With its theaters closed due to the pandemic, Regency Theatres Directors Cut Cinemas has launched a family drive-in movie series Thursdays through Sundays with such classic blockbusters as “E.T” and “Back to the Future.”

On Saturday night, Aug. 22, movie-goers in 60 cars watched “Jurassic Park” projected on a 40-foot outdoor screen with a state-of-the art digital projector and the sound transmitted through in-car FM radios. Guests were able to buy traditional movie concession items such as popcorn, artisan pizza and gourmet hot dogs.

The drive-in movie series is expected to run Thursdays through Sundays indefinitely. The schedule is set for next week’s movies:

Thursday, Aug. 27, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (PG)Friday, Aug. 28, “Mean Girls” (PG-13)Saturday, Aug. 29, “Grease” (PG)Sunday, Aug. 30, “Crazy Rich Asians” (PG-13)

Admission is $25 per car load. Tickets must be purchased in advance, online at www.regencymovies.com or through the Regency Theatres phone app. The theater is at 25471 Rancho Niguel Road.

The area around the Village Maintenance Center was transformed into a drive-in theater.

Most residents stayed in their front seats. A few got the OK to pull in backwards to enjoy their truck beds just like the old days

About 52 cars showed up on Friday, with 38 cars on Saturday, officials said.

The drive-in movies were sponsored by the Village Community Fund. The entry fee was $10 per car.

No food or drinks were available, but residents were able to bring their own.

“I saw many posts that said all Asian people have COVID-19, or that elder people should die because they are not strong or even that New York people have COVID-19 and should stay away,” said Bai, an assistant computer engineering professor at Cal State Fullerton.

Those posts served to boost Bai’s resolve to get started on research he has proposed with three other professors, from CSUF, Cal Poly Pomona and UC Irvine. The goal of the interdisciplinary study is to gather data from Twitter, develop a way to detect biased and racist posts and then come up with an intervention, a counter-tweet that offers an alternative perspective.

Bai, Mark Wu, professor of communications at CSUF; Alex Madva, associate professor of philosophy at Cal Poly Pomona; and Chen Li, professor of computer science at UCI, submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation asking for $1.5 million for their three-year study titled  “Harvesting Social Media Data to Detect and Prevent Biases in Smart and Connected Communities.” The proposal was sent in September, and they are still hopeful their project — or at least part of it — will be approved.

“Our multifactor model, as well as our debiasing advertising intervention, represent major theoretical contributions to the social science of prejudice, polarization and persuasion,” the professors said in their introduction to the study.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have many positives — they have greatly expanded opportunities for communication within and between diverse communities, the professors said. But in many cases, users are looped into an echo chamber where they share information only within their networks and encounter only the most extreme examples of opposing viewpoints.

“It goes without saying that at this point these platforms are also hotbeds of toxicity and bias and they are driving polarization,” said Madva.

In the proposal, the professors want to go beyond current approaches for assessing bias on social media that they consider too simplistic. For example, posts may be taken down after being flagged as having inappropriate or biased words. According to the proposal, biased and racist statements would be detected, along with who is making the statement to whom and the context of the post, Madva said.

“We want to point out there is a whole range of complexities related to people’s social identities and social locations that we have to bear in mind,” said Madva, who teaches classes on race, feminism and co-authored a book on intersectionality.

“You might think if queer women, for example, are using the word ‘dyke,’ they might be using it in a powerful and empowering way,” he said. “But we might think if gay men or straight women are using the term it might be problematic.”

Li from UCI plans to contribute his massive data base of tweets for use in building the analyses. He has begun tracking tweets related to the coronavirus, for instance, looking for biases against Chinese American people or people of Asian descent, Madva said. The tweet library will likely also include posts related to the death of George Floyd and other black men and women and the Black Lives Matter protests.

The plan is not just to identify the patterns, but to do something about them.

Bai, who is leading the project and coordinating the activities, said he will develop the new bias-detection model based on cognitive theory and AI technology. He also will develop an AI-based recommendation system with CSUF’s Wu, who has a background in marketing and advertising, to share a balance of news to those using social media.

The professors are just starting to look at the most effective way to counter-tweet. But they believe that people are most receptive to such tweets from someone in their peer group, Madva said.

