Ep. 5 - Using Career Resources and Inspiration from the Dean

Yoties! Welcome to Episode 4 of the CSUSB Advising Podcast! Many of you have asked about the Career Center and what their department can offer you in this virtual environment. In this episode, we have:

• Denise Perez Flores  - Career Counselor, Career Center
• Dr. Sastry G. Pantula - Dean, College of Natural Sciences

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Transcript

Matt Markin  
Welcome to the CSUSB Advising Podcast. Join us as we bring you the latest advising updates at Cal State San Bernardino. Each episode is specifically made for you the CSUSB students and parents. We provide you advising tips interviews with both CSUSB campus resources and those in academic advising. Sit back and enjoy. Go Yotes!

Star Wildes  
Hi everyone, and thank you so much for joining us. My name is star wilds, and I'm an academic advisor for the office of advising and academic services. I don't know how many months it's been now, but we're still here.

Matt Markin  
We are. I don't know how many months, either, but I do know this is episode four of the podcast. So congrats for us to make it this long.

Star Wildes  
This is awesome. And thank you again for listening. Thank you for downloading. We are so excited that you're using this information.

Matt Markin  
And speaking of which, for information, we have some updates, right? I mean, census date already passed. That was September 21 but I feel like there's a major deadline coming up for students.

Star Wildes  
Yes, major deadline would be October 9. Please don't forget to complete your end sexual violence training. You can find this on your MyCoyote, and please make sure you do so by or before October 9, you will have a registration hold if this is not completed, so please make sure you do this.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, and for those that are continuing students at Cal State seminar, you know this is that yearly training that you have to take care of. So you should have received an email about it when you log into your MyCoyote account, there's probably a banner that says to complete it. So it is like star said, through your MyCoyote account, there's a tile that you can click on for the and sexual violence training, but make sure you definitely get that done by October 9, because you don't want any holds, because if you get a hold, that's going to stop you from registering for spring. So make sure you take care of that right away. Speaking of through my coyotes, how do I find out who my advisor is? And that's a great question. Easiest way is, if you're on your MyCoyote account, go to your Student Center and you can look at the box that says advisor, and in there, it'll have the contact info for your advising center. But speaking of advising, star students have been asking, Hey, what about spring advising? When does that start?

Star Wildes  
Absolutely, so your spring enrollment date and time will be available October 23 this is a Friday, so please make sure that you go to your My coyote on the right hand side, you will see your enrollment date and time also. Advising. Week begins Monday, October 26 and then, of course, we are preparing you for your spring 2021 courses registration for spring 2021 will begin that following week. So please make sure you make an appointment to your advisor so you could plan out your courses.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, and even though advising starts, technically October 26 if you still want to meet with an advisor prior to that, please reach out to your advising center, and I'm sure that they will be willing to meet with you sooner than the 26th so that we can get a head start on asking those questions about spring registration, as well as questions about your major career options, things like that. And speaking of career questions, you've had a lot of career related questions like, should I do an internship? Is it too soon or too late to meet with the Career Center? What does the Career Center do for me as a student? Or I heard that there's these things called assessments. What are those? And are those free? Well, we have those answers for you in our first interview with Denise Perez Flores from the Career Center. So here we go.

Star Wildes  
Our first guest for today. Denise Perez Flores is a career counselor at CSUSB Career Center. Prior to landing her position at CSUSB, she worked as a career advisor at the University of California, Davis Internship and Career Center. Other professional experience has included working in healthcare, Secondary Education and Social Services. She holds a Bachelor's of Science in Kinesiology from CSU Fullerton, and a Masters of Science in Counseling with specialization in career counseling from CSU Sacramento, Denise has a strong passion for helping students find clarity and positive direction in their career decision making process, and is driven to help others succeed In all aspects of their life. She's most excited about her current role at CSUSB with being able to better prepare students for the entering the workforce after college. Please join me in welcoming Denise from the Career Center.

Matt Markin  
Hey. Welcome to the podcast, Denise.

Denise Perez Flores  
Thank you all for having me. I'm really excited. To be here? 

Matt Markin  
We're excited for you to be here as well. So let's dive right into the questions. So being from the Career Center, if a student were to ask you, Hey, what is the Career Center? What does the Career Center offer? How would you answer those questions?

