INDEX 1997

FEBRUARY 14, 1997 (Vol. 17, No. 11)

 

This index page is for reference only; stories in this issue are not available online. Print editions may be found in the periodicals stacks of the Charles Young Research Library.

 

AROUND CAMPUS - UCLA was among 10 universities named Tuesday to receive the National Science Foundation's first Recognition Award for the Integration of Research and Education. . . .Theater, Film, & TV - The Bridges/Larson Foundation and the Cecil B. DeMille Foundation have donated $575,000 to the School of Theater, Film and Television to be used to transform the Melnitz Theater into a state-of-the-art film exhibition venue with Dolby sound and a variable-speed projection system that will allow silent films to be run at their proper speed. . . . Education - The Graduate School of Education & Information Studies has received a five-year grant totaling nearly $2 million from the Spencer Foundation to provide financial aid for doctoral students. . . .Health Care - Researchers at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and two other cancer centers have discovered a way to dramatically reduce the likelihood of life-threatening bleeding for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

 

LAVIN GETS NOD AS BASKETBALL HEAD COACH - Surviving and thriving in the face of a very difficult and unstable situation, Steve Lavin was rewarded this week for his leadership of the UCLA basketball program with a four-year contract as the permanent Bruin head coach. Demonstrating the qualities, values and work ethic that gained the respect of his players and the confidence of Athletic Director Pete Dalis and Chancellor Charles E. Young, Lavin becomes the 11th man to head the Bruin program and eighth since John Wooden retired in 1975. At 32, he is the fifth youngest Division I head coach.

 

CAMPUS READIES TO OPEN NEW GATEWAY ON INTERNET - A new digital day dawns next week on computer monitors throughout the world as UCLA launches a dynamic redesigned homepage for the Internet, premiering at www.ucla.edu. "UCLA's new Internet front door reflects the global reach of this great university in the Information Age," said Chancellor Charles E. Young. "As one of the most culturally and academically diverse universities in the world, we have created a dynamic portal that captures the broad scope of UCLA's resources, both on campus and in the community."

 

SENIOR MAKES TOP ACADEMIC TEAM - When senior Gloria Amador was honored last week as one of 20 students nationwide selected for USA TODAY's 1997 All-USA College Academic First Team, she said the award was her "second greatest honor." What was her first? Conducting research for the past three years in the lab of V. Reggie Edgerton, professor of physiological science. . . .Amador's research has focused on the adaptation of muscles to altered states of gravity -- research that contributes to the understanding of why muscle atrophy and muscle dysfunction occur in astronauts and older patients, she said.

 

NEWS IN BRIEF – Grocers Fleeing City - The poor are finding it increasingly difficult to reach grocery stores and food because of the mass exodus of supermarkets from the inner-city and transportation problems, according to researchers at the School of Public Policy and Social Research. . . . Tops In Entertainment - The School of Theater, Film and Television's undergraduate film and television program has been ranked the best in the nation by the recently published "Gourman Report: A Rating of Undergraduate Programs in American and International Universities." . . . Teach-In - A cross-section of labor, university and community leaders will meet at UCLA Feb. 20-21 to explore a revived partnership between academia and labor. . . .Clinton Proposal – Federal Relations staff members are monitoring with great interest President Clinton's proposal to raise the maximum Pell Grant for low-income students from $2,700 to 3,000.

 

ROYCE TO RECEIVE $5.2M IN QUAKE AID - Six days before the 1994 Northridge Earthquake severely damaged Royce Hall, Vice President Al Gore presided over the nation's first superhighway summit from that venue. Early last week, Gore once again visited UCLA's best known building, but this time in cyberspace on a computer screen in his White House office. Sealed off for the last three years as construction workers have labored to repair the damage, Royce still evoked memories of that visit, Gore said after clicking on to a Web site showing the building.

 

APPLICATIONS FOR FALL CLIMB TO HISTORIC HIGH - A record number of California high school seniors have applied for admission to UCLA for fall 1997, according to data released last week by UC. Despite the overall increase, however, the number of freshman applications from most underrepresented minority groups and the number of transfer applications declined.

 

DID YOU KNOW? – Science-fiction author Ray Bradbury recently recalled at a public lecture his early days as a struggling writer, living nose-to-keys in the basement of the UCLA Library. He churned out his first blockbuster novel, "Fahrenheit 451," on a rental typewriter there, but at little cost. Since rental fee for the typewriter was 10 cents an hour, Bradbury's novel, published in 1953, cost him around $9.20 to produce.

