CONSORTUIM
In 2020, the RJ Project launched the Southern California RJ Consortium that works toward offering RJ Practices education, skill-building, implementation, and joint development initiatives. The consortium is comprised of representatives from Archdiocesan and public K-12 school districts, colleges and universities, nonprofit organizations, and governmental agencies. The goal is to develop RJ practices guidelines, establish standards, offer a support network, and conduct research towards a comprehensive program for the region by bringing practitioners, administrators, educators, academics, and advocates together on a quarterly basis.
The Southern California RJ Consortium has recently named nine advisory council members (pictured below) who meet monthly.
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Tongva Memorial at Ballona Park
On July 16, 2021, representatives of the 3 entities responsible for the creation of Ballona Discovery Park (Playa Vista, Loyola Marymount University, and Friends of Ballona Wetlands), joined Robert Dorame, Tribal Chairman and Most Likely Descendant of the Gabrielino Tongva Indians of California, his family, guests, and members of the Tongva community, to inaugurate the Tongva Memorial in Ballona Discovery Park. The monument honors the Tongva people from the village of Guashna, where Playa Vista now sits under LMU’s Bluffs.
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Founder’s Monument
On October 14, 2021, a Monument to the Founders of Friends of Ballona Wetlands was unveiled to a small gathering of loved ones. The bronze sculpture (pictured here) honors those who saved Ballona from development, and it replicates a historic meeting held by the founders. This monument can be found in Ballona Discovery Park. Pictured here is
Ruth Lansford and former L.A. City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter posing next to
the monument.
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Nature's Balance Event
On October 23, 2021 CURes held the
Nature’s Balance Event in collaboration with
the Friends of the Ballona Wetlands. This
event helped participants discover why
Southern California native plants matter and how to create your own thriving natural landscape on your patio or in their own yards. Native Plants were planted in the
Ballona Discovery Park and Jill Robinson
led a group in a Tai Chi class.
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Student Field Trips with Dr. Strauss
Dr. Strauss took his BIO 322 Lab Class on several field trips this semester to the Ballona Wetlands, Bixby Marsh, Madrona Marsh, Annenberg PetSpace, and West Basin
Municipal Water District to learn about hydrology, ecology, and how these areas provide biodiversity and solutions to urban challenges. Dr. Strauss discussed history of the area as they conducted experiments with field cameras and learned about animal behavior.
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The Gottlieb Garden UCLAxOpen Lecture Series: Hummingbirds of The Gottlieb Native Garden
On Wednesday, November 3, 2021, Dr. Eric Strauss showcased a book
he wrote about hummingbirds where he will discuss the ecology of hummingbirds in
the context of reimagining resilient and green urban neighborhoods, how they have adapted
to the fragmented and patchy habitats from urban development, how they flourish, and the challenge of greening our cityscapes.
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Ballona Discovery Park Tours
Friends of Ballona Wetlands has a long history of providing environmental education programs at the Park; their educational modules have engaged thousands of visitors over 36 years. LMU and Friends of Ballona Wetlands have worked as a team on education and restoration projects for over 30 years. For more information and tours, please contact cures@lmu.edu or info@ballonfriends.org, or visit the website at
Friends of Ballona Wetlands.
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| Research & Partnership Updates
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EDISON INTERNATIONAL PROJECT
CURes continues our partnership with Victor Elementary's Environmental Engineering Club, run by three 5th Grade Teachers, by providing the materials to re-build the garden, after COVID-19 restrictions prevented staff and students from working in the garden for over a year. New structures and beds were installed and the sub-group VEEEC-Beaks also will be putting up the bird feeder that attracted local birds back to the garden and monitoring activity.
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ANNENBERG PETSPACE RESEARCH
In partnership with Wallis Annenberg PetSpace, CURes is assessing animal service organizations in Los Angeles County. The project defines animal service organizations as those that provide: shelter, spay and neuter, specialty care, animal rescue, and/or other care services. CURes researchers are utilizing an established research methodology to inventory, survey, and map organizations within a given geographic area. The survey developed in collaboration with PetSpace and other animal service providers in LA County, and was sent in 2020-2021 to over 600 organizations. Data analysis of the resulting 150+ responses is underway, with a map and report to be completed by mid-2022. The aim of this project is better understand the animal service resources available countywide, answering the questions: Who takes cares of domestic animals in LA County? Where are there gaps and concentrations of care?
FRONTIERS & VET MEDICINE
During two retreats in 2017 and 2020, a group of international scientists convened to explore the Human-Animal Bond. The meetings, hosted by the Wallis Annenberg PetSpace Leadership Institute, took a broad view of the human-dog relationship and how interactions between the two may benefit us medically, psychologically or through their service as working dogs (e.g. guide dogs, explosive detection, search and rescue, cancer detection). These scholars then produced a broad collection of 13 theoretical and review papers summarizing the latest research and practice in the historical development of our deepening bond with dogs, the physiological and psychological changes that occur during human-dog interactions (to both humans and dogs) as well as the selection, training and welfare of companion animals and working dogs.
CULVER CITY COYOTES
CURes continues to be at the forefront of coyote management programs, entering the third year of its study with the City of Culver City. More than 30 motion-sensor cameras set up throughout the city have captured more than 2 million images, and we have collected nearly 200 scat samples, which will allow us to understand the movement patterns and diet of coyotes throughout the City. Now that students have returned to campus, we are able to organize more scat collection and reinstate the backyard risk assessment surveys, which help residents determine if their yard is at high risk for drawing in coyotes. We have also installed cameras on campus and are hoping to learn more about coyotes seen on the bluff.
If you are interested in participating in this program or just want to learn more about it, please contact Dr. Melinda Weaver at melinda.weaver@lmu.edu.
LOS ANGELES RIVER STEW-MAP
CURes recently completed LA River STEW-MAP, a three-year project to examine the activities and relationships of environmental stewardship organizations in the Los Angeles River Watershed. Researchers inventoried 535 environmental stewardship groups in the LA River Watershed and received survey responses from 107 groups. The resulting maps and network analyses can be found on the CURes website and in a detailed forthcoming report. The Stewardship Mapping & Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) is a USDA Forest Service national research program that defines environmental stewardship as: the act of conserving, managing, monitoring, transforming, advocating for and/or educating the public about their local environments. Previous STEW-MAP research by LMU CURes includes work in LA County and Riverside.
GATEWAY CITIES TREE CANOPY PROJECTS
CURes, TreePeople, and Gateway Cities Council of Governments partnered to conduct their third community-based tree canopy prioritization project, this time in the City of Paramount in Southeast LA. This process utilizes high resolution, high accuracy tree canopy data as a foundation to engage the public in identifying priorities for tree planting in the city. In June, the project team conducted a “tree summit” with 37 participants from Paramount. Survey results found that most participants prioritized Air Quality, Low Tree Canopy, and Park Improvement when considering locations for future tree plantings. The city was provided
with a report that included the results along with recommendations to help guide future urban forestry strategies, with several recommendations. This project is funded by the California Resilience Challenge and Edison International.
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