College of Science & Engineering

A longstanding SFSU-Cal Academy partnership enables high-caliber SFSU student research

The Galapagos Islands are famous for the discoveries that shaped Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Now an SFSU graduate has added one more: Ezra Mendales (M.S., ’23) describes a new species as part of his master’s thesis.

“I feel super lucky with this project. I think we fell into this beautiful story that is really rare,” Mendales said of his work with SFSU Associate Professor Jaime Chaves and California Academy of Sciences Ornithology Curator Jack Dumbacher.

They found that the common Galapagos lava heron (Butorides sundevalli) is a distinct species, upending a decades-long assumption that it is a subspecies of the South American straited heron. 

“I’d say the vast majority of ornithologists alive today have never been part of a new species description,” said Dumbacher, who shares a lab with Chaves and was on Mendales’ thesis committee.

A mystery in plain sight

Convergence of stories

As an Ecuadorian, Chaves first visited the Galapagos Island with his family when he was 6 years old. The Galapagos Islands’ people, culture and wildlife became constants in his life. Chaves’ continuing fascination with the islands drives his research and work in the Galapagos community, which includes training tour guides. 

“You have to have this collaboration with the locals. Somebody who really knows the birds on the ground,” Chaves said. 

In this case, the local expertise came from Jason Castañeda, a Galapagos National Park ranger who helped the team catch the herons so they could collect blood samples. 

“He’s a co-author on our paper because it’s a substantial collaboration,” Chaves said.

While Chaves says the Galapagos draws students to the lab, Mendales, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Montana, is quick to credit his SFSU mentor instead. He first met Chaves in 2015 during an undergrad trip to the Galapagos and revered his expertise before coming to SFSU for his master’s work. 

“Getting access to not only the faculty at San Francisco State but the resources and employees at the California Academy of Sciences — it’s a match made in heaven,” Mendales said. 

Dumbacher, who has been at the Academy since 2003, was also familiar with Chaves’ expertise before Chaves became an SFSU professor. Establishing a joint lab to study the Galapagos was a natural extension of their interests and partnership. The Cal Academy alone has the world’s largest collection of scientific specimens from the Galapagos, dating back to 1905. 

“Working with Jaime has been one of the most fun things I’ve gotten to do in my career. It’s really rare that somebody like me at a museum will have a collaborator that is so aligned,” Dumbacher explained.

The root of your goal

“Our students have access to things a lot of students in other labs don’t have,” Dumbacher said about the strength of the SFSU-Cal Academy partnership. Students get to benefit from the Academy’s connection to biotech, local research institutions and companies creating new technologies. “Seeing somebody like Ezra, who was interested in but didn’t have the [molecular biology] background in the lab, go from zero to 80 so quickly was really fun.”

But Mendales says this experience has given him far more than just access to resources and expertise. His SFSU mentors recognized that students bring a wide range of backgrounds and interests to their work and helped him channel those experiences into a clearer sense of purpose. They encouraged him to think deeply about why he does the work he does. “What they [helped] me with was finding the root of my goal. Not what is my goal, but what do I want out of life,” he said. 

It’s an experience that echoes his mentor’s journey. Although Chaves became an SFSU professor in 2020, he first came to SFSU in 2002 as a master’s student. He studied hummingbirds with SFSU Professor Gretchen LeBuhn.

“I came in to do my master’s with a different perspective. I walked out of the lab the first day after I worked with DNA helping Professor Ravinder Sehgal, a postdoc at SFSU at that time. It changed my idea of research by 180 degrees,” Chaves said. He’s been using genetics to study bird evolution ever since. 

“The Biology Department at SFSU has an amazing record of placing their master’s students in Ph.D. programs,” Dumbacher said. “At SFSU you have a really high caliber of master’s students and also professors teaching them … It takes a special kind of professor that is good at research but is also a good teacher who is committed to teaching.”

Learn more about SFSU’s Department of Biology.

Graduate students supported by SFSU’s Student Enrichment Opportunities office complete Ph.D. programs, regardless of undergrad institution or GPA

When San Francisco State University alumna Muryam Gourdet (M.S., ’16) wanted to quit her Ph.D. program, she received a message from one of her former mentors in the SFSU Student Enrichment Opportunities (SEO) program: “Don’t quit. Come talk to me now.” 

She came back to campus to talk to SFSU Professor Teaster Baird, who was the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department Chair at the time and is now a College of Science & Engineering (CoSE) Associate Dean. Other SFSU mentors reached out to Gourdet — in person and by phone and email. Some even contacted faculty and program managers at Gourdet’s Ph.D. institution, University of California San Francisco (UCSF), to help in situations where she felt powerless. 

