THE BIG BLUE BUS

Any Line. Any Time.

THE BLUE BUS IS CALLING: Three decades ago, fans of The Doors pondered the meaning of the “blue bus” in the lyrics of the legendary L.A. rock band’s epic song “The End.” “The blue bus is callin’ us,” Jim Morrison sang. “Driver, where you takin’ us?”

While fans came up with metaphysical interpretations for the meaning of the “blue bus” the band rode from Venice to their gigs in Santa Monica, Santa Monica College students are being treated to a more practical answer to Morrison’s question.

Big Blue Bus drivers are taking students to an increasing number of destinations – from routes that connect campuses with the Olympic park and ride lot at the corner of Stewart Street, to special commuter lines to Mar Vista and Culver City, to trips along Pico Boulevard that end up on Rimpau halfway to Downtown L.A.

If all goes well, a speeded-up ride on a “Rapid 7” could take students in large articulated buses all the way to the Red Line subway terminal at Westlake/MacArthur Park by the fall semester.

In fact, Big Blue Bus officials estimate that SMC students now make up some 6,250 trips on the five lines currently serving the college – Lines 6, 7 and 8, the Crosstown Ride and the Sunset Ride. That represents more than 1.4 million vehicle trips per year that are reduced because of the bus service.

“It demonstrates that there’s a huge demand for public transportation,” said Stephanie Negriff, who heads the City of Santa Monica’s public transit system. “It takes cars off residential streets and moves drivers onto public transit.

“All students are important to the Big Blue Bus because there is really no yellow school bus service,” Negriff said. “Students start riding the blue bus from elementary school to college. Student ridership is hugely important to us.”

SMC officials have long been touting the advantages of public transit and urging students to hop on board. They point to SMC’s new “any line, any time” plan to provide free bus service for the college’s students and employees.

“Getting students to use alternative transportation is an ongoing educational endeavor,” said SMC President Dr. Chui L. Tsang. “Though it takes time to change our auto-oriented culture, we are making progress.”

“This is a great public-private partnership that helps to reduce traffic, parking issues, and pollution, and is the sort of agreement that colleges and universities are now doing across the nation.” — Dan Dawson, Big Blue Bus Customer Relations Manager

Heidi Hoech, AS President

It’s 12:45, and class has just let out on the Main Campus. Some 60 students are standing on the corner of Pico near 18th Street waiting for the number 7 bus. While most of the students don’t have cars, some say they take public transit because it’s the right thing to do.

“I think it’s better for the environment taking buses instead of taking cars,” said Justine Miranda, a freshman nursing student.

The point was driven home by former vice president Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” which exposed the perils of global warming.

“It changed my mind,” Miranda said. “When I saw those polar bears and heard they were drowning, I thought that was really bad.” Sophomore Lorena Robles agrees, as she prepares to board the bus crowded with students. “It helps the environment,” she said. “Less cars, less pollution.”

Negriff thinks the Big Blue Bus is helping to change the image of public transit – from a mode of transportation for those without cars to an alternative for motorists who want to make an environmental difference.

“When you speak with students, they’re already saying public transportation is not what it used to be,” Negriff said. “It’s no longer just a smoky old bus for people who have no other way to get around. They think it’s really cool to get on an alternative fuel bus.

“We are so lucky to live in a community where people say good things about public transportation,” she said. “It not only saves on gas, it’s the right thing to do.”

But while more and more students are making an environmentally conscious effort to take public transit, most still take it because they don’t have cars, or they don’t want to pay the high gas prices, or they want to avoid the hassle of trying to find a coveted parking space near the Main Campus.

John Kernick, AS Director of Financial Support

Freshman Steven Canela prefers taking the 50¢ bus ride from his home near La Brea Avenue, although it takes him 45 minute to get to campus, compared to the 15 minutes it would take driving on the freeway.

“I have a car, but I don’t bring it because of gas and parking,” said Canela. “I don’t like to be in a hurry. Sometimes I study, sometimes I go to sleep.”

Taylor Grant, a freshman, began taking the bus after he crashed his car. Despite having to squeeze into a crowded bus every morning – “we’re packed in like sardines” – he has grown used to the 40-minute ride.

“Parking was ridiculous,” said Grant, who is contemplating buying a hybrid vehicle. “I think it’s really good if people take the bus.”

Freshman Devin Smith, who commutes five miles to the Main Campus, also likes not having to worry about “driving around 30 to 40 minutes waiting for a spot to open.”

While public transit is an easy choice for those who live near the main bus lines, it’s an arduous trek for those who have to transfer several times to get to campus. That’s the case for Freshman Darlene Akpulonu, who would have to take two to three buses every morning to get to class.

