NAMED BEST CAMPUS NEWSPAPER IN CALIFORNIA FOR 2022 BY THE CALIFORNIA COLLEGE MEDIA ASSOCIATION
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Volume 160 No. 25 WWW.SJSUNEWS.COM/SPARTAN_DAILY
SERVING SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1934
INFOGRAPHIC BY VANESSA TRAN SOURCES: NBC BAY AREA, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, ABC7
SJSU lab makes waves in marine biology research By Dominique Huber STAFF WRITER
RAINIER DE FORT-MENARES | SPARTAN DAILY
Librarian Kathryn Blackmer Reyes speaks to the press at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library on March 16.
Veteran SJSU librarian receives $5,000 award By Matthew Gonzalez STAFF WRITER
San Jose State librarian, Kathryn Blackmer Reyes was recently honored with the I Love My Librarian award. The American Library Association awards 10 librarians each year, who receive a $5,000 prize. The American Library Association is a nonprofit organization in the U.S. that aims to promote libraries and library education, according to the organization’s website. The award recognizes the accomplishments of school, community college, university and public librarians, according to ilovelibraries, a website for an American Library Association initiative. Blackmer Reyes said she has worked and stayed at SJSU for 15 years because she believes the stories of the city’s minority population have been undermined. “San Jose is a really important city, and sometimes I feel that it’s underlooked because of either where it’s positioned geographically – and I think also sometimes the minority population of San Jose is overlooked,” she said. Blackmer Reyes said interest in showcasing minority struggles has increased as social media has become more prevalent. “I certainly think the phone with its camera has allowed people to see what’s actually going on out there,” Blackmer Reyes said. “That’s why Black Lives Matter has been so important in our conversation, but we would have never gotten
there if we [had] not seen what happened to George Floyd.” While also a librarian, Blackmer Reyes serves as the director of the Africana, Asian American, Chicano and Native American Studies Center. The center covers 6,000 square feet of space on the fifth floor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, the floor contains various collections of literature regarding cultures the center encompasses, according to SJSU scholarworks. Blackmer Reyes said making materials like these available to students is a good supplement to the curriculum being taught at the university, and can help inspire change toward a campus that is more sensitive to cultural diversity. “We want work that is happening in Chicano studies and African American studies [and] Asian American studies to be appreciated,” Blackmer Reyes said. “It’s not just teaching, it’s working with students that are being challenged by the academy, by being in the university.” Blackmer Reyes said there are aspects of librarianship she feels are overshadowed by people’s preconceptions of the job. Librarianship is a profession concerned with collecting and arranging books and similar materials in libraries and providing these resources to readers, according to dictionary.com. “What makes a good librarian, or what’s not understood in this sort of reference question, is that it really is just a conversation with the AWARD | Page 3
Researchers and students at San Jose State’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories have the opportunity to help in the recovery of the Olympia oyster population and researching emperor penguins in Antarctica, among many other projects relating to marine biology. Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, located about 90 minutes south of campus in Moss Landing, Calif., is a marine science research and education facility, overseen and primarily funded by SJSU. Multiple universities from the CSU system, including San Francisco, Stanislaus, East Bay, Fresno, Monterey Bay and Sacramento, participate in the lab and contribute funding and faculty members. “Having a lot of different expertise allows us to explore the oceans and
Calif., according to the same webpage. For nine years, the lab operated out of trailers in a lot neighboring a cemetery and a chocolate factory while its new facilities were constructed, according to a blog post on SJSU’s MLML webpage. “Now we have this state of the art, beautiful building up on the hill,” Aiello said. He said after the rebuild, the lab expanded to include a marina, a wharf, a shore lab facility and other features that make it a “selfsustaining campus.” Moss Landing Marine Laboratories is partially made up of eight faculty labs, including biological oceanography, chemical oceanography, geological oceanography, ichthyology, which is the study of fishes, invertebrate ecology, phycology, physical oceanography and vertebrate ecology, according to the labs website.
Having a lot of different expertise allows us to explore the oceans and understand the effects of global climate change in a much more effective way. Ivano Aiello interim director Moss Landing Marine Laboratories
understand the effects of global climate change in a much more effective way,” said Ivano Aiello, interim director of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. SJSU bought the facility for Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in 1965 for $210,000, according to the university’s History of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories webpage. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed most of the facility’s buildings, resulting in the transportation of most of the equipment to trailers in Salinas,
The lab is also partnered with a number of groups outside the CSU system. Some of these groups include the Western Association of Marine Laboratories, the UniversityNational Oceanographic Laboratory System and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, according to its affiliations webpage. “These other groups extend the range of topics and research opportunities, education MOSS LANDING | Page 2