Denise Perez Flores  
The first thing that will come to my mind would be to say, what do you think the Career Center does? But of course, I'm not going to do that today, because we don't have those students here to answer. Students here to answer the question. One of the things that I've done in the past when I've come across maybe a question like that, I might go back to a student's high school experience, and I might bring up the fact that they had a counselor that they may have worked with that helped them graduate, and then I might bring up the fact that that counselor may have also helped them plan for life after high school, and may have provided a little bit of that social emotional support. And then I'll bring that into the conversation and say, well, at a CSUSB, and this campus in particular, and a lot of university and colleges across the US, you'll have this more like a triangle type of situation where the support is kind of spread apart into different areas of the campus. And I'll go into the fact that there's academic advising takes care of the academic piece and that planning and preparation. And they'll talk about the psychological services office, who covers that social emotional piece, although the academic side probably covers a little bit of it. And then I talk about the career piece. So the career piece is separate, and I talk about the career center and career counseling, how we touch upon that planning that goes into what you're going to do when you get out of school again after you graduate from, you know, college, and all the preparation that goes into what that entails. So getting experience outside of the classroom, you know, working on your resume that's going to help you prepare for applying for a job, preparing for an interview that's going to help you, you know, land that job, and a very various other things that go into that, connecting with employers before you graduate so you can, you know, increase the chances of You getting an opportunity when you do graduate, and even learning how you know what to do with your degree and the skills you're going to need for the workforce, the skills you're gonna need for a certain career path, the exploration piece comes in, and there's the career education, career development educational piece along along with the readiness piece that comes in. So there's a lot of different facets that come into play when I think about career counseling and the Career Center and the different services we offer. But essentially, you know, we're one piece of that triangle to support students through their student and career development and readiness for the workforce. So when they do get out of school, they're, you know, they can be successful and feel like they are prepared enough to be successful in whatever they choose to do.

Star Wildes  
That's awesome. And thank you. And Denise, can you tell us how is the Career Center working with students? I know that, you know we've been doing this virtual learning. I know that, you know nice came out from chancellor's office that we will continue the virtual learning through spring 2021 so during this time, how is the Career Center working with our students during this virtual learning?

Denise Perez Flores  
Yeah. So you know, a lot of what we're doing now is a continuation of what we were already doing on campus. You know that support piece and that preparation piece, but essentially we're doing all of our services are being offered virtually online via zoom, and we're also taking phone calls as well. We have a chat bot on our website. So the technology is very important. We've upped the ante on it and using it utilizing those resources as much as possible. In addition to that, we are trying to increase the number of workshops and events that we're doing, so we can increase that connection and get the students engaged and to remain engaged and connected through this very difficult time, because we're not connected physically on campus, and so we want to just make sure that we are keeping them interested, but keeping them, you know, also keeping ourselves accountable to provide the services continually, regardless if we're on campus or we're virtual. And so we're doing, you know, we're still doing appointments, we're still doing we're still doing drop ins. We've added another component of doing electronic reviews through email of resumes and cover letters, because maybe they're not able to do a zoom appointment or a phone call, but maybe they are able to send an email to get that review. So we have pretty much moved everything to the virtual world, and we are readily available. We're still taking the phone calls as if we were in the office to our main line. We have our website. We up the the number of links to resources outside of our center through our page. So we're just continuing to add and improve upon the structure we now have in place to support the students.

Matt Markin  
We have students from. From all different class levels. So freshmen, sophomore, juniors, seniors. Sometimes there's the question in terms of like, well, when should a student meet with the Career Center? And I guess the question we can ask is, is it ever too early for a student to meet with your department, with your office?

Denise Perez Flores  
Yeah, I definitely feel like it's never too early to begin this planning. We actually launched this fall, for the first time, we launched a four year kind of pathway planning roadmap session. We did one for each of the colleges. It was something that a group of us got together in the office to decide, what could we launch out that at least that we can start utilizing more with the freshmen to begin with when they first come in to say, here is what you could do to set yourself up for success. Here are some things you can do each year while you're here to prepare yourself for that next step, which is when you graduate and leave CSUSB or leave, you know, complete your undergraduate degree. And so we did that this fall. We had a really great turnout. I think the College of Natural Sciences had the most attend attendees, which was really great. I think they are one of the biggest colleges on campus, so that was really great to see that. But every single college, and even we had an undeclared session, they all attended. There was really great questions that was asked. All career counselors participated. We have a we had a few student assistants in that session that participated as well to provide some insights and some tips to students to learn about things that they should do. And we just kept reiterating the fact that, you know, start now right alongside with your academic plan. You know you're in your first year doing these classes. What else should you be doing? Here's a roadmap to that. Right when you get into CSUSB as a freshman, start there. Don't wait. I think that there is this idea of, Oh well, I have time. Then a year passes, then I have I have time. Another year passes, and then you get to the last year, you're going to graduate in a month, and you're like, Oh no, I need a job. But a degree does not necessarily equal a job. So there is a lot that goes into it and rushing at the end to try to get stuff completed, to apply for a job or grad program so you can figure out what where you're going to go next, is not always going to be the greatest. And it could really kind of it could. It could be a little discouraging. It could. It could really, your motivation could go down. It could really cause a lot of anxiety. So if you just set yourself up a little sooner, then you'll probably have a lot higher chance of succeeding in the future with what you're potentially planning to do. 