Questions about censorship will likely come up, Madva acknowledged. For example, some of President Donald Trump’s followers might object to the recent moves by Twitter to block his posts or add facts, he said.

“They may say, ‘this is censorship.’ But what if we can instead try to boost the signal on the members of the peer group who are reacting differently? Maybe for example, white male police officers or white male military veterans who are responding,” he said. “Are there ways we can boost the signal on those perspectives?”

For their study, the professors want to include members of underserved groups in mentoring and outreach programs at the three diverse campuses. They would open research positions to recruit students into their labs, including a summer research program for community college students.

It’s hard to say if the project will be approved, Bai said. Other proposals have been rejected already, so it’s become a case of no news is good news.

“I am thinking they like the idea,” he said.

One of the most-discussed topics has been the criticism and second-guessing of scientists in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.

“It’s not about single articles and single experts,” said Sami, an assistant professor of public health who formerly worked in the Center for Health Development, part of the World Health Organization. “If you pay attention to the scientists, the real scientists, not the politicized scientists, they are speaking in collective. They are saying, this is what we understand. Here are the gaps in our knowledge.”

Unfortunately, to many in the public, she said, that can sound like scientists are being wishy-washy. But that’s not the case, she said.

“It’s evolving. As we get better information, as the collective scientific endeavor understands more, we inform the public.”

Sami and her students have also discussed the resignation earlier this month of Orange County chief health officer Dr. Nichole Quick after threats from the public and push back by county officials over her order to require face coverings as the county allowed some businesses to reopen, and Rebekah Jones, a data manager who said she was fired from her job at the Florida Department of Health after she refused to manipulate data that would make the state appear to meet its target to reopen.

One master’s student in her summer session told her he was worried about his career development.

“If I have to be scared when I do my work, what does that mean about our profession?” Sami said. “And that is a really serious conversation.”

“For those of us in public health it’s very odd to hear the discourse. I was dumbfounded that this has become so politicized that we can’t protect the scientists who are trying desperately to bring mitigation into play here.”

Sami said the argument that masks are a violation of people’s civil liberties doesn’t make sense. Personal freedom can’t be separated from personal responsibility, she said.

While those protesting the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery are demanding justice and an end to police violence against black bodies, they also are calling for a deep and insightful look into how racism is perpetuated in the nation’s institutions, including medical and health systems, she said.

“For me as someone who studies health, it was inevitable for this crisis to emerge at the same time as the pandemic.”

On June 10, she joined her colleagues in the CSUF Department of Public Health in making a statement that calls for the eradication of racism to achieve health equity and justice. The statement was authored by Sami, Portia Jackson Preston, Maria Koleilat, Lilia Espinoza and Tabashir Z. Nobari.

“The COVID-19 pandemic increased the collective understanding of the role of public health in the prevention of disease and injury in a population,” the professors said. “The public was suddenly made aware of epidemiological concepts of contact tracing, quarantine and isolation as mitigation measures for infectious disease. Debates swirled in the media around ‘flattening the curve,’ face covers, the amount of space needed for physical distancing and when we can get ‘back to normal.’”

But as the scientific community was focused on hospital preparedness and controlling transmission rates, health disparities emerged that showed higher morbidity and mortality rates in Black, Latinx, Pacific Islander and Native American communities, they said.

“COVID-19 exacerbated the existing social inequities in our communities such as housing, income and food insecurities, lack of legal documentation and health insurance, and the disproportionate amount of communities of color in essential jobs with limited to no leave pay,” they said.

The biggest tragedy in the coronavirus epidemic, Sami said, has been that the government has not had consistent messaging about the virus and failed to put scientists at the forefront.

Her students have asked about the concept of flattening the curve in California. She tells them it’s a complex issue.

“We saw California from March to April with a really nice plateau, which was 900 new cases a day,” she said. “That wasn’t actually flattening the curve. We were successful, we saw success in the plateau, but we never decreased.

“That’s the greatest danger I see now — this move to reopen because people are tired. And they are tired because there is no consistent messaging. And it’s not driven by science, it’s driven by corporate interests.

“I’m worried,” she added. “I’ve never been in this situation where there is so much denial of science.”

Andrea Rios, one of the center’s resident volunteers, is a fixture at its classes on health and nutrition, community meetings and outreach programs.

She is also a core member of a community building initiative called Safe Neighborhoods, which is looking at ways to make sustainable changes in local neighborhoods.

