Navigating Southern California traffic on a two-hour commute from Temescal Valley to Cal State San Marcos, Saide Gallegos is already well into her day while most students grumble about an early-morning class. Gallegos is on track to graduate next fall as a child and adolescent development major. Her academic path hasn’t been a straight line. “I graduated from high school in 2020 during COVID,” Gallegos said. “I started at my local community college that same summer and stayed at that college for three years, finishing my general education in 2023.” After earning her associate degree, Gallegos took an eight-month break not to relax or go on vacation, but to work. “I told myself that the only reason why I was taking those eight months off was to save up to come here and not have to work as much for my first semester because I didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “I really struggled a lot in the community college so I wanted to make sure that school was my priority.” By spring 2024, Gallegos was enrolled full-time at CSUSM. Her so-called “break” didn’t last long. Within weeks, she was back to juggling two jobs: cleaning homes and working at a local gym, all while maintaining a full-time course load. She started working at the gym out of necessity after losing her restaurant position during the pandemic, and the cleaning opportunity came by chance from the person who cleaned her family’s home. Despite her grueling schedule, Gallegos made the Dean’s List last  fall, an achievement that took her by surprise. “At first, I thought it was a scam email,” Gallegos said, laughing. “I knew I had done well, but I never thought I’d be recognized for it. It felt empowering. Like all the sacrifices had paid off.” As she reflects on her journey to get here, the word “sacrifice” frequently comes up. From the long commute to the long workdays, not to mention the staying up late to study, Gallegos sees her hard-earned progress is not just a personal success but a tribute to resilience. “Passing isn’t always easy,” she said. Gallegos lives at home with her mom and is part of a tight-knit CSUSM legacy. Both her parents are alumni, and her younger sister is a student as well. Her family connection adds more profound meaning to her academic milestones. Looking ahead, she plans to take another eight-month break after graduation. But again, calling it a break is probably not accurate. She’ll continue working two jobs to save for graduate school, prepare for the GRE and study for the Spanish proficiency exam required to enter the university’s credential program. Her goal is to become a dual immersion teacher and make an impact in bilingual classrooms. For now, Gallegos is focused on finishing strong. “Every day, I remind myself why I started,” she said. “It is about the sacrifices we make that are temporary for long-term success.” In a world where instant gratification often dominates, Gallegos is living proof that dedication, purpose and perseverance never go out of style.    Media Contact Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Service has been the cornerstone of Maj. Gen. Anthony (Tony) Jackson’s life – from leading Marines across the globe to uplifting students and veterans at Cal State San Marcos.  In recognition of his many extraordinary contributions, CSUSM bestowed Jackson with a Presidential Medal of Honor during spring commencement last week. This prestigious award celebrates individuals who exemplify the highest standards of leadership, service and unwavering commitment to the values of CSUSM.  Jackson’s contributions to CSUSM exemplify his steadfast dedication to student success and community impact. Since joining the university’s Foundation Board in 2012, he has served in a variety of capacities, including director, chair and adviser. A passionate advocate for veterans, he was the inaugural chair of the President’s Military Advisory Council and established an endowed scholarship with his wife, Sue, to support veterans. His contributions extend to athletics, where he mentors student-athletes, fostering leadership and personal growth.  “We are profoundly grateful for Gen. Jackson’s advocacy, mentorship and service,” CSUSM President Ellen Neufeldt said. “His unwavering dedication to our veterans, his mentorship of student-athletes and his enduring commitment to education and our community make him an extraordinary leader and role model. He has made an indelible mark on our university and embodies the very spirit of the CSUSM Presidential Medal of Honor.”  With one in 10 CSUSM students identifying as military-affiliated – the highest per capita in the California State University system – Jackson’s many contributions exemplify this shared dedication to military-connected individuals and the broader community.      