Star Wildes  
So with our next question, we hear a lot about assessments and understanding of oneself.. Does the Career Center offer any assessments for students to take?

Denise Perez Flores  
Yes, we have, right now, we have the Myers Briggs typology indicator. We have the strong interest inventory, and we have just added, but it's not officially on our website yet, these strengths, so the Clifton Strengths Finder, which was created by Gallup, and that is a really great assessment that I'm really excited about. It's a new one that a few counselors in the past have were certified to use, and they moved on to, you know, new roles. And there's a few of us now that we got, actually four of us just got certified, or at least with the training to get certified for this new assessment, which the strengths Clifton Strengths Finder, for me, it really touches on pieces. Well, it dives into talents. And, you know, we all have our own unique talents, and if we're able to find out what those are and how we can use them to the to our advantage, then that can give us insight into, you know, different opportunities that might fit us very well, and even give us that boost of confidence to say, Oh, I'm really strong in like for me, for example, one of my top five talents is strategic. And I find that I hear, I hear people using that word to even describe how I'm communicating something, or you how I'm approaching thinking about something we're trying to solve in our office, and I'm owning that like, wow. You know, I could come up with five different paths towards of solutions towards this problem. So, you know, it's something that I now am starting to finesse, and that then can become a strength mind that I can lead with. So knowing what you do, what what, who you are, and the parts of you that I think you can excel with, and the things that are those talents within you and those abilities, and even find out what you're interested in. So the more you know, I think, the better, the better are off you're going to be, the more informed you're going to be to make those decisions. And ultimately, I feel like that connection between assessments leads to helping to make more informed and better decisions for yourself, whether it's for your personal life, your career, your academics. And these can be applied in all these different areas, and I feel like they all are connected so we don't. Will automatically give someone assessment. We do take an inventory through a, you know, a one on one conversation to see, will an assessment help someone, and if so, which one would be the right one, that we can help this student, use this information to help them with a decision that they're trying to make, or just to learn more about themselves that could then lead to helping them figure out what they want to do with their lives, in their career. So yes, we do offer assessments. And like I said, we don't automatically Hand them over, but we do use them in our career counseling that we do provide.

Matt Markin  
And so after they meet with the career counselor, and if it's deemed that, yeah, the student could do the assessment, is there an additional cost for that?

Denise Perez Flores  
No, there is not. The Career Center does cover the cost we have. We purchase the assessments on our end, and then we provide the information for the student to take the assessment, and then we get the results, and the student does not have to pay for those.

Matt Markin  
That's always great to hear. So shout out to the Career Center for taking care of that for them. So another question that always comes up is internships. And I know a lot of students are interested in doing internships, and especially now, though in this virtual environment for a lot of students, the question comes up like, should I still do an internship? How does that even look nowadays? What could you tell the student about that? 