“She is an engaged resident who really wants to make a difference in the community,” said Santos, manager at the center. “She started participating with a couple of classes and after that she decided to take up a leadership position.”

Rios was one of the volunteers at the center’s June 13 Ready, Set, Read event. She greeted visitors and talked about the importance of participating in the 2020 Census.

It took her a while to get there, though, because she doesn’t drive. Rios, 46, has to wait for the bus for the 30-minute ride from her Anaheim home to the center in Fullerton and then get her electric wheelchair off the bus.

A bout of polio at age 3 months weakened her legs, and even after 14 surgeries she needs the wheelchair to get around.

That doesn’t stop her.

“I feel like I don’t have problems,” Rios said. “I’m OK, so I like to help others.”

The Center for Healthy Neighborhoods works to alleviate education and health disparities, revitalize neighborhoods and reduce the cycle of poverty through partnerships with underserved families in nearby communities.

In her volunteer role with the center, Rios has talked in front of the Fullerton City Council to advocate for families to receive assistance and participated in food drives, health fairs and STEM-related events, Santos said.

“She is very resilient in every form and shape of the word,” Santos said. “She has undergone so much in her personal life so she continues to be very empathetic. You’re always greeted by a very warm smile. She’s always asking if there is anything she can do for the center.”

Rios came to Fullerton from Mexico City when she was 16 and dreamed of going to college when she attended Fullerton High School. Married at 17, she focused on being a wife and mother instead.

She pushed her two children to get an education. Her son Joseph Colon, 26, graduated in May from Cal State Fullerton with a bachelor’s in forensic science, and her daughter, Melissa Colon, 21, is attending Fullerton College studying child development.

Now Rios is able to focus on learning and volunteering. She is thinking about going to college to study nutrition and health or maybe to volunteer or work at CHOC.

“She has the time and the drive,” Melissa Colon said.

“I think she is amazing but a little crazy,” Colon said with a laugh. “She always wants to help.”

.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark civil rights decision barring job discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, announced Monday, was a huge win, said Betancourt, coordinator for the LGBT Queer Resource Center at Cal State Fullerton.

“It’s great having this now,” said Betancourt, who this summer is working with the university’s Career Center to help students navigate getting a job. “Unfortunately, there will be cases of discrimination, but now we have opportunities and resources to be able to get support and help.”

“Yes, you still have fear about being out and open in the workplace, but this can now eliminate a little bit of that,” she said. “You have rights, and that is very exciting.”

It was a “wonderful surprise” that the ruling came out during Pride Month, Betancourt said, and that the majority in the 6-3 court decision included conservatives Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion invoking the Title VII provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” Gorsuch wrote. “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”

“They put it to the letter of the law, showing the broadness of what the Civil Rights Act entails,” Betancourt said. “And that you have to stick to it.”

Eric Gonzaba, an assistant professor of American Studies specializing in race and sexuality and a self-described “Supreme Court junkie,” called it the most important decision in the court’s history on gay rights — even more so than the legalization of gay marriage in June 2015.

“It affects every single queer, LGBT person,” Gonzaba said. “Not every person thought marriage was the right struggle. But everyone, the vast majority of queer people, do work. The place of employment is important, it’s where they spend half of their lives, make a living.”

Some say the decision may provide a clue that the Supreme Court isn’t as conservative as everyone thought. Gonzaba said you have to be ready for anything when the decisions are announced.

“You are always going to be surprised but sometimes you’re not surprised about being surprised,” he said. “A lot of people think they can gauge what the court is going to do. A Republican comes to power … but the legal world is different, more complex than people give it credit for. It’s not the red/blue divide we are so obsessed with in America.”

Still, as excited as he is with the decision, Gonzaba said he worries about Supreme Court rulings expected this month on DACA and abortion rights. The vote by Roberts may have been to build some “good will” before more conservative votes on the other issues, he said.

Shaun Pichler, an associate professor of management specializing in human resources and organizational behavior, said the decision is a watershed moment not only for LGBTQ people but also employers.

Pichler discovered Monday after the ruling that his research on LGBTQ people in the workplace had been cited three times in an amicus brief submitted on behalf of business organizations in connection with the two sets of cases ruled on in regards to Title VII and LGBT workers.