“I drive and park here,” Akpulonu said, as she waited for a shuttle to the lot on Stewart and Olympic, where she parked that morning. “If it’s a day I can’t park, I go to Stewart.”

This Spring, The SMC Associated Students approved $428,000 yearly to help underwrite the cost of free service for students

The Big Blue Bus is trying to find ways to make public transit more convenient by cutting down on the number of transfers. “If you minimize the number of times a passenger has to transfer,” Negriff said, “then they’re more likely to use public transit.”

That is one reason Negriff is currently negotiating with the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to add the new Rapid 7 line to the Red Line terminal, which “would capture 1,000 more Santa Monica students.”

Because the line would go into a “reserved service area,” MTA approval is required, Negriff said. “They’re concerned we’re going to take riders from them, but it creates improved regional mobility,” she said, noting that students currently have to transfer two or three times to get to campus from the Red Line terminal.

The new line would supplement the most productive route in the 20-line system – the number 7 along Pico Boulevard, which has a high ridership among students who flock to the bus stop on the Main Campus when classes let out.

But all lines will be at no charge to students with current ID, thanks in part to a $430,000 yearly commitment by Associated Students that helps underwrite the cost of the service.

“This is a great public private partnership that helps to reduce traffic, parking issues, and pollution and is the sort of agreement that colleges and universities are now doing across the nation,” said Dan Dawson, customer relations manager for the Big Blue Bus.

“The Big Blue Bus is helping to change the image of public transit — from a mode of transportation for those without cars to an alternative for motorists who want to make an environmental difference.” — Stephanie Negriff, Big Blue Bus Director

The Big Blue Bus is calling on students to hop aboard with an information campaign that currently includes installing information kiosks in the cafeteria and at the main SMC library to make getting schedules and trip planning easier for students. The kiosks should be up by the fall semester, Blue Bus officials said.

The system also works closely with SMC staff to inform new and returning students on public transit options and has used banners, print ads, direct mail and e-mail blasts to notify students about the service. Big Blue Bus representatives also attend SMC events.

In addition, the Blue Bus is reaching out to students – and the general public – with an art exhibit at its transit store and customer service center in Downtown Santa Monica, which has seen a steady increase in traffic since it opened its doors last November. The store offers trip planning assistance, maps, schedules and a full range of transit fares.

Dawson hopes the exhibit – which showcases in the form of a green periodic table the many everyday objects that can be easily recycled – will provide a platform to teach motorists a new way of thinking.

“We thought the transit store would be the perfect palette for thought-provoking and creative environmental displays as a way to engage and inspire people as they pass by the transit store window,” Dawson said. “We wanted to offer something a little different and enticing within the store itself to draw people in to learn more about public transit.”

Transit officials are also making it easier to catch a bus. Soon riders will be able to use their cell phones to find out when the next Big Blue Bus will come down the street, Negriff said.

The outreach – coupled with soaring gas prices – has helped boost the number of riders choosing to take the bus around the transit agency’s nearly 52-square-mile service area, bus officials said.

Between 2004 and 2007, ridership increased overall by 2.3 percent, higher than the national average, translating into half a million more trips taken every year, according to the latest data.

“I think people are realizing that taking transit makes a lot of sense, especially with gas prices so high and people having to spend so much more of their income now on filling up the tank,” said Dawson.

“Using public transit, even occasionally, instead of driving a car is one of the most powerful personal commitments people can make to conserve energy and positively impact the environment,” he said.

SMC NEWSMAKERS

SMC Political Science Professor Wins Top Educator Honors

SMC Political Science Professor Dr. Christine Schultz

SMC political science professor Dr. Christine Schultz – who is known for her deep love of teaching and her success in growing and diversifying SMC’s honors transfer program – has been named one of four winners of the prestigious statewide 2008 Hayward Award for Excellence in Education.

This is the first time in many years that an SMC professor has won the award, considered the highest honor for California community college faculty.

Professor Schultz has taught at SMC since 1984 and has been chair of the Philosophy & Social Science Department – which includes political science, economics, sociology, philosophy and women’s studies – since 2004. A specialist in the effects of the mass media on presidential politics, she also taught from 1979 to 1997 at UCLA.

She has twice been named SMC Alpha Gamma Sigma Outstanding Professor of the Year and twice named University of California Los Angeles Professor of the Year.

While colleagues praise Schultz for her intellectual heft and impeccable academic credentials – she is the author of three college textbooks on American government and politics – Schultz is best known for her quiet passion in the classroom.