Denise Perez Flores  
I was actually doing a little bit of research on the back end before today's session to really think about, you know, how to answer a question like that. I've been getting a lot of questions, especially in workshops I've been doing and presentations I've been doing the classrooms and students want to know what's the future look like for me right now? And you know, a lot of us don't have the perfect answer, and I think I never do anyways. I don't think there ever is one. We never know what's going to happen, you know, in the future. So I think that a couple of things that I'll reiterate. You know, the internships are a great way, of course, to, you know, develop skills and make connections with employers and companies. It's also a great way to explore like a certain field or industry or a functional area of interest. Also you can then, you know, you take that knowledge you're gaining from the classroom, and then you go and apply it out there into the real world. And you never know what can come from an internship. And now, a lot of internships may not be paid, especially right now, with what's happening in the world, but there are opportunities out there, and I actually took a couple notes earlier today on what we have available currently through our own platform where employers post positions. And right now you know us, so this is a nationwide in handshake for CSUSB students, there are 7344 opportunities posted right now that are open now, obviously they're not all here in California or even all here in Inland Empire. And I even broke it down a little farther. There are 1831 internships. And there's 27 on campus, jobs, 5000, 5003 jobs. And there's a few other other various types of opportunities, like fellowships and volunteer positions and stuff like that. Of the positions that are posted, seven, 6844 are paid. Now I use the filters in our system, which I always recommend students do and we show you how to do that, to break down to find what you're looking for. If you're looking for a paid role, you'll break it down by that. Maybe you're looking for an internship, you break it down by that, and you can take it a step farther and go into location. Now I broke it down by 50 miles. Within San Bernardino, there are 692 opportunities. So there are opportunities out there. They're always there. Always is. I know there's a lot of shifting going on in industry. There's shifting going on with types of opportunities available, and there's shifting going on with the amount of time employers are spending in order to bring onboard people. And they're also working, you know, a lot behind the scenes to make things happen, because they want to keep their companies going. They want to keep opportunities happening. They want to keep bringing in talent. And so for internships, you know, there are opportunities still out there, and there are a lot of remote opportunities out there, and they're increasing the number of those. You know, I don't want to, I don't have the stats on it, but they're increasing the number of those. And I've written a few articles that were even stating that that companies are now they're able to now pick up the pace a little bit with creating those opportunities, because they have what they have needed to set into place to then create those opportunities. So patience is really a big, big thing that I recommend that you, you know, really look to during this time, because that's going to help you to, you know, calm your mind a little bit, and just know that there are opportunities out there. And now they might not be the ones, the perfect ones, the ones you're looking for, the ones you've been wanting, you know, all your life, but they might be something to get to, for you to gain what you're going to need, you know, for that next step. And it's about being proactive right now. So I. Know if I should jump into the funding that the Career Center offers on internships. Yeah, go for it. Let me make sure I plug that, because the Career Center does offer internship awards, and there are two internship awards that the Career Center offers for those internships that are maybe aren't paid. One is called the Career Center internship Award, and the other one is called the Explore Internship award. There's different eligibility requirements, and we do have that information on our website. Our Website main address is csusb.edu/career-center. And that's where you will find all this information that I'm talking about today. But we do have those two internship awards that we offer. The number of students who are awarded every semester now is different. It varies. The amount of the award currently is $1,000 so essentially, you apply for this internship award at the beginning of the semester, you do your internship during the semester, your funding comes at the end of the semester, you're awarded that after you complete the internship, you complete all the requirements of the internship with the internship site and with us, and then you get the final award. And that award comes through the financial aid office. So I make sure students know about that. 

Star Wildes  
And thank you so much for sharing that helpful information that students can definitely look into. I know you had discussed the internships, but does the Career Center have any upcoming workshop for students? I know that you guys have posted via your social media. I know I've seen the emails. So can you let us know any upcoming workshops that students can take advantage of, especially during this time?

Denise Perez Flores  
Yes, another thing that we kind of did this this year around starting for so now we knew we're going to semesters is that we wanted to even increase the number of workshops that we did offer. And so, for example, this this fall, we had 27 events that were set in stone before the beginning of the semester for fall, 27 events, and that includes career readiness workshops, which is our typical series. We have an internship workshop series as well. That's typically that what we offer as well. We did increase the number of workshops we offered in the career readiness series, workshops. Of course, we have job fairs, expos. We just had one for grad school not too long ago. Our next career fair coming up on October 22 from 11 to two, and it's virtual, and the employers are connecting with you through we use plan. We used handshake these last couple times. I think we're going to use handshake again to not only promote for you to register, and also for you to then get connected with the employers and learn about opportunities that are out there. And there are, like I said, you know, the employers are hiring, they're coming to our affair to actually promote openings and opportunities. So we, unfortunately, through those career fairs, we're not able to able to have as right now, the platform we're using, we're not able to have as many employers come so we're working on the back end of that to increase that number. But our workshop series entails and I'm just going to go to the page real quick, just so I can make sure that I don't leave anything out. But essentially, you know, it's about resume writing. It's about the job search. It's about grad school preparation, all these basics that will go into, all the things that can prepare you for that life after college and help you start thinking about what it what, what could you do, and how could you do it. We also have one on exploration for careers and majors. There's a new one we got. We just added pathway to law school, if you're interested in law school. This is something that one of our career counselors wanted to launch. She noticed that there was a strong increase, a strong interest in law school, those who wanted to go to law school. And so she had created this law school panel that's going to be hosted on October 6, and she actually has some really great professionals coming to speak to students about that planning and helping them prepare for that. We have job search, social media, do's and don'ts. I think that's a really good, strong one that I think we get a lot of attendance at. I think it's really important, because it also talks about networking too, which is huge piece of the career development process and professional development process, getting connected to employers and learning what networking means. And we have one talks about what's next after graduation. And finally, the Career Management one, which essentially gives you some tips on how you can not only prepare yourself for the workforce, but what happens after that. You know, what happens when you're actually in the workforce, in a your first full time job in a company? And how do you manage your career from moving forward after that? So those are just, you know, some of the things that we've been offering. And of course, we come into the classroom. Um. And speak to students, you know, through the invitations we receive from the professors and all that. So it's been really great so far this summer and this this fall, and we're really looking forward to seeing students come to students and alumni, because alumni can also attend to our workshops and our events.

