Employee of the Month - June 2019
Brian Thorson - Biological Sciences, CNSM
Brian started at CSULB in 2008 as a Botany Technician. He oversees and curates the extensive collection of living plants used in classroom instruction as well as community outreach.
For the past 9 years he has been cultivating and caring for the plant specimen Titan Arum, also known as a "corpse flower" which only blooms once every ~10 years for 1-2 days.
Brian wanted to share this rare and special event with the campus community, as well as the community at large.
Because of Brian’s efforts, the tweet impressions for the CNSM Twitter account were up by 20,441.9%, and the Twitter profile was visited 54,400 times!
The corpse flower viewing was covered in the following media outlets: LAist, LAT, LB Post, Press Telegram, KCAL/CBSLA, KFI, FOX 11, LA Magazine, Yahoo! Lifestyle, Spectrum News, Patch, House Beautiful, NBCLA, KTLA, and KABC. This reflects the incredible engagement from the community that this event generated.
Brian was tireless in his commitment to providing education about the flower to the public and his efforts increased visibility of our campus and sparked a surge of interest in science. Brian Thorson has gone above and beyond to propel our campus forward.