By snoadmin
The geological sciences department at Cal State Long Beach has added a new faculty member to its team beginning in January. Long Beach Second District City Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal will begin instructing classes for the 2008 spring semester.
A graduate of the University of Southern California, Lowenthal earned her doctorate in urban planning and public policy in 2002.
Lowenthal has been on the city council for a year-and-a-half, and has implemented various projects within her district, including a number of water education programs that have been used at the Aquarium of the Pacific, Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro, and Los Angeles County’s Floating Lab.
Previously, Lowenthal worked for the Long Beach Unified School District Board of Education for five years. She has also worked for 10 years in the water industry.
“This will give her a huge advantage in teaching water policy courses,” said Fourth District City Councilman and CSULB alumnus Patrick O’Donnell. “Suja has real-world experience, and the students have a lot to gain from her.”
Lowenthal began her career working for Basin Municipal Water District in 1998 and then served as the government affairs manager at the West Basin Municipal Water District. For the past two years, Lowenthal served as the chief of strategic planning and initiatives for the Water Replenishment District of Southern California.
“I sat down with President F. King Alexander and we discussed working part-time,” Lowenthal said.
She is planning on inching her way into teaching and said she hopes to eventually become a full-time professor.
Although Lowenthal has always been interested in teaching, she only recently made the leap after deciding it was time for her to share her knowledge with other people entering the same profession.
“I had such a diverse pool of professors in college, and there was so much enrichment that, the more and more I thought about it, the more I wanted to teach,” Lowenthal said.
Even though Lowenthal will only be teaching part-time, she has real-life experience in her field and an in-depth background in the industry.
Lowenthal will be developing her own special topics course for the spring semester. Because her thesis was done on urban water pricing, she is going to focus her upper-division classes on that subject.
The councilwoman will be teaching a special topics course in environmental science and policy, called ES&P 490 (California Water Resources Supply, Pricing and Management). The course will outline the history of water and water resources development in California. It will also cover strategies that can lend opportunities to secure California’s water supply and quality reliability.
“This is going to be a major career shift for me. I am anxious about the change, but really excited,” Lowenthal said. “Now everything I do will be in the city of Long Beach. My son goes to school right across the street from CSULB, so it will be very convenient.”