Matt Markin  
A lot of great resources from the Career Center. And so it seems like there's something for everyone to be able to attend and gain some type of knowledge and be able to use that and you mentioned graduates and alumni. So once a student does graduate, are they able to still utilize the Career Center for your resources?

Denise Perez Flores  
They are absolutely able to still utilize the Career Center for appointments, for drop ins, for any of the other services that they received as a student. So yes, we are moving forward and pushing through to make sure that happens.

Star Wildes  
That's awesome and just a question. Let's say, if a student was interested in contacting your office, setting up an appointment with a Career Counselor, how may they be able to navigate that or get in contact with you.

Denise Perez Flores  
So, like I mentioned, the website and then our telephone number, I'll plug that, 909-537-5250, and if you go to our website, we have now a chat bot at the bottom, it's this little icon. It looks like a message, Message icon here, and then it says, Hello, can I help you with anything? And once you click in that in that box, you can automatically click on some of the suggestions that they have here, like office hours, office location, resume help. And those prompts will take you to those responses that can help you to then move to the next stage of whatever that question you have. So maybe it's resume help, and that might direct you then to our our appointment page or our drop in page. So we have on our website, we do have the pages that one page says meet with a career counselor or meet with a counselor, while the other page says drop in services. And through those two pages, you can learn about what those each entail and involve, who you would be meeting with, and how you can go about accessing those services to meet with a counselor you would essentially go into your MyCoyote. There is two ways that you can find the handshake icon if you click on your right hand side of the screen, when you get into your main page of your mycoty home, you'll find the whole list of options there, and you'll see a little handshake icon. It's a yellow icon. It looks like a little, I don't know what it looks like two people shaking hands, but it's really integrated, so you can't really tell those hands there, but it's a yellow icon. This is handshake. You can click on that and it takes you into your handshake profile, and in your handshake profile, then you can make an appointment through your dashboard. You can also find it through your employment opportunities in your mycoty homepage, and the icon is there again for handshake. You can also call our phone number to speak with our front desk receptionist who is taking those calls to make those appointments as well. So there's a lot of different ways that you can get in touch with us. And we also have our email address career center@csusb.edu You can also email us there to receive help with making an appointment.

Matt Markin  
Nice. So so much great, useful information. So yodes, please take advantage of the career center. They are here for you, even in this virtual format. And just like Denise said, it's never too early to contact the Career Center, meet with them, attend a workshop. So of course, check your emails, check the social media. There's so much great, useful information there for you all but Denise, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. 

Denise Perez Flores  
Thank you for having me. It was really great conversation.

Star Wildes  
Thank you so much Denise, amazing information that students will be able to utilize. Thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for providing this information for all our students to have. And next up the College of Natural Sciences, Dean, Dr Sastry pantula, this is going to be amazing, and he has amazing information for you all coming up next.

Matt Markin  
All right, and the great interviews continue. We have Dr. Sastry G. Pantula, the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences at CSUSB since august 2018 Most recently, he served as a director of data analytics programs at Oregon State University. Also, he has served as the Dean of the College of Science at OSU after serving a three year term as a Director of the Division of Mathematical Sciences at NSF. Dr. Pantula spent more than 30 years as a statistics professor at North Carolina State University, where he began his academic career in 1982 at NCSU. He also served as the director of graduate programs and the head of the Department of Statistics. Dr pantula is a fellow of the. American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Statistical Association. He served as as a president in 2010 and received the ASA Founders Award in 2014 Doctor pantula received his bachelor's and master's degrees in statistics from the Indian statistical Institute and a PhD in statistics from Iowa State University. Dr. Pantula, welcome.

Dr. Sastry Pantula  
Thank you. Good morning. How are you all doing?