A Legacy of Service  With a distinguished career spanning more than 36 years in the United States Marine Corps, Jackson retired in 2012 after serving in pivotal roles, including commanding general of Marine Corps Installations-West and director of operations and logistics for U.S. Africa Command. As an infantry officer, he commanded at every rank, contributing to global operations in Iraq, the Horn of Africa and beyond, earning numerous decorations such as the Navy Distinguished Service Medal and the Legion of Merit.  After his military service, Jackson continued his leadership as director of California State Parks and Recreation, where he emphasized the importance of conserving natural resources. His commitment to education is reflected in his academic achievements, including a bachelor’s and master’s degree from San Jose State University and advanced studies at institutions such as the Army War College and Harvard Kennedy School.    Mentor, Advocate and Friend to CSUSM  Jackson’s distinguished military career, philanthropic leadership and commitment to education exemplify his shared vision with CSUSM: to empower individuals, uplift communities and lead with purpose. A champion of higher education, Jackson has long recognized its transformative power in building equitable communities and preparing future leaders to meet society’s evolving challenges.  Media Contact Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

As a standout golfer at Los Alamitos High School, Madison Murr was widely recruited by colleges in and out of California. Cal State San Marcos emerged as her choice in part because of the presence of Jaime Jacob, who in 2019 became the first national golf champion in Cougars history. Six years later, Murr is now the second. The senior joined Jacob in program annals by winning the individual component of the NCAA Division II national championship tournament in Boulder City, Nev., last Thursday. “Jaime definitely influenced my decision to come here,” Murr said. “She had an amazing career, and watching her success was inspiring and made me want to follow her. To join Jaime as a national champion is really special.” Murr posted scores of 69, 64 and 69 for a three-round total of 14-under 202, beating Gracie Grant of Dallas Baptist University by three strokes. “I worked really hard during the tournament on my self-belief and remembering how great I am,” she said. “Reflecting on all my accomplishments and how hard I have worked throughout my career allowed me to believe I could win a national championship. I was able to play freely and trust that I could get it done.” For her efforts, Murr was named the NCAA Division II PING Co-Player of the Year by the Women’s Golf Coaches Association, a program first for CSUSM. She posted a scoring average of 71.1 with five victories and eight top-two finishes this season.   Cougars golf coach Greg Hutton was especially proud of Murr’s performance after the disappointing way that her 2024 season ended. Leading the same national tournament after two rounds, she succumbed to an illness and struggled down the stretch, ultimately placing sixth. “Maddy is relentless. She’s the hardest worker that I have ever coached and puts everything she has into every tournament she plays,” Hutton said. “I think Maddy has a tremendous belief in herself. I’m pretty sure she went into the national championship knowing and believing that she could win. Don’t get me wrong, she gets nervous just like every other girl out there, but she has this great ability to get locked in and focus on hitting one shot at a time.” On the same day that Murr won the individual title, the Cougars secured the No. 2 seed in the eight-team match play round of the team championships. Their season ended Friday with a 4-1 loss to Central Missouri in the quarterfinals, but in the larger picture, they reached the NCAA national tournament for the third year in a row and fourth time overall.   “I can’t say enough about this entire team. What an incredible group of young women,” Hutton said. “CSUSM women’s golf is a national power. I think we legitimately have one of the best programs in the country, and producing another national champion will help us continue to be a top D-II golf program.” After leaving a rich legacy at CSUSM, Murr will continue her golf career. She plans to turn professional this fall when she attends the LPGA Qualifying Series. “I am extremely proud and honored to be a national champion,” she said. “I couldn’t think of a better way to end my college career.” Media Contact Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

