Second-year student Zora Williams is using her voice to bring more mental health and nutrition programming to San Diego Mesa College. Williams was elected president of the college’s Associated Students (AS) for the 2024-2025 academic year and serves as the college’s student representative on the San Diego Community College District Board of Trustees.
Sometimes, you hear a story that makes you want to know more. Kevin Gonzalez has such a story. The last time this story was updated, San Diego Mesa College student Kevin Gonzalez was a 15 year-old heading off to Massachusetts to complete his high school education. In the ensuing years, he has travelled to the other side of the world, built houses, but remained in close contact with his Mesa College professors and connections he made while on campus.
The San Diego Community College District has appointed four new student trustees for the upcoming academic year. Dalia Ramirez (San Diego City College), Zora Williams (San Diego Mesa College), Hailey Hua (San Diego Miramar College), and Haydee Zuniga (San Diego College of Continuing Education), will be sworn in during the June 20 SDCCD Board of Trustees meeting.
March 22, 2023
San Diego - - UC San Diego’s vibrant research community wouldn’t be the same without the valuable contributions made by our postdoctoral researchers. Postdocs are scholars who have received their doctoral degree and are hired to help complete research and mentor current graduate students.
“When I was a graduate student, I worked closely with postdocs in my lab, and I picked up a lot of extremely useful research—and life—tips from them,” said postdoc Nuttida Rungratsameetaweemana. “Now as a postdoc myself, I enjoy passing that knowledge and advice along to the next generation of scientists while building upon my research skills through exciting research projects.”
“A vibrant postdoc community exists as well, largely due to the Postdoctoral Association (PDA)” explained Viktoria Steck, chair of the PDA. “It’s all about enhancing the postdoc life at UC San Diego,” Steck said. “I’m happy to have found a support system and a great group of friends among them.”
Rungratsameetaweemana and Steck are just two of 1,300 postdoc researchers at UC San Diego. Learn more about a few of our postdocs:
Christopher Theissen, NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow and UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow | UC San Diego Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences
Christopher Theissen wasn’t always interested in astronomy—he just knew physics intrigued him. As an undergrad student, he would often sit in on introductory physics lectures at Stanford University, where his then girlfriend, and now wife, studied. Still, it wasn’t until he saw the Hubble Deep Field image—a landmark photograph showing nearly 3,000 very young galaxies in a small area—that he decided to pursue astrophysics.
“I was hooked on the beauty and expansiveness of the universe,” Theissen said. “And my first few nights on a telescope—in my case, the Palomar 200-inch telescope—were extremely zen. I’ve been an observational astronomer ever since.”
Theissen grew up in sunny Ramona, in San Diego’s East County. He attended San Diego Mesa College before transferring to UC San Diego in 2007, where he double majored in physics and mathematics. Theissen worked full-time during his undergraduate career, first as a quick oil change mechanic and then as a consulting intern. Still, it was his studies that drove him and his passions; Theissen moved to Massachusetts to pursue both a master’s and a Ph.D in astronomy from Boston University.
NOTE: In November of 2017, Dr. Theissen returned to Mesa College to present “Low Mass Stars and Exoplanets” as a part of the San Diego Mesa College STEM Lecture Series.
“I am interested in searching for and studying worlds around the smallest stars in our galaxy and exploring their habitability,” Thiessen explained when asked about his research at the UC San Diego Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences. Those stars, called M dwarfs or red dwarfs, are very faint and have less than half of the Sun’s mass, but number approximately 75% of the stars in our galaxy.
He continued, “Over the past decade, we’ve found that red dwarfs tend to host two to five terrestrial planets per star; we still don’t know if they are habitable because of the extreme amounts of UV and X-ray radiation from the stars during the earlier parts of their lives.”
After completing his postdoctoral fellowship, Theissen hopes to become a faculty member at a research-oriented university, where he can pursue his research interests and inspire future generations of astronomers and scientists.
Visit the San Diego Mesa College Alumni Network to learn about news and get involved in events.
Find San Diego Mesa College on Social Media:
Facebook.com: sandiegomesacollege
Twitter.com: sdmesacollege
Instagram.com: sdmesacollege
Youtube: youtube.com: sdmesacollege
Snapchat: sdmesacollege
Athletics: SDMesaOlympians/SDMesaAthletics
LinkedIn: San Diego Mesa College Alumni
Tags: In The News
Jennifer Nichols Kearns
Director of Communications
jnkearns@sdccd.edu
(619) 388-2759
Five students at San Diego City, San Diego Mesa and San Diego Miramar colleges have been named as semifinalists for the prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship that provides a tuition-free pathway to a four-year degree at a college or university of their choice.
San Diego Mesa College student, Renee Smaldino, competed in the International Interior Design Association Southern California Chapter Student Design Charrette on March 11 at the HLW International Office in Santa Monica. Renee was nominated by Mesa College for a chance to win cash awards and move on to the Regional Student Charrette Competition in Arizona.
San Mateo, CA – On April 12, 2023, a Project entitled Benefits and Opportunities: California’s Community College Baccalaureate Programs, led by Hai Hoang, Acting Dean of Institutional Effectiveness at San Diego Mesa College, was awarded as a 2023 Honorable Mention Project.
