San Diego State University

Alurista is the nom de plume of Alberto Baltazar Urista Heredia , a Chicano poet and activist. Urista was born in Mexico City and attended primary... school in Morelos. He went to the United States when he was thirteen, settling with his family in the border city of San Diego, California. He graduated from high school in 1965 and began studying business administration at Chapman University in Orange County, California. He disliked the field, however, and transferred to San Diego State University to study religion. He changed his major several times before earning a B.A. in psychology in 1970. He went on to earn an M.A. from SDSU in 1978. His doctoral thesis, accepted by the University of California, San Diego in 1983, was on the fiction of Chicano lawyer and author Oscar Zeta Acosta. He has taught at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, Escuela Tlatelolco in Denver, Colorado, and at the University of Texas at Austin. He has also lectured and read his poetry in venues throughout the world.
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Cleavon Jake Little was an American film and theatre actor. Little was widely known for his lead role as Sheriff Bart in the 1974 Mel Brooks comedy... Blazing Saddles. He also was the irreverent Dr. Jerry Noland in the early 1970s sitcom Temperatures Rising. In 1978, he played "The Prince of Darkness" in the radio station comedy FM, previously having played the role of radio personality Super Soul in the 1971 action film Vanishing Point. His later work included the 1984 film Toy Soldiers. Little was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, and was the brother of singer DeEtta Little, best known for her performance of "Gonna Fly Now", the main theme to Rocky. He grew up in California and attended college initially at San Diego City College, and then at San Diego State University where he earned a bachelor's degree in dramatic arts. After receiving a full scholarship to graduate school at Juilliard he moved to New York. After completing studies at Juilliard, Little trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
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Kathleen Kennedy is an American film producer. In 1981 she co-founded Amblin Entertainment with her husband, Frank Marshall, and Steven Spielberg.... She is known for producing the Jurassic Park films, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Kennedy is the second-most successful film producer of all time in terms of domestic box office receipts with totals at just over $5 billion. Kennedy was born in Berkeley, California, the daughter of Dione Marie "Dede" , a one-time theater actress, and Donald R. Kennedy, a judge and attorney. Kennedy graduated from Shasta High School in Redding, California, in 1971. She continued her education at San Diego State University where she graduated, majoring in telecommunications and film. In her final year, Kennedy got a job at a local San Diego TV station, KCST, taking on various roles and posts including camera operator, video editor, floor director and finally KCST news production coordinator. After her employment with KCST, she then went on to produce a local talk show, entitled You're On, for the station for four years before moving to Los Angeles.
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Joan D. Vinge is an American science fiction author. She is known for such works as her Hugo Award-winning novel The Snow Queen and its sequels, her... series about the telepath named Cat, and her Heaven's Chronicles books. Vinge studied art in college, but eventually changed to a major in anthropology, and received a B.A. degree from San Diego State University in 1971. Vinge has been married twice: first to fellow SF author Vernor Vinge, and then to SF editor James Frenkel. Vinge and Frenkel have two children, and live in Madison, Wisconsin. She has taught at the Clarion Workshop several times, both East and West. Besides writing, Vinge also makes and sells dolls. Robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to Joan. On March 2, 2002, Vinge was severely injured in a car accident that left her with "minor but debilitating" brain damage that, along with her fibromyalgia, left her unable to write. She recovered to the point of being able to resume writing around the beginning of 2007 , and her first new book post-accident is the 2011 novelization of the movie Cowboys & Aliens.
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Vernor Steffen Vinge is a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best... known for his Hugo Award-winning novels and novellas A Fire Upon the Deep , A Deepness in the Sky , Rainbows End , Fast Times at Fairmont High and The Cookie Monster , as well as for his 1984 novel The Peace War and his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that the creation of superhuman artificial intelligence will mark the point at which "the human era will be ended," such that no current models of reality are sufficient to predict beyond it. Vinge published his first short story, "Bookworm, Run!", in the March 1966 issue of Analog Science Fiction, then edited by John W. Campbell. The story explores the theme of artificially augmented intelligence by connecting the brain directly to computerised data sources. He became a moderately prolific contributor to SF magazines in the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1969, he expanded the story "Grimm's Story" into his first novel, Grimm's World.
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