Star Wildes  
Doing great. Great. So much for joining us. We are so excited about this podcast with you, and so we're let's go ahead and get started. Can you please tell us what you do in your role here for the College of Natural Sciences.

Dr. Sastry Pantula  
Thank you again for the wonderful introduction too. Let me first before I jump into answer that question to make sure that both of you and all of our students are doing well, staying healthy, happy, safe and sane. I know we are having difficult, different challenges at this time, so I want to first acknowledge the COVID 19 virus, pandemic has been devastating, with close to about 192,000 deaths, and counting fires and smoke all around us, with some who lost their homes. I know systemic, systemic racism that is impacting many of us, undocumented students, having additional worries and unemployment that is having financial challenges. And also, as you know, today is the 19th anniversary of the terrible tragedy of 911 many of our students probably are not even born at that time. I just want to acknowledge that the challenges everyone is facing before I jump into answering the questions, even though there are a lot of challenges, I want to encourage our students we can thrive during these challenges, because we are one coyote family. Now let me answer your question. As the dean of the College of Natural Sciences, my primary job is to make sure that everyone in our college and in our university reach their full potential. So my number one goal is, of course, our Student Success every day. That's what I get up and focus on. How can we help our students to be more successful here and beyond? Of course, our students cannot be successful unless our faculty are successful and our advisors are successful and our staff are successful. So we are here for our students learning, and as a scientist, we're also here for new discoveries in science. So my job daily is to find resources needed to help our students to do well in their studies, get meaningful and transformative experiences here again, finding advising for them, but also doing useful workshops. So my job is again finding resources for faculty to find do their research, bring our undergraduate students into their labs and provide some hands on experiences. So my job is also to help the university collaboratively across colleges to accomplish our strategic goals, not only colleges, all the units, including the union, including undergraduate studies, including our facilities, etc. So finally, most of the times, my role is to solve problems that that may come up and find solutions that help our students, our faculty, our staff and our community.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, you're definitely a problem solver and making sure that the students at their forefront of their success. And so I guess my next question to follow up with that would be, what do you find most rewarding about your job? 

Dr. Sastry Pantula  
So, to be honest, this may sound a little quirky, but being a dean is really such a rewarding job, because I get such excitement seeing our students, faculty and advisors, being successful, I just can't believe that I get paid to do my job. That's honest truth. I mean, I also enjoy working with our alumni and do fundraising for our student scholarships and grant support for our faculty. It's such a gratification when I see that student walk across the graduation line, or I get gratification when I see a letter from a former student how he or she. Benefited from a simple conversation I may have had with them. I feel great when that faculty member I recruited got tenured or got a grant funded or a paper published. Is that excitement and the adrenaline rush that I get when I see people in our college and in our alum alumni base had a great news to share. I love to toot or brag about the stories about our faculty success or a student success. And also I do truly like to promote our core values that is strive for excellence, enhance diversity and foster harmony. Diversity of our students is what brought me here to CSUSB. I truly believe that the diversity enhances excellence and here the social mobility also, as you know, science is more and more collaborative these days. It's a team science. So it's very important that there is harmony within the college and within the university to do collective success for everybody. It is a team sport, in a way. So again, as I said, it is the drone that I get when I see people around me are successful, and that's my primary job.

Star Wildes  
That's amazing. And thank you for sharing that, and we can definitely see it in all the work that you're doing, things that you're posting and being there for students, faculty, staff. So thank you for sharing that. So with that being said, As far and we know that you are, you know, really there at the forefront for students, faculty, staff. What challenges do you believe students are facing with all that is happening? For example, you know, we've just started fall. Changes now to semester, courses are online. And, of course, as of yesterday, you know, found out that, per the chancellor, that spring will be virtual. So, you know, continue to be virtual. So what are challenges you believe students are facing with all that is happening?

