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Teaching and technology

The Faculty Committee on Educational Technology has selected four instructors to receive the 2006 Brian P. Copenhaver Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology. The recipients were chosen for their work in using technology to improve the undergraduate learning experience. Daniel Blumstein, ecology and cvolutionary biology, co-developed software that enables the collection and analysis of data on animal behavior. Nicholas Gessler, human complex systems program, teaches non-technical students to develop their own software and “express their own ideas about the structure and processes of interactive systems as computer simulations.” Todd Presner, Germanic languages, developed a dynamic Web-based hypermedia textbook and modular mapping tool that can be used for creating a cultural history of cities and spaces. Arlene Russell, chemistry, co-developed the Calibrated Peer Review, “an integrated set of network tools that manages the submission and evaluation of written student work.” These tools have been used by approximately 13,000 students in 90 UCLA courses to improve their writing and reviewing skills.

Coming to the City of Lights

Faculty and alumni artists from UCLA will be represented in “Los Angeles 1955‑1985,” a major exhibition opening at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on March 8 and running through July 17. The retrospective celebrates Los Angeles’ impact on the arts and culture in the second half of the 20th century and marks the “coming of age” of the city as a world center for the arts. Among the UCLA artists represented in the exhibition are department of art professors John Baldessari, Lari Pittman and James Welling; emeriti professors Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy and Nancy Rubins; and alumni Peter Alexander, Tony Berlant, Vija Celmins, Judy Chicago, John Divola, Judy Fiskin, Robert Heinecken, Craig Kauffman, Michael McMillen, Ed Moses, Raymond Pettibon, Betye Saar and Peter Shelton.

Alumni and recipient of UCLA Extension certificate are up for Academy Award

Alumni and recipient of UCLA Extension certificate among the Oscar nominees
A number of Bruins will be nervously waiting to hear if they are headed for the podium on Oscar night. Among the films and people in contention for an Academy Award:
* The film "Tsotsi" has been nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category. It was written and directed by Gavin Hood, who received his UCLA Extension certificate in Film, TV and Video in 1992. Based on the novel by South African playwright Athol Fugard, "Tsotsi" traces six days in the life of a ruthless young gang leader who must care for an infant he accidentally kidnaps during a car-jacking. Set in the sprawling Johannesburg shantytown of Soweto, the film explores themes of violence and poverty, memory and self-fashioning.
* Nominated for best animated short film is "9," the thesis project of recent graduate Shane Acker. Acker is currently working on a feature film version of the short for Tim Burton and Universal Pictures Focus Features. Since June, the film has been cleaning up honors internationally including the student academy award.
* "Munich" co-screenwriter and alumnus Eric Roth was nominated for best-adapted screenplay with playwright Tony Kushner. The film, directed by Steven Spielberg, received a total of five nominations.
* "Memoirs of a Geisha," edited by Oscar-winning alumnus Pietro Scalia, was honored with a total of six nominations and "King Kong," starring alumnus Jack Black, received four nominations.

New contract for clerical employees

UC clerical employees have ratified a new multi-year contract through Sept. 30, 2008. Under the agreement, UC's clerical employees will receive wage increases of approximately 12% over the next three years, contingent upon state funding, including a 3.5% increase retroactive to Oct. 1, 2005, when other UC employees received increases. UC's library assistants and other clerical employees will receive additional market equity increases for the first two years of the agreement to help address salary lags. The agreement allows UC clerical employees to continue to receive the same high level of health benefits given to all UC employees and maintains the university's salary-based approach to health-care premiums whereby those who earn less pay less for the same health coverage.

Professor's research on cell wins her an NAS award

Sabeeha Merchant, professor of biochemistry, will be honored with a major award from the National Academy of Sciences at a ceremony April 23 in Washington, D.C., during the academy's annual meeting. She will receive the Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal, awarded only once every three years, for her exceptional scientific research, which is providing insights into the complex machinery of the cell. "Sabeeha has blazed new pathways that have allowed us to better understand how organisms take advantage of metal ions to create useful energy for biosynthesis," said Steven Clarke, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and director of UCLA's Molecular Biology Institute. "Most importantly, she has demonstrated the plasticity that organisms can use to substitute one metal for another when environmental conditions are altered. She has shown that this molecular flexibility is crucial for maintaining life when the outside world changes."

Changes to work and family policies for academic personnel    

To help accommodate academic appointees and their families, UC has revised key components in its academic personnel policies that cover work and family issues.
 The revised policies "express the University of California's commitment to ongoing development of principles, institutional resources and a work place culture supportive of family care-giving responsibilities," said UC President Robert C. Dynes. Some of the major changes to these academic policies include extending the time provided to birth mothers for reduced duties from one academic term to two terms. One academic policy will describe the types of family accommodation policies available for childbearing and child-rearing purposes. You can find the revised academic policies at: www.ucop.edu/acadadv/acadpers/apm/welcome.html.

