UCLA Today: Names and Faces

APPLAUSE

John Mazziotta has been named the Francis Stark Chair of Neurology and chair of the Department of Neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine. Mazziotta already holds the positions of professor of neurology, radiological sciences, and medical and molecular pharmacology; Pierson-Lovelace Investigator; and director of the UCLA Brain Mapping Center. As department chair, he is responsible for administering the activities of 222 academic and 234 staff personnel, and more than a dozen research, clinical and teaching programs.... President Bush appointed Jean B. deKernion, professor and chair of the Department of Urology, to the National Cancer Advisory Board for a six-year term. The 18-member board advises the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and director of the National Cancer Initiative.... Postgraduate researcher Kogie Moodley received the First Annual Pfizer Scholars in Endocrinology Grant Program Award, which honors important contributions to research and patient care in endocrinology. She joined Michael Bryer-Ash’s labora-tory in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension last March.

KUDOS

Victoria Sork, who spent last year as American Council on Education Fellow at UCLA, joined the Chancellor’s Office as Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Academic Initiatives. In addition, she holds faculty appointments in the organismic biology department and the Institute of the Environment and has a prominent research program in plant population genetics and conservation biology.... Deborah Silverman, the University of California Presidential Chair in Modern European History, Art and Culture, won the 2001 J. Russell Major Prize for her book “Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art.” The prize is awarded annually by the American Historical Association for the best work in English on any aspect of French history. Her book also received the 2001 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award from the Phi Beta Kappa Society.... Malcolm Lesavoy, a clinical professor in the Division of Plastic Surgery, was named Clinician of the Year by the American Association of Plastic Surgeons. The award is presented annually to a doctor who has exemplified all standards of practicing medicine.

IN MEMORIAM

Elizabeth Marmorston Horowitz, a former UCLA faculty member in social welfare and widow of former UCLA Vice Chancellor and Law Professor Harold Horowitz, died on July 21 at age 72. Throughout her career, Horowitz was associated with legal education and the intersection between law and social change. She also served as clinical professor of law at USC and was founding director of the USC Law School Paralegal Program and Juvenile Court mediator.
Known for her compassion, generosity and concern for the underprivileged, Horowitz served as a referee/mediator in the Juvenile Court, conducting hearings in often heart-rending abuse and neglect cases. She found creative and workable solutions to otherwise intractable cases.
Horowitz, who earned her M.S.W. in social welfare from UCLA, used her expertise to create anti-poverty programs for the Rural Development Corporation and low-income housing programs for the Office of Economic Opportunity. She devoted her time and talents to numerous pro bono legal and social service organizations, including Bet Tzedek, the Jewish Federation Council, the Western Center on Law and Poverty, the Center for Law in the Public Interest and various committees of the Los Angeles County Bar Association and the American Bar Association.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Hal Horowitz Fund for Public Interest Law at UCLA. Please send donations to: Charles Cannon, UCLA, School of Law Development, 3243 Law Bldg., Los Angeles, CA 90095-1476.

Roslyn B. Alfin-Slater, a longtime UCLA professor and an authority on nutrition, died Aug. 9 in Los Angeles following a stroke. She was 86. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Alfin-Slater obtained a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Brooklyn College in 1936. She later attended Columbia University, where she earned a master’s in chemistry and a doctorate in biochemistry.
She joined the faculty of UCLA’s School of Public Health in 1959 and helped to found its program in public health nutrition. She also taught a popular UCLA Extension class called “Nutrition for Now,” which emphasized practical guidelines on vegetarianism, additives in food, fad diets and other topics. Alfin-Slater was known for her common-sense approach to diet and nutrition. She co-founded the newsletter “Nutrition and the M.D.,” written for doctors and nutritionists. Together with Derrick B. Jelliffe, she wrote the column “Science, Food and Health” in the Los Angeles Times from 1972 to 1982.

Alfin-Slater was the target of criticism in 1980, when she co-authored a report that downplayed the role of dietary fat in heart disease. Retired from UCLA since 1987, she also was the author of the four-volume series “Human Nutrition, A Comprehensive Treatise” and the book “Nutrition for Today.”

Yuji Ichioka, an internationally renowned historian who became a key founder of the Asian American Studies Center (AASC) at UCLA, died Sept. 1 at age 66. A UCLA Asian-American studies and history professor, he coined the term “Asian American” in the late 1960s and taught the center’s first Asian American studies class in 1969.

Born on June 23, 1936, in San Francisco, Ichioka spent part of his childhood in an internment camp at the Topaz Relocation Center during World War II. He dedicated much of his life to social justice and scholarly research in the United States, Japan and Latin America. While at UC Berkeley, where he organized the Asian American Political Alliance in 1968, he was an activist for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. For nearly 33 years, Ichioka was a senior researcher at the AASC as well as an adjunct professor in the UCLA history department.
Ichioka authored the seminal book, “The Issei: The World of the First-Generation Japanese Immigrant, 1885-1924,” which was nominated for the 1988 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History and awarded the 1989 U.S. Book Award of the National Association for Asian American Studies.

The Chancellor’s Office will hold a special flag ceremony to honor Ichioka on Oct. 3. A public event will also be held on Oct. 19. For more information, contact the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, (310) 825-2974 or dtn@ucla.edu. The AASC plans to establish the Yuji Ichioka Endowed Chair in Social Justice Studies. Cards or donations may be sent to: Yuji Ichioka Fund, c/o UCLA Asian American Studies Center, P.O. Box 951546, 3230 Campbell Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546.

Shohig Sherry Garine Terzian, a retired faculty member of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the School of Medicine, died on July 12 at the age of 86. She organized the Psychiatric Library of the Neuropsychiatric Institute in 1961 and pioneered a work project for psychiatric outpatients, who assisted her with library projects. Many of them later obtained regular jobs in the outside world.

Born in Constantinople of Armenian parents, she was brought to the United States at age 6, together with her younger sister Annette. Shohig -- which means “little dewdrop” in Armenian -- grew up in New York City and entered Radcliffe College of Harvard University, graduating in 1937 cum laude in English literature.

Terzian received her master’s degree in library and information science from Columbia University in 1942 and continued her studies at UCLA, the University of Wisconsin, and the New School for Social Research in New York. In 1961, Terzian joined her sister at the UCLA School of Medicine as a faculty member and as first librarian of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Later, she became NPI’s information specialist and research consultant until her retirement in 1988.