Dr. Sastry Pantula  
Yeah, many challenges, of course. And it feels like Groundhog Day when I heard that spring will be online. And lot of the things that I'm actually seeing through our daughter, she's a sophomore at UC Riverside, and they're all have been virtual, and I can see many challenges that she's facing. But of course, the challenges that others are facing are even more for example, for our continuing students and faculty, the transition to semesters is a big challenge. For everyone, teaching virtual is a challenge, or learning virtually is a challenge, not being able to socialize and enjoy the our beautiful campus or enjoy the activities in the student union is a challenge. The economic situation and the loss of jobs in the Inland Empire is a big challenge, because many of our students families are struggling. Many of our students also are parents themselves, and schools being virtual increases their workload at home. I mean, this is true for our faculty and staff as well, but the thing that is positive thing is that our faculty worked really hard this summer to train to teach better online. They spend time instead of the summer doing just the research or do other things, they have committed their time to do a better job in teaching. Our university invested almost million dollars training our faculty, our advisors are providing virtual advising, and even offer advising. You guys are working very hard these days to help our students. So many of the services, including our health and the den and other basic needs for our students, are very much available, in some ways, actually, maybe more accessible to students than before, in some ways, because before they may have to go through my assistant right now, they can reach to me directly. We just want to make sure that they're making use of everything we offer. But I do know the challenges. I don't know all of the challenges, but I do hear a lot of the challenges our students are going through, and I think about them every day.

Matt Markin  
And we know how active you are in wanting student success, and you, in the past, have done drop in zoom sessions with students. Students can connect with you through social media. Can you tell us some more about this? How students can. Get in touch with you. Or can they still do the drop in zoom sessions? Or can they reach out to you on Instagram?

Dr. Sastry Pantula  
Yeah, thank you very much for asking that. As you know, I post at least one post every day on the Instagram, kind of like selfie with Sastry posts, but also usually some advice or activities that are happening for our students. I very much encourage students to join me every Tuesday, 9am to 10am on my Zoom channel. I used to have that in my office as Snickers with Sastry on every Tuesday at the same time, unfortunately, now they had to bring their own Snickers to these meetings. But I had students who joined and asked me questions about what courses to take, what advising centers that they should visit, advice about internships. Some asked me actually to write recommendation letters, which I have done. I just wrote one for a Fulbright scholarship. And two or three students actually, believe it or not, asked me questions about their mathematics homework or statistics class. In fact, two of the students I ended up tutoring them over the weekends and evenings and the spring semester, spring term and over the summer too. So if anyone needs help in statistics or probability or math, of course, they can contact me. Of course, I would encourage them to make use of their tutoring and supplemental instruction, etc, but I'm the extra resource that they could make make use of. This is something I really miss taking selfies with students and chance meeting or give out donuts or share a popcorn in our building, but I just want every student to know that I am here. I am accessible. I promise you I will respond every email you send me or message on my Instagram. I won't know the answer for every question you may ask, but you can ask. There's no dumb question. You can ask me anything, even though I don't know the answers. I will find somebody who can answer you. So please do take advantage of my Zoom hour or the Instagram or email. Feel free to do so.

Star Wildes  
Thank you so much. That's amazing, and we definitely do see how active you are. You know, when we were on campus, now virtual via your social media platforms, you know, with students, faculty, staff and in our campus community. So as you are again, our first guest speaker, faculty member, and we wanted to to and again, excited. We are podcast. What do you want to let students know? As we know again, we mentioned that spring 2021, term will continue to be delivered virtually. You had mentioned some, you know, of the challenges that students are facing. You mentioned some resources, right, like the den. What would you encourage students to utilize, especially virtually, just some resources that you can think about and that you have shared with students. 

Dr. Sastry Pantula  
There are a couple of things there. First of all, I want to challenge all the other deans and other faculty to participate engage our students through these wonderful podcasts that you guys are doing, or the live events that you're putting together. I thank you for doing that. And again, I challenge my colleagues to accept your invitation or proactively reach out to you to do that for the students. Remember the number one thing that we are all here for your success. Please, please, make use of us. Make use of our advisors. Make use of our faculty. Believe it or not, some of the faculty are lonely. Do I encourage you to take advantage of their time? Our alumni are also willing to mentor you. There is a mentoring network that please take advantage of that there is absolutely no reason at all to be lonely on our campus, even if it is virtual, parents and family play a very important role. It does take a village. They support our students is very, very important. Again, as I mentioned that some of our students are parents themselves, so they are juggling with their own kids. Number of resources for our students is. Number one, for example, is our science Success Center. It has three advising centers. One is pack the professional Advising Center. There's HPAC the health professionals Advising Center, and then STEM center. They're all here to help you with academic advisor health professions and professional carriers advising graduate programs. For graduate programs, they also run various workshops. I'll encourage them to take for example, just to give you some examples of workshops they're doing just this semester, each one of our nine departments in our college have a career panel, starting with biology career panel this week, math following week, and how to apply for nursing program, application preparation for medical schools, developing a personal statement for professional schools, importance of getting involved in extracurricular and summer opportunities, how to cope with core covid and reduce anxiety and optimize your academics, enhancing study skills, creating virtual learning environment how to take care of your finances. I'm glad that you did a podcast on that with Diane. These are just some examples of the types of workshops that we are offering. So please be engaged, especially this term as well as spring term, you don't have any reason to be lonely. Be proactive in making connections through our student clubs, student union activities, undergraduate studies activities, engage, engage, engage, and network. One of the things I wanted to mention is I attended the undocumented student and as well as the first year student orientation, when other breakout rooms, they talked about, I asked the students what type of questions they have. They talked about they didn't even know what financial aid means, or what is a prerequisite mean? I mean, these are the things that are language that we don't realize, that our students may not know. And that's where I was encouraging, that there's no dumb question you ask. Don't assume, ask. We are actually going to show a documentary called unlikely very soon, and there it follows four students who are first time students and how to navigate the university system. It is not easy, especially given 80% of our students are first generation students. It follows through the challenges and the hurdles that they face. And I showed this to our advisors and our department chairs, just so that they understand from the walking through the footsteps and the eyes of our students where they come from. They are very talented, but they may not have the right information to show their full potential. They are the diamonds in the rough. Our job is to polish them and see them to be very successful. 