The brief argued that the protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans workers are in the best interest of business organizations as employers, and that teams perform better when everyone is open about their identity.

“If you look at the literature, having to hide your identity in any environment, at home or work, causes extreme psychological distress,” Pichler said.

One of Pichler’s cited studies showed that firms with LGBT-supportive policies had higher sales per employee than firms without such policies. The productivity and profitability was not limited to LGBT employees but extended to all employees, the brief stated.

“You always want the work that you do to have some kind of impact,” Pichler said. “Some academicians look at impact in terms of how many times other scholars have cited their work. Me, I’m 4,000 times more interested in seeing my work, especially on LGBTQ workers, being used as a part of a set of logic for the application of Title VII. That for me was very humbling and frankly, quite exciting.”

Betancourt said she has heard from students who were excited about seeing the rights of LGBTQ individuals continuing to advance. But they also cautioned that the work isn’t done.

“And that’s true,” she said. “As we saw with the Administration rolling back health care for trans individuals, it’s very clear that there are conflicting messages about the rights of LGBTQ people, and students still feel that and are navigating that.”

Marisabel Hernandez, a human services major with a concentration in mental health and a minor in queer studies, said that while she hasn’t faced blatant workplace discrimination, she experiences other types of discrimination.

“People see you as different once you mention that you like girls or you become the token queer person in the class,” said Hernandez, who interchanges between queer and lesbian. “When LGBTQ is mentioned, all eyes are on you.”

The victory should be taken with a grain of salt, she said. More needs to be done to protect the civil rights of those who are facing violence.

“Next step is hiring black trans folks and black community people into the workplace,” she said.

The Mission Viejo resident started devoting all his time to Creations by Design, the home-based screen printing company he created in 2003 as a side business to his corporate career. He grew the company through word of mouth from local sports teams, PTA moms and corporations.

Then the corornavirus hit.

“When everything came down I remember thinking, ‘Oh well, this isn’t going to have a big impact,’” Lau said. “I had so many jobs I couldn’t sleep. But as soon as the schools shut down, that’s when everything came to a grinding halt.”

But help was out there. Creations by Design is one of nine struggling Orange County and Los Angeles businesses that are taking part in “Tuff It Out,” a volunteer program started by the Cal State Fullerton chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America. Since the beginning of May, 50 upper division communications students and May graduates have been divided into nine teams to come up with a strategy to help the businesses keep their doors open.

For Lau, the team led by graduate Maya Jimenez came up with a number of tactics, such as cleaning up his website and beefing up his social media with a calendar to generate more community awareness. Lau and the team are also finalizing plans for a fundraiser called Creations by Donations that will provide a way for the company to help about a dozen local nonprofits.

The students operate as if they are working for a PR firm, said Ken Hagihara, a CSUF lecturer and faculty adviser for PRSSA who came up with the idea and oversees the program. “They have members with varying levels of educational and internship experience and they are doing everything from creating PR plans and executing them but also tracking labor hours, just like they would have done full-time at an agency.”

“They are not receiving pay or college credit,” he added. “They just want to give back to the community.”

Hagihara came up with the idea for “Tuff It Out” after a conversation with the owner of a local doughnut shop. The woman told him she was likely to close the doors in a month or two.

He realized that some of the smaller businesses weren’t doing the basics, like communications work.

“They weren’t used to social media, they weren’t doing media outreach to let people know they were actually open and in business,” he said.

Through outreach by the students and suggestions from the city of Fullerton, the group came up with nine businesses with the qualifications they were looking for: struggling mom-and-pop shops in one location.

Graduate Alyss Chacon and her team are working with Phantom Ales, a brewery/restaurant in Anaheim. After meeting with the owners, the team discovered a lack of communication between the business and consumers, so they created a strategy that included improving the brewery’s social media presence, generating media coverage through a program to provide free meals for those who are financially affected by the coronavirus and a campaign video showcasing Phantom Ales’ safety efforts for employees and customers.

“That’s something we are super excited about and are beginning to implement,” said Chacon, who has worked at a restaurant and is interested in restaurant public relations.

Yuridia Sanchez-Herrera has watched her mother, Rosa Sanchez, build La Ranchera Mexican restaurant in La Habra up from a location with bare walls in 2002 to a family restaurant where regulars come for the family packs or bring their own pots to take home the menudo.

