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INDEX 2005

April 12, 2005 (Vol. 25, No. 12)

NEWS

BUREAU BRIEFS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA: For the 11th consecutive year, the UC leads the nation’s universities in developing new patents, according to a report by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.... HONORS: Four UCLA faculty members are among winners of prestigious fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. “I’m just thrilled to pieces,” said World Arts and Cultures Professor Donald J. Cosentino, who will use the grant to write a book about spirits of the dead and popular religion in Los Angeles.... EXTERNAL AFFAIRS: Southern California business leaders were scheduled to meet in Sacramento today with lawmakers to share their personal experiences in support of a critical message: The state’s economic growth and competitiveness require a stable, long-term investment in higher education.

LEAVING BEHIND A LEGACY
A part of campus history came to a close in March with the dissolution of the National Committee on the Emeriti, Inc. (NCE).

PROVING THAT THEY WORK
Before the battle over funding of UC’s academic preparation programs flares anew in the Legislature, UC is working to strengthen its case for continuing these programs by showing how California benefits from its investment.

NEWS 2

CAMPUS BRIEFS
FACE TO FACE: At the invitation of C-SPAN and Time Warner Cable, Chancellor Albert Carnesale recently talked to students at High Tech High School in Lake Balboa, Calif., about leadership and his commitment to public service.... LABOR UPDATE: As of press time on April 8, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union (AFSCME) had notified the UC of its intent to strike on April 14.... LIGHTNING QUICK: Researchers at UCLA have for the first time been able to capture and digitize electrical signals at the rate of 1 trillion times per second, a development that eventually may help scientists mount defenses against attacks using high-powered microwave weapons and allow physicists to peer into the fundamental building blocks of nature.... AT THE TOP OF THE CHARTS: An historical corrido (ballad) from the Frontera Collection at UCLA recently became part of the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, which each year recognizes recordings that best reflect the American experience.

SMALL AMOUNTS CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE
Jackie Reynolds’ first child was just 3 months old when she enrolled him in UCLA Child Care Services and went off to work on campus. Around that time, Reynolds received a letter from the UCLA/United Way of Greater Los Angeles Campaign, appealing for contributions of as little as $5 a month to help improve the local community in several key areas, including, fortuitously, child care. Reynolds immediately signed up.

U.C. CONSIDERS FAMILY-FRIENDLY POLICIES FOR FACULTY
She’s tenure-track at UCLA and the mother of a newborn. She loves teaching but knows that the time it takes away from her baby is lost forever. Every day, she wonders how much longer she can keep it up.

DID YOU KNOW?
The School of Nursing has operated a health center at the Union Rescue Mission in the Skid Row area of downtown L.A. since 1983. Managed by nurse practitioners, the center annually provides primary healthcare to 2,500 homeless and indigent patients, totalling 8,000 visits.

YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW
CARNEGIE SCHOLAR: UCLA Law Professor Khaled M. Abou El Fadl was recently selected by the Carnegie Corporation of New York as one of 16 Carnegie Scholars, all of whom will study themes focusing on Islam and the modern world.... GIFT OF MUSIC: The UCLA Library has acquired the A&M Records Collection, donated by company co-founders Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss. Founded in 1962 in Los Angeles, A&M became America’s largest independent record company.... AFTER THEY LEAVE: Community service declines sharply during the years immediately after students graduate from college, according to a new national survey of former college students done by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA.

PEOPLE

A CELEBRATION OF CERVANTES
Carroll Johnson, an acclaimed scholar of the literature of Spain’s Golden Age, started studying Spanish only to fulfill a language requirement at his South Pasadena junior high school.When he later enrolled at UCLA as an undergraduate in 1955, Spanish wasn’t his first choice as a major. But after growing disenchanted with international relations, Johnson figured he would spend four years mastering ever finer points of Spanish grammar.

15 SECONDS
MARY CRAWFORD: Graduate Adviser, Music and Ethno-
musicology; UCLA Carillon Player.

NAMES AND FACES
Applause: Kathleen L. Komar ... Kuo-Nan Liou ... Rita Wadhwani ... Manisha Sisodia ... Molly Crockett ... Jennifer Lauren Lee ... Francine Maigue ...Dorothy McGarry.
Acclamations: Leonard Apt ... Steven E. Jacobsen.
In Memoriam: Norman P. Miller

CAMPUS

MUSCLE CELLS ON METAL MAKE MICROBOTS MOVE
Imagine a future where an amputee can grow his own muscle cells over artificial bones to create a new leg or rebuild severed fingers.

PRIESTS IDENTIFY UCLA LIBRARY'S SACRED TREASURES
It was a rare sight to behold — five elderly men dressed in black cloaks entering the Young Research Library last month raising crosses and murmuring prayers. For these men, the building where students check their e-mail or catnap in the stacks is a holy place, a repository for texts sacred to the 1,600-year-old Ethiopian Orthodox Church — illuminated manuscripts written in calligraphy on parchment.

'ROUND & ABOUT
STAYING HEALTHY: Want to know how to achieve optimum health and wellness? .... ELDERCARE: The UCLA Staff and Faculty Counseling Center is hosting two remaining workshops in its Eldercare and Aging series.... UCLA COLLEGE: April 24 marks the 90th anniversary of the beginning of an historical event that continues to elicit controversy and is still disputed by Turkey — the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1918.... E-WEEK FROLICS: Those wacky engineering students will be at it again this week as they gather in Bruin Plaza and the Court of Sciences for concrete bowling, liquid nitrogen ice cream, a demonstration of firefighting robots, an old-fashioned tug-of-war and their version of “American Idol.”

WEB WATCH
If you have never visited the UCLA Hannah Carter Japanese Garden, located in Bel Air just a mile north of the campus, clicking on http://www.japanesegarden.ucla.edu is the next best thing, complete with the soulful sounds of a flute, the seductive trickle of the garden’s many water elements and close-ups of stone carvings, water lilies, carp and other features. Take a narrated tour via video and you feel yourself transported there.

VOICES

HER STORY IS HISTORY
When the mother of women’s history in the United States, Mary Ritter Beard, assembled the book “America Through Women’s Eyes” in 1933, so little had been written about women’s history that she had to present her bold vision of a woman-centered American history from the colonial era to the Great Depression entirely as a collection of excerpts from original sources and selections from a handful of other historians’ writings.

OUR CULTURE'S CRUDE? IT HAPPENS IN EVERY ERA
Has American culture truly coarsened over the past several years? Or is our national nostalgia for the 1950s actually misguided and misplaced? A show of hands, please: Who wants “The Simpsons” canceled in favor of a resurrected “Leave it to Beaver”?

WHAT'S ON MY MIND: GENERATIONS FIND
NEW MEANING IN 'THE MERCHANT OF VENICE'
Plays change over time. They do so because historical circumstances change, theaters and performance styles change, scripts get changed, audiences change. Controversies arise from, and dissolve into, complacencies; what was once topical fades into footnotes, and later generations find newly urgent meanings in old plays.

OUR WORLD: BY CAROLE CABLE