SDSU Master’s Research Scholarship Awardees 2021/22
19 Graduate Students from CAL Awarded Scholarships
Graduate students from anthropology, big data analytics, creative writing, geography, Latin American studies, history, linguistics, rhetoric and writing studies, political science, and women’s studies were selected to receive Master’s Research Scholarships. Students were each awarded $10,000 to contribute toward continued research in their chosen field.
"I am thrilled that so many CAL graduate students received these awards,” said Dean Monica J. Casper. “ Our M.A. students are top-notch and reflect excellence across many disciplines in CAL. I'm proud of these students – and their faculty mentors – and I look forward to witnessing their continued intellectual and professional growth."
The scholarships from SDSU’s College of Graduate Studies are designed to provide direct, much-needed financial support to master’s students who contribute to research, scholarship, or creative activity in their particular area of academia.
The scholarship directs institutional funding to support recruitment, retention, and timely degree completion for graduate students who are engaged in work that advances the university's goals for research and creative activity.
Read more about each student’s area of focus.
Eirein Gaile Harn’s research aims to extend onomastics (the study of names) into the
field of rhetoric. She will explore names as rhetorical sites of meaning by considering
the rhetorical strategies people use to navigate the relationship between their names
and their cultural identity. Specifically, she seeks to understand the role names
play in cultural identity development.
Catherine Drzewiecki's research aims to bring attention to the Filipino Amerasian
population born during the Cold War era. From the Vietnam War to the end of the 1980s,
the Philippines had a significant American military presence and as a result thousands
of Amerasian children were born. Through analyzing the cultural and political environment
in which they were born and grew up in, she hopes to understand why this population
was excluded from U.S. legislation benefiting other Amerasian ethnic groups in the
1980s.

Ryan Garcia’s research revolves around studying Sino-American relations during the
Cold War. Through analyzing the influence of domestic politics, gender and race on
American and Chinese policymakers, he aims to build a more comprehensive understanding
of the Cold War dynamics between the two nations and how the Sino-American rapprochement
occurred. Moreover, he hopes that this research will serve another function of showcasing
and emphasizing the multi-polarity of the Cold War, through the incorporation of often
unheard voices.
Harmit Chima has always been inspired by big-scale issues. During her first year of
grad school, she teamed with a non-profit organization called the Metabolism of Cities
Living Lab, led by Dr. Gabriela Fernandez. Their underlying mission of achieving the
2035 Sustainable Development Goals at a localized level, allowed her to assist with
data-driven decisions that support disadvantaged communities. Thus, supporting her
overarching goal of advocating for underprivileged populations.
Timothy Andersen’s research aims to develop helpful tools and visualizations for text
analytics. His current focus is on topic models: statistical models that generate
and assign topics to documents based on their contents. He is researching ways of
making topic models easier to use and visualize.
Dylan Wells is in the MFA for Creative Writing - fiction, as well as the LGBTQ+ Studies
Graduate Certificate programs at SDSU. His work attempts to reveal poverty/wealth
inequality and the toxic effects of normative cis/hetero-patriarchy by illuminating
characters largely ignored in mainstream artwork, as well as the deep indoctrination
of speciesism by challenging the exploitative/violent relationship between humans
and non-human animals.
Giovan Michael’s research meets at the crossroads of desert ecology and hedonistic
sustainability in the form of an experimental road trip novel. Giovan’s writing explores
the many million miles of road that connect across the continental U.S. and aims to
show how they bring the harmful doctrine of manifest destiny into the 21st century.
Giovan’s writing also aims to tell the stories of the cultures, fauna, and flora that
have been displaced in the name of progress.
Arnisha Royston aims to extend the understanding of poetry and its relationship with
the African American community. As both a writer and student, Arnisha will use her
experience to explore how form, expression, emotion, and vulnerability are interwoven
into black narrative. She is interested in exploring the work of authors such as Jericho
Brown, Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, and Kwame Dawes to identify key poetic devices,
forms and elements used in their poetry.
Jamie Bastide's area of research focuses on the gender identity of Nathan "Nate" Harrison.
Harrison was the first African American homesteader in San Diego County and one of
the most photographed San Diegans of his time. Through historical documents, oral
and written histories, and the archaeological record, as well as current gender and
feminist archaeological research, Jamie will be looking at how Harrison performed
his masculinity within the larger hegemonic masculine ideals.
Shannon Farnsworth’s MA thesis focuses on The Lost Murals of San Diego State. These
student-created pieces of art were meant to be permanent and lacked individual ownership,
serving as the people’s art. The lost and newly restored murals can give insight into
the campus and community attitudes during significant events in the past. Despite
the fact that the study of murals and mural preservation is lacking within the historical
archaeology discipline, Shannon will argue that it fits well within the scope of the
field.
Josh Trinidad's research aims to examine the behavioral ecology of moor macaques (Macaca maura) in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Specifically, he will explore how the provisioning
(i.e., feeding) of macaques shapes human-macaque interactions and macaque movement
patterns. Ultimately, he aims to use this research to help inform conservation efforts
and the mitigation of human-macaque conflict.
Kayla Gorman’s research focuses on elephant ecotourism in Thailand. Specifically,
she is interested in the human-elephant interactions that take place at these experiences
and how they relate to ecotourism project success. Kayla is fascinated by solutions
that work to benefit all stakeholders, both human and non-human alike.
Jessica Embury will employ geographic information science (GIS) and geocomputation
techniques to study health geography. She will conduct geospatial data analysis and
modeling to investigate the impact of COVID-19 health disparities on neighborhood
communities. Her research is expected to contribute to geocomputation education through
curriculum development and the creation of software tools that bridge geography and
computer science.
Ivette Lorona’s living experience as a transfronteriza (transborder person) drives her research interest in providing insight to how binational
social structures shape health disparities among transfronterizos (im)migrants, and fronterizos (borderlanders) residing in the San Diego-Tijuana border region. Ivette aspires to
advance the field of transborder health research and set the groundwork for binational
collaborations to address the existing structural inequalities and provide bidirectional
resources for communities in the California-Baja California transborder region.
Nancy Bahena’s storytelling film project seeks to narrow the gap in the feminist documentation
of low-income Latina’s participation with informal economies (unregulated labor) from
Central and South San Diego during the COVID-19 pandemic. The collaborative project
will expand beyond the scope of monetary sustenance and build upon how their labor
shapes and influences dynamics these businesses create for them personally, in familial
relations, and their communities.
Farah Adeed is interested in studying the dynamics of the rise of the right-wing populist
movements that have challenged Western democracies and that have had impacts on political
regimes in the non-Western world. Recently, such Western democracies as the United
States, Hungary, and Italy came under the relentless attack of populism and far-right
politics. The challenges democrats are facing in developing as well as the developed
world now appear to have the same structural base; economic stagnation, failed institutions,
and the absence of a shared political identity. Within this context, Adeed plans to
ask the following question to examine politics in Pakistan in comparative perspective:
To what extent the problems of economic stagnation, institutional failure, and national
identity crisis that have challenged Pakistan are similar to the problems that have
challenged certain Western democracies?
Gabriele Cocco is interested in all areas of linguistics, and his research focuses
on the analysis of death row inmates’ last words in order to gain a deeper understanding
of the link between the structure of a text and its communicative purpose.
Learn more details about the scholarship.