Building Resilience for Socially Disadvantaged and Beginning Farmers via Training, Mentorship and Urban-Rural Network

This project involves online coursework and interactive virtual instruction/presentations for 30 CSUN students and community members. The project will include hands-on intensive farming and education, including site visits to local farms.

Open Gaarden History App

The Open Gaarden history app brings together history and technology to reimagine what it means to live in this urbanized world, revealing public gardens and nature hidden in plain sight. Our app aims to make green spaces part of our everyday life—part of the foreground rather than the background. Our goal is to help visualize changes in land use patterns over time—from the movement of farms to the disruption of ecological systems to the reintroduction of these spaces in t...

Rez Metal

“Rez Metal: Navajo Soundscapes and History,” explores the relationship between Native music and history. The book challenges the stereotypes of reservation life and static cultural identity that plague mainstream perceptions of Indian country. Rather, Zappia and his co-collaborator, award-winning filmmaker Ashkan Soltani, capture the creative energy and vibrant Native youth culture in the twenty-first century. The manuscript will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in S...

California' Golden Brew

The “California’s Golden Brew” project is engaged in several local, regional, and national research efforts. Zappia serves on an interdisciplinary and trans-institutional team of growers, private and public educators and researchers, USDA scientists, and private sector with extensive direct experience in part or all aspects of the proposed work. Several of the team members are directly involved in education and outreach activities and the team reflects the connection b...

Food Frontiers

Zappia's manuscript explores the evolution of food in the early American West. It closely examines the political-economic, cultural, technological, and environmental transformations that helped create new food systems across the vast distances of continental North America. Within this region, food systems required myriad supporting components, including infrastructure, transportation networks, producers, consumers, and irrigation. In similar ways, Natives and Euro-Americans employe...

Los Angeles Regional Energy Innovation Cluster

CEC Innovation Cluster Workshops will bring together innovators, entrepreneurs, students, sources of finance, community members, and technical specialist to brainstorm innovative ideas that provide benefits to rate payers. It will also help expose entrepreneurs and innovators to resources available through LACI, our partners, and throughout the CSU5 that can help them bring new technologies to market.