Katherine Sciurba Brings Academic Magic to Comic-Con Harry Potter Fandom Panel

Katherine Sciurba and Naim Martin

By Michael Klitzing

Katherine Sciurba remembers feeling butterflies as devoted denizens of Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin filed in by the hundreds. Seats disappeared quickly and soon the standing-room spaces began to vanish, too. 

 

An academic conference this most certainly was not. 

 

It was during last fall’s scaled-down special edition of Comic-Con International that Sciurba — an associate professor of literacy education at San Diego State University and director of the SDSU Literacy Center — first nervously graced the long-running Harry Potter Fandom panel.
 

Doc Students, Alumni Receive Fellowship to Prepare Future Cal State Faculty

Clockwise from top left: Horg-Aaron, Nealon, Paredes and Garcia. 

By Michael Klitzing

Two current students and two recent alumni from the San Diego State University College of Education are recipients of a prestigious California State University (CSU) fellowship that will further their dreams of pursuing careers in academia. 

Denise Villarrial Nealon and Griselda Paredes, students in the Joint Ph.D. Program in Education with Claremont Graduate University, and Fernando Garcia (’17) and Cassandra Horg-Aaron (’20), alumni of the Postsecondary Educational Leadership: Specialization in Student Affairs (PELSA) master’s program, were accepted into the Chancellor’s Doctoral Incentive Program (CDIP) for 2022-23. They were among seven SDSU-affiliated fellows among the cohort’s 67 members. 

Student Spotlight: Lily Hopkins, Builder of Safe Spaces

By Aaron Burgin

“Safe space” is not merely a buzzword for San Diego State University graduate student Lily Hopkins, who’s spent the better part of the past seven years creating them.
 
Hopkins, a student in the College of Education's online-hybrid counseling master's program, worked last year in The Pride Center’s Pride House peer mentorship program and will return in the fall as the graduate assistant supervising and training all of the Pride House mentors.