The Cal State San Marcos women's lacrosse team won its first national championship by defeating Montana State 17-5 in the title game on May 9. The Cougars were led by Shea Morgan, who scored seven goals in the final game of the Division II bracket of the 2025 U.S. Lacrosse Women’s Collegiate Lacrosse Associates (WCLA) national championship in Wichita, Kan.  The event featured top women’s collegiate sport clubs from across the country, including 11 teams in the Division II bracket. CSUSM finished third at nationals last year.  The national title completed an undefeated season for CSUSM (15-0).  “At the beginning of this season, we struggled with offensive communication and showing up to game days focused and ready,” women’s coach Jillian Dohrmann said earlier this season. “Late fall, our whole offense met outside of practice and talked about their disconnect, and ever since then we have been excelling and have had great communication and collaboration.” Five Cougars were named WCLA Division II All-Americans: Morgan (first team), Angela Chantaca (first team), Kali Price (first team), Cierraleone Warfield (first team) and Kamryn Kinsey (second team). Morgan also was named the Attacker of the Year and the WCLA tournament MVP.  Media Contact Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

It’s a tough time to be a scientist. The National Science Foundation has made drastic cuts to research funding, with hundreds of grants terminated and the proposed budget slashed by more than half. The National Institutes of Health has been hit equally as hard. Few universities have been spared from such reductions, including Cal State San Marcos. As the dire headlines piled up this semester, a group of faculty members in the School of Arts began conversing about what they could do to show solidarity with their science colleagues. “The real-life impact of cutting scientific research and inquiry will reverberate for generations,” music professor Merryl Goldberg said. “We feel that being silent equates to complicity.” Rather than marching in angry protest with bullhorns, the arts faculty opted to take a more positive, life-affirming approach. They chose love. In March, the professors – a group led by Lucy HG Solomon, Goldberg, Judy Bauerlein and Karen Schaffman – began holding events called “Love Letters to Science” that involved exactly that: faculty, staff and students writing letters in which they expressed their admiration for scientists and the vital work they do for the world. “The arts have always been first on the chopping block, and that vulnerability makes us sensitive to the extraordinary, arbitrary and indeed existential threat facing the sciences,” said HG Solomon, an art, media and design professor. “At the same time, some of our students shared that they did not feel that they had a positive outlet for responding to those same threats to their education.” The meetings took place weekly, with some letter-writing sessions occurring in the Arts Building and some at The Makery in CSUSM’s library. Sometimes they intersected with other events, as when the Office of Safety, Health and Sustainability co-hosted a table outside the University Student Union on Earth Day because, as HG Solomon put it, “climate science matters.” Sometimes science faculty would stop by to express their gratitude for the effort. Some members of the campus community wrote letters to science in general while others addressed them to specific scientists at CSUSM. Student Melanie Wollrabe, for instance, wrote to Heather Cook, a lecturer in the chemistry and biochemistry department who Wollrabe said has been a source of constant support. “I have a lot of friends studying STEM, so it was important for me to write letters to them to let them know that their area of study is still important and appreciated,” said Wollrabe, a liberal studies major and STEAM ambassador who’s graduating this month. “I haven’t had a lot of science classes, but the few ones that I have had, instead of feeling intimidated, the professors made me feel included and not inferior to my classmates.” The “Love Letters to Scientists” campaign culminated on Wednesday afternoon, when arts faculty led a final writing session in The Makery. Then they took a brimming box of letters compiled over the last two months and – holding posters decorated with messages like “Science Rules,” “Science is Real!” and “Dear Scientist, Your research sustains me. Love, The Planet” – paraded across campus to the USU Ballroom, where the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics was holding its annual Celebration of Achievement. The worlds of art and science melded as the letters – along with buttons for CSTEM faculty, personalized according to research interests – were delivered to an emotional audience. “I think this initiative had great meaning for our faculty, our community guests and our student awardees,” CSTEM Dean Jackie Trischman said. “What a great group of colleagues!” Media Contact Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