 

MANAGER SWIRLS TO A FLAMENCO BEAT - If people at UCLA know Jani Quintero, it's either through her job -- personnel payroll manager for transportation services -- or for her campus involvement as past president of the Staff Assembly and chair-elect of the systemwide Council of UC Staff Assemblies. But most people don't know the other side of Jani Quintero: flamenco dancer.

 

NAMES AND FACES – Kudos – Arie Belldegrun, Harvey Herschman, Rob Reiter, Charles Sawyers, Pauline Yu, Jerome Engel Jr., Maurice Zeitlin, and William F. Friedman. . . .In Memoriam – Julian Eule.

 

DESIGNER'S STUDENTS ARE STARS - When Alan Armstrong decided to accept a job teaching costume design at UCLA, he considered it a wayside stop on the road to becoming an artist in Ojai. After holding academic positions at three universities, Armstrong had nearly lost his taste for teaching. Until he came to Los Angeles, the hotbed of costume design for the film industry and home to a university with a national reputation in design and production.

 

WHO'S NEW – Nancy Greenstein

 

MEDICAL NEWS – NCI Approval - The National Cancer Institute recently gave its one-year approval to the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center's Internal Scientific Peer Review Committee, an 11-member multidisciplinary panel of physicians, nurses, statisticians and other health-care professionals who review the design and protocol of cancer research studies to assure their scientific validity. . . . Recruits For Health - Over the next year, UCLA will be recruiting an estimated 1,900 women for one of the largest disease prevention studies ever conducted to improve the health of future generations of women. . . . Jobs For HIV-Positive - The Harbor-UCLA Research and Education Institute in Torrance has received a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to train and place in jobs people with HIV who are not disabled by their disease. . . . Prostate Cancer - Researchers at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have found a way to attack prostate cancer by using a gene that can be altered to be toxic to prostate cancer cells. . . .Out of Darkness - Three faculty members have received grants from Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB), an organization dedicated to supporting research on blinding eye diseases.

 

SEIZURE CENTER BRINGS EPILEPSY OUT OF SHADOWS - Epilepsy has a long and dark history. Records of people with the disorder appear in the Bible and other ancient documents. It's associated seizures were believed to result from demonic possession, according to Jerome Engel, Jr., physician director of the UCLA Seizure Disorder Center. To this day, epilepsy patients live in the shadow of fear and stigma. "Many families keep epilepsy a dark secret, even hiding the family member from society to a large extent," Engel said. "The patients may also be kept from receiving medical treatment." Engel is out to change all that. "It is time to bring this disorder out of the dark ages," he said. As president-elect of the International League Against Epilepsy, Engel is part of a worldwide effort coordinated by the league and the World Health Organization to increase public and professional awareness of epilepsy as a treatable brain disorder, and to dispel ignorance and myths about it.

 

FOCUSES ON CONGENITAL DISEASE IN ADULTS - Stan Roman was born 60 years ago with a severe heart condition. Physicians told his distraught parents, "Don't expect much." When Tom Bancroft was born with the same condition a few months later, the doctors said to his mother and father, "Go home and have more kids because this one's not going to make it." There were no common remedies at the time for congenital heart defects, yet these men survived. Their saga illustrates the benefits of clinical research in a time of shrinking medical spending. Both underwent groundbreaking open-heart surgery in the late 1940s to partially repair their ailing hearts. They struggled for almost 40 years with their remaining impediments. Then the UCLA Adult Congenital Heart Disease Center (ACHDC), a pioneering facility created in the early 1980s, came to their aid.

 

'ROUND AND ABOUT – Senate Honors Chancellor Young – The Academic Senate will honor retiring Chancellor Charles E. Young for his unequivocal support of academic freedom with a lecture by Vartan Gregorian, president of Brown University. . . .Garden of Paradise - It's a stone's throw away, but a world apart. The UCLA Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden, one of the most well-known public gardens in the western U.S. specializing in subtropical plants, is looking for volunteer docents to lead tours to introduce schoolchildren and community groups to this natural treasure. . . Hot Times - A new brochure detailing the new Summer Youth Camps for 1997 is now available from UCLA Recreation. Camp Bruin Kids for grades K-6 is offering one-week all-day sessions with a different curriculum, field trips and activities. . . . Reflection of the Past – "Jewish Budapest," a program that includes a lecture and panel discussion about Jewish life in Budapest prior to the Holocaust, will be held in Korn Convocation Hall of the Anderson Graduate School of Management on Feb. 23 from 2-5:30 p.m.