African-American Angelenos

"Forming and Transforming the City: African Americans in Los Angeles," which reveals the influence of African-American individuals, organizations and institutions both in Los Angeles and beyond, is on view in the lobby of the Charles E. Young Research Library now through March 30. African-American Angelenos have played an integral role in the city's development into a world-class metropolis. The exhibit offers information about the city's Afro-Mexican origins, art, business, civil rights and the Black Power movement and film, among other topics. It also features a number of UCLA alumni, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Arthur Ashe, Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, Rafer Johnson, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, James Lu Valle, Jackie Robinson and Diane Watson.

Student summit on traffic

On Feb. 10, Public Affairs Day at Los Angeles City Hall, 16 graduate students from the School of Public Affairs worked directly with Los Angeles leaders and administrators on the city's top issue -- traffic. Students discussed whether priority bus lanes were the right option with Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, City Councilmembers Tom La Bonge and Bill Rosendahl, and Frankee Banerjee, acting general manager of the Department of Transportation. Later, students offered policy suggestions during a noontime roundtable discussion led by Visiting Professor of Public Policy Michael Dukakis and Councilmember Wendy Gruel. The event was organized by the School of Public Affairs and UCLA's Office of Government and Community Relations.

Blood sugar levels in men

Men with cardiovascular disease may be at considerably increased risk for death even when their blood sugar level remains in the normal range, suggests a new study by a team of scientists at UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The study, a statistical analysis examining the connection between glucose (blood sugar) levels and death in patients with cardiovascular disease, appeared in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Currently, doctors consider a glucose level of 100 or less to be normal, 101-126 to be impaired and above 126 to be diabetic. "Our findings suggest that for men with cardiovascular disease, there is apparently no normal blood sugar level," said Sidney Port, UCLA professor emeritus of mathematics and statistics, and lead author of the study. “For these men, across the normal range, the lower their blood sugar, the better. Their death rate over a two-year period soars from slightly more than 4% at a glucose level of 70 (mg/dl) to more than 12% at 100 (mg/dl) an enormous increase.

New center to study racial attitudes

A new UCLA center has been launched to conduct large-scale surveys exploring the racial attitudes of major groups and provide opportunities for faculty and students to do international fieldwork about the impact of race and ethnicity on global modern societies.
The Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Politics has both graduate and undergraduate students in the field working on such issues as Salvadoran migrants in the United States, African migrants in France, and the interaction between African Americans and the Chinese in the Mississippi Delta. Located in UCLA's Public Policy building and directed by Mark Q. Sawyer, the new center launched this quarter with support from Dean Scott Waugh of the Social Sciences Division.Other faculty affiliated with the center include Franklin D. Gilliam Jr., associate vice chancellor for community partnerships and professor of political science; David Sears, professor of psychology, sociology and political science; Edward Telles, professor of sociology; and Victor Wolfenstein and Raymond Rocco, both professors of political science.

Resolution sent to regents

The Board of Directors of the UCLA Alumni Association adopted a resolution Feb. 11 that urges the UC Board of Regents to undertake a targeted divestment of UC investments in Sudan because of the Sudanese government's "perpetuation of genocide in the country's Darfur region," said the association's president, Eleanor Brewer. In a letter to Gerald Parsky, chairman of the UC Board of Regents, Brewer said the association's board decided to adopt the resolution after consulting with the UC Sudan Divestment Taskforce, a systemwide coalition of students, staff and faculty. Dozens of universities and states have joined the nationwide Sudan divestment movement, Brewer pointed out. The UC regents, who are studying the issue, are scheduled to vote when they meet March 15 and 16 at UCLA.

Heading off a drinking problem

Beginning this fall, all incoming first-year students will be required to take an online alcohol education and prevention program as part of the university's comprehensive and proactive approach to help students make safe and healthy decisions about alcohol. The program, AlcoholEdu for College, is used at more than 450 university campuses nationwide. The customized course, which takes two-and-a-half hours to complete, provides personalized information to each student based on demographic information and their experiences. "While surveys show the rate of high-risk drinking by UCLA students is half the national rate, the campus wants to provide students with an additional tool to help them make healthy and safe decisions about alcohol," said Janina Montero, vice chancellor of student affairs.

Where are we?

We're in the Viewpoint Lounge, A-level of Ackerman Union, looking at the articulated ceiling, designed by UCLA alumna architect Rebecca Binder.