“The happiest moments of each of my days are those spent in the classroom,” Schultz says. “With my students I learn, laugh, embark on uncharted seas, and push the boundaries of knowledge. My love affair with the classroom is so consuming that I have never opted to take a sabbatical leave and I have accumulated hundreds of days of unused sick leave.”

Although demanding of her students, Schultz has chalked up one of the highest student retention rates at the college, with more than 90 percent of her students finishing her courses.

“I am not an easy grader,” she offers. “Rather, I have developed a complex system of working individually with each of my students, tailoring my assignments to their particular interests and talents.

“In a 16-week semester, I provide more than 42 assignments from which students pick and choose,” she says. “It is not uncommon for me to be meeting individually with students the week of finals trying to provide them additional opportunities to express themselves and what they have learned. My students thrive in this environment of choice.”

2008 Hayward Award for Excellence in Education letter to Dr. Schultz

From 1986 to 2002, Schultz was the faculty coordinator of SMC’s prestigious Scholars Program, an honors program whose students are essentially guaranteed admission into such schools as UCLA as long as they follow a prescribed curriculum and maintain the required grade point average. During her tenure, the program grew from approximately 30 students to more than 800.

“More importantly, the program was transformed from one that served a homogenous population of students to one respected across the state for its diversity in teaching faculty and student population,” she explains.

With her specialty in mass media and presidential politics, Schultz admits she is reveling in one of the most dramatic and exciting presidential races in recent American history.

“The 2008 presidential campaign is exciting this young generation of first-time voters,” Schultz reports. “This moment in history presents an opportunity for this nation to invite them in and encourage and foster their voice in politics. They bring with them a deep commitment to peace, global citizenship, and ecological literacy. The young often speak with the purest voice and it is a great gift that as educators we have the opportunity to learn from them and ride their wave of enthusiasm to a better tomorrow.”

The Hayward Award – named for former California Community Colleges Chancellor Gerald C. Hayward – is given each year to four instructors from four different regions in the state.

SMC Anthropologist Directs Archaeological Projects at Maya Sites

SMC Anthropology Professor Brandon Lewis

One Santa Monica College student sold 2,000 candy bars at a dollar profit each to help drum up the $2,200 needed for a trip to excavate ancient ruins in the jungles of Belize. Other students sold their cars.

For four summer weeks, the three were among the two dozen SMC students who lived in the ancient land of the Mayas in pole and thatch buildings with dirt floors, listening at night to the sounds of the rainforest and by day soaking up a culture many hardly knew existed before taking the flight south.

“There’s a passion you can’t create in the classroom,” says Brandon Lewis, an anthropology professor in the Department of Earth Sciences who organizes the trips. “But you can’t recreate the passion of monkeys in the trees, snakes going by in the grass or the sound of jaguars in the night.

“For the vast majority, it’s an experience of a lifetime, and arguably, a life-changing experience,” says Lewis, a director of the Three Rivers Archaeological Project (TRAP) in the Belize rainforest preserve, one of the longest running, regional archaeological projects in Central America.

During his 13 years at SMC, Lewis has been championing an understanding of Latin America with an unbridled enthusiasm that comes from the love of a culture he finds “vibrant and passionate.”

So when College President Dr. Chui L. Tsang put out a request for project ideas to further his goal of turning college students, many of whom have never ventured far from their L.A. homes, into global citizens, Lewis jumped at the chance.

“I think I was in a unique position to propose something that was rather comprehensive,” explains Lewis, who has won numerous awards for his teaching and research. “What better way to expose our students to Latin American culture than by taking them there. How better to understand the heartbeat of a country.”

Lewis put out word that he needed professors to help him establish an “integrated, multi-disciplinary Latin American Education Program” and got a hundred responses. The new program – which Lewis will launch with Professor William Selby, a colleague in the Department of Earth Sciences, and other SMC professors – will take students to Belize, Guatemala and Mexico during Winter and Spring 2009.

The extended Yucatan program will include service learning, short-term and semester-length study programs that will offer coursework in anthropology, sociology, history, communications and geography, as well as faculty exchange agreements, Lewis says.

“This is not just about archeology,” he offers. “We’ll study the ancient Mayan use of landscape and the modern use of landscape, geography, intercultural communication, speech and Mexican art.”

Lewis also will continue excavating the houses, temples and courtyards of a civilization that flourished between 400 and 850 A.D. at the Late Classic site of Dos Barbaras, teaching students the techniques of data recovery, laboratory work and mapping procedures.

The program also could expand to Argentina and Ecuador, where SMC students have already accompanied Lewis to the Inca fortress site of Quitoloma to study the role of fortresses in the expansion of what was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America.