When Valeria Castellanos Rodriguez crosses the commencement stage next week, she will be thinking about the countless hours she logged in labs en route to a biology degree. She'll be thinking about her primary Cal State San Marcos mentor, biology professor Carlos Luna Lopez. She'll be thinking about her impending enrollment at UC Irvine to begin a Ph.D. program in cancer research. Mostly, though, she'll be thinking about her parents. Rodriguez’s father and mother never got the chance to pursue higher education, with her dad stopping in sixth grade and her mom in first grade. Rodriguez grew up in Oceanside with three siblings, and for the first 18 years of her life, she and her entire family resided in a house owned by a relative. Her father would rise by 5 a.m. seven days a week to do landscaping work, and still it was barely enough to scape by. Many parents in that situation would have urged their children to drop out of school to help earn money for the family, but Rodriguez’s parents thought differently. “They have always supported my journey of higher education, which I’m very, very thankful for,” Rodriguez said. “They didn’t choose not to have an education. They didn’t have an opportunity to. My mom used to tell me that if she could have gone to college, she would have become a nurse.” On her path to a science degree, Rodriguez benefited from more than just parental support. She had a sibling role model in her sister, Tanya, who’s only one year older and resembles Valeria so much that they’re often mistaken for twins. Tanya preceded Valeria at CSUSM (graduating in 2024) and, after taking a gap year, also will be starting a Ph.D. program in the fall, at UC Santa Cruz for immunology. Then there was her high school. Rodriguez had the advantage of attending Mission Vista, the newest high school in Vista Unified School District, which offers a program called Project Lead the Way that allows students to get a head start in STEM disciplines like biomedicine and engineering. As a result, Rodriguez arrived at CSUSM having been exposed to and liking science, specifically biology. It was at CSUSM, however, that she discovered research and the notion – previously unimaginable to her – that research could be a career. After her freshman year, she joined the lab of Luna, the biology professor, for the Summer Scholars program in 2022. She wanted to do research involving the human body, and she liked that Luna specialized in breast cancer research. Rodriguez has been a member of Luna’s lab ever since. She worked on a project to learn how different types of fat cells (brown and white) affect how breast cancer spreads, growing such cells in the lab and using a special microscope to examine how they change shape. She also helped the lab transition to employing 3D models to study breast cancer cells since, as she points out, “humans are 3D, so hopefully we make research a lot more relevant if we use a model that’s closer to us.” “Dr. Luna is the best mentor I’ve ever had,” Rodriguez said. “He’s very honest when it comes to meeting realistic goals but also supports me in the path that I want to follow. And he’s a very fun guy.” After she caught the research bug through Summer Scholars, Rodriguez set her sights even higher for the subsequent two summers, gaining acceptance to premier undergraduate research programs through Stanford University and the Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle. Outside of the lab, she became heavily involved with both the Center for Training, Research and Educational Excellence (CTREE) – the hub for research-based initiatives at CSUSM – and The Alliance, a program aimed at increasing access to college education for area K-12 students. She also maintained a 3.96 GPA while being honored as one of the first two CSUSM students ever to receive a Barry Goldwater scholarship, a prestigious national award that recognizes leadership potential in research science.   Of being a first-generation Latina scientist, Rodriguez said: “It has been difficult. Sometimes I feel like I’m behind, like I’m sprinting a marathon rather than jogging it. But I’ve learned to appreciate the small moments, whether it’s winning an award, having a happy time with my family and friends, or just chatting about life with Dr. Luna. Those moments motivate me to continue and overcome the hardships that I’ve gone through.” Luna and Denise Garcia, the director of CTREE, said Rodriguez is one of the most motivated and talented students they’ve encountered in their careers as professors. “I put her in the top 1% of students that I’ve worked with,” Luna said. “She displays a great deal of dedication, intellectual capacity and compassion. She is driven to be a leader and role model in the field of cancer research.” The drive is innate in Rodriguez. It was forged as a child as she watched her parents struggle to assimilate into American culture and establish a livelihood. It carried her through her high school years amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when her whole family was stuck inside the rented room, which simultaneously brought them closer together and drove them crazy. Now, with her family having moved out and living in their own apartment, that inner drive will propel Rodriguez toward a doctorate in UC Irvine’s Cellular and Molecular Biosciences program, which she could start as soon as next month. “I’ve always been motivated to get a college degree and a Ph.D.,” she said. “Yes, I want to have a better life for myself, but more importantly, I want to thank my parents and make them proud.” Media Contact Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306