With about half the employees laid off and fewer customers, Sanchez agreed to participate in “Tuff It Out,” her daughter said. The team led by graduate Jennifer Sierra recommended a number of ideas, including loyalty cards and revamping the social media to get La Ranchera’s name out in the community.

Sanchez-Herrera, who works as a licensed vocational nurse, said she’s happy but surprised her mom is working with the team.

“They have been really helpful,” she said. “And they are really professional. When I heard about it, I said, ‘Oh, that’s so nice.’ I didn’t even know there was a program like that. It’s awesome.”

When Jimenez and her team met with Lau on Zoom for the first time they were inspired by his goal to build a local business for the locals. But they wanted to change his focus on mostly word-of-mouth business.

“Our goal was to develop relationships with newer clients by establishing it as a viable screen printing company that cares for the community,” said Jimenez, who hopes to create her own PR firm one day. “He really wanted to make a big outreach for Mission Viejo so we were really excited to hop on that.”

Now they’re working on the Creations by Donations fundraiser, which will donate to the nonprofits about half the cost of each shirt sold with the nonprofit’s brand and website.

Lau said he has been grateful to have the students’ help. Despite his background in marketing, he said he has been so focused on business operations that he hasn’t had time for outreach.

“It was nice for me to see the caliber, at least with the team provided me, that Cal State Fullerton is putting out in terms of student preparedness,” he said. “If I were to determine I wanted to take better control of my social media and utilize it for more generation, I would have no qualms over hiring any of these students.”

The businesses participating in “Tuff It Out”

Phantom Ales, an Anaheim brewery/restaurant

Bollywood Zaika – a Redondo Beach Indian restaurant

La Ranchera, a La Habra Mexican restaurant

Creations by Design, a Mission Viejo screen printing business

Wood Café, a Fullerton Thai restaurant

Tails a Wag Inn, a Fullerton pet boarding house

Let It Brie, a Fullerton cheese store

Revolucion 1910 Mexican Grill & Cantina in Fullerton

Roadkill Ranch, a Fullerton clothing store.

The event — held in light of the coronavirus pandemic — was sponsored by Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Healthy Neighborhoods, along with the Mexican Consulate of Santa Ana and the Power of One Foundation, which provides emergency food assistance.

Beginning at 9 a.m., about 30 volunteers from Fullerton, Brea and Anaheim began distributing the food bags to families who drove up in their vehicles, ensuring social distancing. The volunteers, many of them single parents, are resident leaders the center has trained to work on projects to improve neighborhood health and safety, said Jessie Jones, director of the center.

“Many of them have lost their jobs and are suffering themselves,” Jones said. “Yet they have pride and want to help as much as they can others who are hurting.”

In the largely Hispanic community, the center has assessed 400 families and discovered that 69.2% of the households have at least one adult who lost their job as a result of the coronavirus pandemic or shelter-in-place order and 71.5% of families reported having at least one adult who had their hours reduced because of the pandemic.

In addition, 96.4% reported not having applied to any other coronavirus relief grants or funding through another organization, while 53.4% reported that they are ineligible for unemployment insurance.

Many of the residents in the community are undocumented, Jones said.

The center also worked with the Mexican Consulate to educate residents about the 2020 Census. About 31% percent of the lower-income residents in Fullerton have not signed up for the census, she said.

As part of the Ready, Set, Read Summer program, volunteers gave out school supplies and books, including “The Hunger Game” which can be used to talk about racial injustice and the pandemic, Jones said. The annual eight-week program, which is virtual this year, targets students in the third through sixth grade to avoid the “summer slide.”

“We’re not just handing out books but our goal is to have children read at least eight books over the summer,” Jones said, adding that children who get behind in reading by the fourth grade are more likely to drop out of school.

The center worked with local schools districts to make sure the children in the program have a computer they can use over the summer, Jones said. The center staff also trained the families on how to use Zoom and other virtual applications.

“We want them to stay connected,” she said.

At 50, she decided it was time for a career change. After watching as her parents and the people in the houses she cleaned got older and increasingly dealt with health and family issues, McKeon realized she wanted to become a caregiver and started an educational journey to a gerontology master’s program at Cal State Fullerton that lasted another 15 years.