It wouldn’t surprise Lewis if after finishing the program students decide to stay longer, furthering the goal of the Global Citizenship Task Force to prepare them for a rapidly changing global world.

“Students have stayed down there an additional six months,” Lewis notes. “Others have changed their careers to become anthropologists. Students end up doing their graduate research in what they learned at SMC. They’ve gone on to Stanford and Yale.”

Lewis hopes the new program will serve as a blueprint to help students explore other world cultures. “I think this is one of the coolest things happening, one of the most important undertakings in a decade.”

SMC Geographer Leads Students on Discovery of New Species of Spider

SMC Geography Professor Bill Selby

A group of SMC students has discovered a heretofore-unidentified species of jumping spider during the launch of a comprehensive animal and plant inventory in Death Valley National Park.

The surprise discovery came during the Fall 2007 semester when a group of about 30 SMC students in geography professor Bill Selby’s field studies course spent a few hours collecting spiders and ants in what was the first day of the National Park Service’s long-term inventory effort.

“For a community college, this is unusual,” Selby reports. “New species of plants and animals are being discovered every day, but usually by researchers and graduate students, not by folks like us.”

Selby recently got word from the National Park Service of the discovery, which came after specimens were sent to the University of New Mexico for identification. Scientists say it can take months or even years for a new species to be formally recognized by publication in a science journal.

“We expected that the inventory would uncover new species, but SMC was the first group out on this study and for them to find what they did was quite unexpected,” said David Ek, assistant chief of resources management at Death Valley National Park.

Students – who broke up into 10 groups assigned to different areas ranging from sea level to 10,000 feet high – collected 21 spiders, representing 14 species. The group at the 4,000-feet elevation, in Emigrant Canyon, found the new species. Ek explains that the new species is part of a genus of spiders, Pellenes, which is found mainly at higher elevations and in mountains. There are 40,000 species of spiders in the world and approximately 3,000 in North America.

“Our records may be the lowest, most southerly and more arid record for the entire genus,” says Ek. “This is another indication of the diverse, unique and special resource of Death Valley National Park.”

The students also collected 322 ants, representing 11 species, one of which had never been found in California before. In addition, a specimen collected near Stovepipe Wells Airport was identified as a species that was only recently discovered in similar habitat in San Bernardino County.

According to Ek, the National Park Service will now send the new spider specimen to an expert entomologist to be described in scientific literature. The scientist will give the new species its name, following certain restrictions, guidelines and protocols.

There are instances in which suggestions from the student or students who found the spider might be taken into account in the naming process.

However, Selby says it is not known which of the four students in Emigrant Canyon collected the new spider species. “Their task was to collect ‘anything that moved’ – and that is just what they did.”

Ek had enlisted the help of Selby and his students when he heard of their planned weekend field study trip that was held last fall. The inventory seeks to identify every plant and animal in the national park, “from microbes to bighorn sheep.”

Death Valley – the largest National Park outside Alaska and the largest protected desert habitat in the United States – is unique because of its extremes in topography and abundance of biodiversity. With elevations ranging from 282 feet below sea level – the lowest point in the U.S. – to 11,000 feet high, it can be snowing in one place and just a few miles away be 100 degrees.

Selby has been leading SMC field studies trips for more than 20 years, from Morro Bay to San Diego and from the Sierra Mountains to Southern Arizona.

Death Valley is east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and is over 130 miles long but only about 12 miles wide, near the border with Nevada. Badwater Basin, inside the National Park, is the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere, 282 feet below sea level. Death Valley includes numerous canyons leading into the mountains. Students broke up into 10 groups assigned to different areas ranging from sea level to 10,000 feet high and collected 21 spiders, representing 14 species. The group at the 4,000-foot elevation, in Emigrant Canyon, found the new species.

Although demanding of her students, Professor Christine Schultz has chalked up one of the highest student retention rates at the college, with more than 90 percent of her students finishing her courses. Though not an easy grader, she works individually with each of her students, tailoring assignments to their particular interests and talents.

The Programme for Belize research station is in the largest private environmental preserve in Belize, and includes 260,000 acres of rainforest. Within the preserve are a number of archaeological excavations, including Dos Barbaras. SMC students have participated extensively at this site, uncovering and preserving relics (400-850 AD) from a medium-sized Mayan community.

Professors Lewis and Selby are collaborating with other SMC professors in developing a new Latin American program for SMC students for Winter and Spring 2009. An extended Yucatan program will include service learning, short-term and semester length study programs, and faculty exchange in Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico, and a possible Argentina program planned for later in the year. Coursework in sociology, history, communications, anthropology, and geography will be offered.

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