Matt Markin  
Dreat advice there. And if we can ask you for some more advice, if, let's say, a student is struggling this term, what would you encourage students to do? Where can they go for help?

Dr. Sastry Pantula  
Remember that everyone is struggling, so don't feel that you're the only one who is struggling so and feel that you should not be approaching because it's your fault or something. Everybody needs help, and we are all here for your success. So please make use of every resource that we can offer you. Encourage I encourage you to talk to your faculty. Make use of supplemental instruction. In fact, there is data out there. I just saw them that our institutional research showed us that people who use the Supplemental Instruction just one visit have decreased the dfwi rates. If they have gone more than three times, the dfwi rate went down to 4% so it just shows and their GPAs have gone up. They have shown the data for that. So I encourage to make use of the supplemental instruction. Visit your advisor. They are available virtually. They are available by email. They can call you back by phone. I also encourage to make use of mental health counselors. There's nothing wrong with going and getting help. Just like physical health, it's important that you take care of your mental health as well, especially given the anxiety, given the stress of all the whether it is the racism, whether it is the covid, whether it is the unemployment, it's the fire or it is being the virtual in nature. Please, please do take care of yourself, and it's very important reach out to your family members, support them and support yourself. And of course, don't forget your Dean, who is here for you. Never give up. Never ever give up. There is an entire coyote village looking out for each other. It's very important. Again, I want to emphasize that I talked about our core values, etc. It's very important that our students are taking advantage of every single thing that you do. Offer our Undergraduate Studies offers our cats and Health Center offers our den. Don't forget the basic needs. Please. We are replenishing the den every day. Please make use of because if you're hungry, you're not able to take care of yourself. In studies, make use of our it. They're providing Wi Fi, type help, or the laptops help, etc. Visit the covid 19 webpage and make use of all of the resources that you have. You deserve it. We want you to be successful. We are here for you, and I am here for you.

Star Wildes  
That's amazing and great advice and encouragement and motivating our students, that's amazing. We truly thank you, Dr pantula, for joining us and answering our questions, but also we are so excited for students to to hear this and hear your message of encouragement and all the resources you provided. Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope that you enjoy all the information that Dr. Pantula here shared with us.

Dr. Sastry Pantula  
Thank you, both of you for what you're doing, and keep up the excellent work and have a wonderful weekend. And same thing for our students, we are here for your success. Remember that and do well, whether you're a new student or a continuing student, we are here for you.

Matt Markin  
Thank you so much Dr. Pantula for joining us for this podcast episode. We truly appreciate it. And Dr. Pantula mentioned that you can contact him, you can email him, you can send him a message through Instagram and to follow him on Instagram. So we want to be able to give you that contact information. So if you do want to email Dr pantula, his email address is sastry.pantula@csusb.edu, or if you're on Instagram, follow him on Instagram. His Instagram handle is Sas three pantula, so that's S, A, S, the number 3, P, A, N, T, U, L, A, and follow Him. He will appreciate it. He posts a lot of great information, and any questions that you have, send him a message, and he'll reply back. But thank you again, Dr. Pantula.

Star Wildes  
All right, everyone and thank you so much. Thank you so much to Denise. Thank you, Dr. Pantula, thank you Matt. And thank you all for listening. Join us again on our next episode. We're so excited. We have special, amazing guests that you will appreciate.