Oct 23, 2007 8:00 AM

New chair takes reins

Elizabeth Bjork, professor of cognitive psychology and new chair of UCLA's Academic Senate, doesn't have many regrets in her life. One thing she does feel sorry about, however, is never having learned to speak Chinese.

Bjork was born in China during World War II, where her parents, both medical missionaries, worked in a large Presbyterian hospital. They spoke Chinese fluently — as did her two older brothers — but not Elizabeth, who was only an infant.

The opportunity to learn Chinese was lost when her mother moved her and her two brothers back to the States. "Rather than speaking Chinese to me, they used it as their secret language," said Bjork in her soft Southern accent, which she picked up during her formative years in Oklahoma.

Bjork's father stayed behind to continue working for the Red Cross, but joined them later in Oklahoma.

"They were still thinking that at some point, they would go back to China, once everything got settled," Bjork said, laughing. "But once the Communists took over, medical missionaries were not welcome!"

Bjork's exotic childhood is a far cry from her current life as a professor at UCLA, where she is embarking on her role as chair of the Senate. She's looking forward to an exciting and productive year working with Chancellor Gene Block.

"He's filled me with inspiration. I think he's going to take a lot of initiative, and he certainly seems to have a lot of energy and good ideas for achieving his goals," Bjork said. "And I want the Senate to play a role in that."

The goals? "Salary, child care, housing — these problems have been with us for a long time, and they've just gotten worse. I think that we might be able to come up with some imaginative approaches to solving some of these problems, or at least not have them be a deterrent to our being able to recruit and retain excellent faculty."

A math major in college, Bjork discovered psychology almost by chance. She took an introductory psychology class in her senior year at the University of Florida to fulfill a GE elective. The course enthralled her, and soon afterward she entered the burgeoning field of mathematical psychology, the application of math and quantitative methods to the study of psychological problems.

Today, Bjork specializes in cognitive psychology, as does her husband, Robert Bjork, who is chair of the psychology department. Her area is memory and learning — in particular, how people keep their memories current, and what role inhibitory processes play in resolving competition and interference during retrieval.

"For example, you've had many phone numbers over the years. But when someone asks you, 'What's your phone number?,' you want to get to the most current one quickly," Bjork explained. "But there are all those other phone numbers in there. If they have been inhibited, they don't create interference.

"On the other hand, should circumstances change, and you need one of those phone numbers again, it will still be there, and regaining access to it will be easier than having to learn it from scratch."

One of her own favorite memories involves Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, of all people (or puppets?). When their two boys were young, Bjork and her husband took them to see the movie, "The Muppets Take Manhattan." They were amazed to recognize the man who played the minister in a scene where Kermit and Miss Piggy get married: It was the Rev. Cyril Jenkins, the man who married them in 1969.

"So we tell our children about this, and we think it's hilarious, but we notice they're not laughing," Bjork said. "They've got this serious look on their faces. So we ask them, 'What's wrong?'

"They ask, 'Does this mean you're not really married?'

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