 

KENNEL'S SENSE OF DIRECTION TO GUIDE CAMPUS - Charles F. Kennel's education at UCLA began in 1967, when he joined the faculty as an associate professor of physics a day after his 28th birthday. In the 29 years since he has seen UCLA blossom into one of the nation's great universities. Now as executive vice chancellor -- a position to which he was named last January after a two-year stint in Washington, D.C., heading NASA's Mission to Planet Earth project -- Kennel may be entering the most challenging phase of his career yet. This coming year, he will be charged with maintaining continuity as the torch is passed from Charles E. Young to a new chancellor. He recently took time from his busy schedule to talk with Senior Writer Mona Gable about these and other issues.

 

IMMIGRATION DEBATE MISSES POINT - Political debate on immigration has been obsessed with how to keep unwanted foreigners out. But these are matters of limited relevance when the most important fact about Southern California's large immigrant population is that it has come to stay. Yes, more effective border enforcement would reduce the number of low-skilled immigrants who have been crowded into highly competitive labor markets where they find dead-end jobs. However, even if undocumented immigration could be reduced from roughly 300,000 arrivals a year to zero -- not a very likely prospect -- the United States would still be the recipient of roughly 800,000 newcomers via the legal system.

 

THE VALUE OF STORYTELLING - Many parents hear the term "storytelling" and think of a narrow definition: someone, usually an adult, usually in a library or bookstore, telling a tale to a child. But storytelling is so much broader than that, your child hears stories in many other ways. Every TV show, movie and video is a story -- told by someone else. A stranger. Maybe a stranger who doesn't share your values.

 

FORGET WHAT YOU'VE HEARD, MAMMOGRAMS SAVE LIVES - Here we go again with yet another installment in what has become a sometimes acrimonious debate of many years over the value of mammography screening for women 40-49. In 1989 the National Cancer Institute along with 12 medical and cancer organizations developed guidelines recommending that women in this group have screenings every two years. But in 1993, the NCI overturned those guidelines following a two-day "International Conference." That conclusion drew the ire of a U.S. House of Representatives committee, which judged in a report titled "Misused Science" that the decision was based on a flawed review. Afterward, the NCI stated that it was not within its scope of activities to generate clinical guidelines and would not do so in the future. So with this background in mind, why convene another conference on mammography screening in 1997? The reason was because of new data: The most recent analysis of European screening trials had provided clear evidence that screening women aged 40-49, using mammographysubstantially reduces the death rate from breast cancer.

 

'TOO JEWISH?' REFLECTS MUSEUM MISSION - The old UCLA Wight Art Gallery and now UCLA/Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center have a decade long involvement with presenting exhibitions that explore societal issues through the arts. First there was "CARA," or "Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation 1965-1985," an exhaustive survey of the Chicano art movement. Then there was "Executive Order 9066: The Internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans," which explored the injustice of ethnic incarceration during World War II; "Bad Girls;" and more recently, "Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's 'Dinner Party' in Feminist Art History," which contemplated feminist issues from the 1990s to the present. "Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art" dealt with the perceived image of the African-American man in today's society. And now, "Too Jewish? Challenging Traditional Identities," presents the work of American Jewish artists working through issues of cultural assimilation, identity and religious practice in contemporary times.

 

MUCH FOR JEWS (AND GENTILES) TO LEARN FROM ART – Great art satisfies our deepest aesthetic, even spiritual needs. Important art -- which is not always great art -- succeeds in challenging our visual and conceptual conventions. It is this latter criterion -- more provocation than pleasure -- that makes the new exhibition at the UCLA/Hammer Museum, "Too Jewish?," a significant cultural moment. To pass through the exhibition is to encounter the cultural predicament of American Jewry in the late 20th century.

 

CRITIC-AT-LARGE: 'TOO JEWISH?' IS TOO TIMID - "Too Jewish?," a traveling exhibition that originated at the Jewish Museum in New York, has come to the UCLA/Hammer Museum and Cultural Center. This exhibition has generated some controversy, thought it's nothing compared to commotions caused by two other exhibitions previously seen here: "Black Male Image in Contemporary American Art" and "Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's 'Dinner Party' in Feminist Art History." Neither of these two were perfect from a curatorial or critical point of view, but they were feisty and provocative, engaging the viewer in the social, racial and gender-oriented issues dominating contemporary cultural discourse. "Too Jewish?" is trying to do the same, but unfortunately it is unable to achieve the boiling point where polite arguments are abandoned and bitter fights could erupt at any moment.