She took classes at Saddleback and Coastline community colleges in human behavior and gerontology, got a gerontology certificate of achievement and a bachelor’s in human services with a minor in mental health at Cal State Fullerton in 2011. She has worked for the past 10 years as a long-term care ombudsman for the Council on Aging of Southern California.

“People don’t understand the needs of the elderly,” said McKeon, 65, who lives in Laguna Beach. “They don’t want to see mom and dad as being needy. They start viewing their parents as children, which is wrong. Adult children and older parents have to develop some sort of adult-to-adult relationships.”

McKeon’s accomplishments haven’t gone unnoticed. She recently was awarded the 2020 Betty Robertson Award, which is named for one of the founders of CSUF’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The award recognizes an older degree candidate who values and represents lifelong learning, said John Blaydes, head of the committee that selects the honoree.

“The reason Patricia was selected is because she has had a variety of life experiences in a whole variety of fields, so we thought she might be a perfect choice for us,” Blaydes said. “She is a lifelong learner, and that is what OLLI is all about.”

McKeon has also overcome some challenges in life, he said.

Growing up in Laguna Beach, McKeon said she graduated from high school focused more on partying than college. She had jobs at a hotel and a hamburger stand, but eventually decided she wanted to work with children.

She started classes in childhood education and worked in child care and as a teacher’s aide. She got an associates degree in childhood studies, but realized it wasn’t the path she wanted to take.

McKeon was also battling some demons — her drinking continued and she started abusing drugs, she said. She wound up as one of the first clients of Human Options, a women’s shelter, after a relationship turned abusive.

“My relationship at the time, with the drinking and the drugs, became violent, which is completely out of my sphere,” McKeon said. “I was not raised in that type of environment.”

In the early 1980s she took classes on alcohol and drug abuse and worked on getting sober.

McKeon said she started doing house cleaning because she liked the work and the independence of setting her own schedule.

“I thought, what’s wrong with me, I really like cleaning,” she said with a laugh.

When she was 55, right after her father died, she started work on her bachelor’s at CSUF.

It was during an internship with the Council on Aging of Southern California that McKeon found her place — a little later than most, she acknowledged.

She’s an ombudsman, serving as an advocate for seniors in long-term care or assisted living facilities.

“Many of them don’t have families, we are there to be a confidante,” she said. “We are not mandated reporters although if we feel a problem is bad enough there are channels we can report to and make sure the issues are addressed. We have to follow the residents’ right to self determination. What others may view as not a good decision, it’s their right to make the decision for themselves.”

She said the work, which became full-time two years ago, has opened doors for her about cutting-edge programs other agencies are doing.

With the master’s program in gerontology, McKeon hopes to continue her journey.

“It’s for credibility, definitely,” she said about being part of the program. “And it’s a small field. There aren’t that many professional gerontologists out there. I’ve had professors say, ‘Gee, what’s gerontology?’ People ask me all the time. It’s kind of frightening considering where we’re headed with the demographics.”

McKeon said she can see herself developing a business doing consulting in the field.

“I don’t want to do management. I like direct care work,” she said. “What I love about being an ombudsman is advocating for that older person. Being the voice for them within their own family, even, and showing them what options they have for living out the rest of their life.”

On Saturday, students, their families and friends will be able to view the university’s first virtual commencement celebration.

The website will include a virtual yearbook with personalized slides for graduates who participated. The slides could be customized with a photo and a favorite quote, and with a click, the student’s name will be read.

The virtual celebration also includes a message from President Fram Virjee, as well as several prominent Titan alumni, including Tracy Caldwell Dyson, NASA astronaut; Bruce Bowen, professional basketball player; Roy Choi, restaurateur; Anthony Rendon, speaker of the California State Assembly; Marc Stein, sports reporter for The New York Times; Vikki Vargas, NBC4 Orange County bureau chief; and Dennis Kuhl, chairman, Los Angeles Angels.

Each of the university’s eight colleges also will be celebrating and honoring their graduates on the site.

“I know this isn’t the kind of graduation that you imagined,” CSUF Provost Pam Oliver said in a video. “But just remember the point of this event is to celebrate your incredible accomplishment. You graduated, and there is nothing that can take that away from you, not even a pandemic.”

CSUF officials announced March 17 that they were postponing 2020 commencement ceremonies planned for May 18-21 in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

The website will be available to view beginning Saturday at www.fullerton.edu/commencement.