NOTE: Faculty, if you are interviewed and quoted by news media, or if your work has been cited, and you have an online link to the article or video, please let us know. Contact us at news@csusb.edu.

The Garcia Center for the Arts in San Bernardino will present the play, “Love Letters,” today and Saturday, and the reason the campus community may want to attend is because Kathryn Ervin, professor of theatre arts, is directing, and one of the actors is Ernie Garcia, retired dean of CSUSB’s College of Education.

Michel Nolan, in her weekend roundup of things to do in the Inland Empire that appeared in The Sun, noted that Ervin “has directed dramas, comedies, musicals and taught courses in directing, acting, creative drama and African American Theatre and Film and Culture. She is also an author, and with Ethel Pitts Walker co-authored ‘An African American Scenebook.’”

Of Garcia, Nolan wrote: “Through the years, Ernie has emerged to play a role in some production or other. In the early years — when he was first bitten by the acting bug — his genre was melodrama and he was always the villain.

“In the ‘70s, he acted with Bilingual Players of San Bernardino in ‘La Tia de Carlos,’ (‘Charlie’s Aunt’), and later with the resurgence of the Rialto Players, he had one of the leads in ‘Plaza Suite.’ This reading of ‘Love Letters’ is his third, following performances with the University Players and the San Bernardino Symphony Guild.”

The Garcia Center for the Arts, at 536 W. 11th St., is named for Garcia and his wife, Dorothy, longtime supporters of the art community in San Bernardino.

The article, which also appeared in Redlands Daily Facts, was published Feb. 2, 2017, and can be read at “Hmmm, what to do this weekend? Super Bowl alternatives.”

The Inland Empire economy’s health appears to be strong, according to the latest report on the region’s Purchasing Managers' Index, compiled by the CSUSB Institute of Applied Research led by Barbara Sirotnik, professor of statistics and supply chain management, The Press-Enterprise reported.

Almost every category in January except inventory was above the 50 percent baseline between growth and contraction, and all categories showed increases, the newspaper reported.

“Those are really the biggies,” Sirotnik said in an interview. “New orders is really the key. Those are orders for products put in by customers. It says customers are buying. If there are new orders, then production follows.”

The article, published Feb. 1, 2017, may be read at “Inland production index comes back strong in January.”

And Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice and director of CSUSB’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, was one of the experts The Orange County Register interviewed for an article about reports that the Trump administration plans to revamp a U.S. government program designed to counter all violent ideologies to only focus on Islamist extremism.

Reuters reported Wednesday that the federal government program “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE), would be changed to “Countering Islamic Extremism” or “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism.” This would mean the program would no longer target groups such as white supremacists who have also carried out attacks in the United States, according to Reuters.

Such an approach could strip some of the benefit from having a CVE program, which was established in February 2015 to counter radicalization and terrorist acts through community partnerships, said Levin.

“Our most prominent terrorism threat today in the United States does come from violent Salafist Jihadists,” he said. “But we also have the most diverse set of extremist movements threatening the country, from neo-Nazis, black separatists and sovereign citizens to animal liberation and environmental extremists. It’s like a logjam.”

The article, published Feb. 2, 2017, may be read at  “Experts concerned Trump's plan targets only radical Islam, ignores neo-Nazis, anti-government extremists.”