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From rat-reward research on to doctoral program,
Cazares among 23 MORE Program students
Psychology
research student first in family to graduate from college
Already an award-winning researcher in behavioral psychology,
Victor Cazares (Long Beach resident) will head to
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor this month to pursue a Ph.D. in
neuroscience after completing his master’s degree in psychology at
Cal State L.A.
Cazares, the first in his family to graduate from college, received
first place in the behavioral and social sciences category for
his presentation, “Orbitofrontal Cortex Lesions Impair Responses to
Cue Predicting Shifts in Work to Reward in Rats,” at this year’s
system-wide
California State University Student Research Competition.
Cazares said, “When I came here and started working with Dr. Alicia
Izquierdo, it just opened up my mind to the possibilities of
research. There are so many opportunities here. The facilities are
great, the faculty is supportive, and you get to go to conferences
and get to interact with other researchers.
“I would say coming here just really made my career. I don’t see how
I could be where I am now had I gone to another school,” he said.
“We just have a big research tradition here. There are all kinds of
opportunities to get involved in research.”
A recipient of a Minority Biomedical Research Support Fellowship and
Michael Roffe Scholarship, Cazares received his bachelor’s degree in
psychology from Cal State L.A., after transferring from Orange
County Community College.
Cazares is one of 23 students this year from Cal State L.A.’s
Minority Opportunities in Research (MORE) Programs who have been
admitted into prestigious doctoral programs. Other M.D.- or
Ph.D.-bound grads—listed with their doctoral destinations—are as
follows:
Franque Bains, UC Riverside
Danielle Barrios, UC San Diego
Benjamin Bush, SUNY at Binghamton
Carla Cueva, UC Berkeley
Monica Delgado, UC Davis
Ivy Donalson, University of Denver
Michelle Flores, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
Erika Garcia, Caltech
Steven Gee, UC San Francisco
Angelina Hernandez, Indiana University
Laura Martinez, University of Washington
Celeste Mendoza,
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Omar Moreno, UC Santa Cruz
Ann Munoz, USC
James Nunnelley, University of Hawaii,
Manoa
Mario Nickening, UC Riverside
Maura
Palacios, Texas
A&M
Sergio Rivas, UC Riverside
Melissa Romero, USC
Nadine Rodriguez, UC Santa Barbara
Suzi Sanchez, USC
Abebayehu Yilma, USC # # #
Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 205,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds—reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to a unique university center for gifted students as young as 12.
Programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH- and Rockefeller-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, housed in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. www.calstatela.edu
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