“It was full force,” she said.

Gourdet successfully finished her Ph.D. at UCSF. She also earned a mentorship award there — UCSF faculty started asking her for mentorship advice — and accomplished several other achievements along the way. After her Ph.D., she worked in industry for a few years.

It’s a story heard time and time again in SFSU’s SEO community.

“Once SEO, always SEO,” said SEO Director Megumi Fuse, a professor in the Department of Biology. 

Since the early 1990s, SEO has housed training grants for undergraduate and graduate students in CoSE, providing research opportunities, stipends, full tuition, career development opportunities, graduate application guidance and community. Although it mostly serves students in Biology and Biochemistry and Chemistry, SEO has impacted nearly all majors in the college at one point. 

In a new PLOS One paper, Fuse and collaborators at SFSU and California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) demonstrate that this system leads to master’s students enrolling in and successfully completing prestigious Ph.D. programs, regardless of undergraduate GPA. It supports the larger movement for a more holistic assessment of student success. 

SEO students wearing merch from their Ph.D. institutions

GPA isn’t everything

“We have this amazing pool of students that are hidden,” said Fuse. “Things like their GPA and need to work mask their ability to be successful. Once we give them money and mentorship, we see their true abilities.”

SEO supported over 500 students between 1992 and 2019. Eighty-nine percent of the 330 SFSU master’s students who applied to Ph.D. programs were accepted. Fuse's collaborators at CSULA’s MORE (More Opportunity in Research) office reported a similar pattern. Students enrolled in top research institutions such as UC Davis, UC Berkeley, University of Washington, UCSF, Harvard, Stanford and more. 

Network with insider insight

“I applied to San Francisco State and San José State. I basically made my decision based on the SEO support I was going to get,” said Dennis Tabuena (M.S., ’16), now a postdoctoral fellow at the Gladstone Institute. “I still think my favorite experience in research was the two years I spent at SFSU. It was probably the most productive years in my whole research career.”

Though Tabuena didn’t have the best grades as a UC Merced undergrad and only did research in his last year, he was able to transition to a biotech job. The problem was that he quickly discovered a career ceiling that required a Ph.D. to break. After a few unsuccessful Ph.D. application cycles, he decided to pursue a master’s degree as a stepping stone. 

SEO’s extended network was invaluable to Tabuena’s success earning a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Washington, Seattle. While SEO provided coaching, practice interviews and writing support, the office also brought university recruiters to talk about programs and provide a peek behind the admissions process. 

“I’ve been able to get big-name universities to come to SF State on their dime. They fly recruiters in; they pay for the hotels, the airfare,” Fuse explained. “UCSF, Stanford, Harvard — they come to SFSU to recruit. They realize that SFSU is a goldmine for students.”

Tabuena recalls some recruiters would even provide feedback on personal statements and answer questions via email. They provided insight that could only be provided by someone on admissions committees, something that was lacking in his industry experiences. 

SEO’s students and alumni themselves are critical to the health of the SEO ecosystem. As Gourdet prepared to leave industry, SEO connected her with alumni who had similar career experiences and trajectory. She has been coming back to SFSU two or three times a year for on-campus events.

SEO also provides undergrads with research experience. The number of undergraduate and graduate SEO alumni is in the hundreds. Alumni often stay connected with SFSU and participate in panels and other events with current students and faculty. 

The lasting SEO effect

“It’s so many layers of mentorship that hopefully [students] don’t fall through the cracks,” Fuse said. She and her collaborators built the SEO infrastructure with longevity and a culture shift in mind. “Students also learn to mentor the next generation. I think one thing you’ll find with low-income minority students is that they want to give back to their community.”

SEO scholars like Juan Mendoza (B.S., '03) have gone on to become professors carrying on the tradition of the high-caliber science and intentional mentorship at prestigious universities. 

Tabuena wants to stay in academia. As an SFSU student, he used to mentor community college summer interns, so he’s continuing to do this as a postdoctoral fellow at the Gladstone, a research institution affiliated with UCSF.

“We’re giving people that opportunity to get into the lab. These people are not in a position where [research experience is] readily available to them,” he explained. “It’s very important for me to keep doing that now that I’m on the inside.”

Thanks to her campus visits, Gourdet just started her dream position as program manager for SFSU Assistant Professor Archana Anand’s Phage Pathways program. The Department of Energy-funded program with two national labs is creating a pipeline to train students for the renewable energy workforce. 

“I tell students that the most important thing is the network you build, not the things you learn. You can learn material from anywhere; you can Google a lot,” Gourdet said. “But knowing the right people to guide your next steps is critical.”

Learn more about the Student Enrichment Opportunities (SEO) program at SFSU.