Faculty senate adopts grades plan; reform of 'narratives' proposed

UCSC's academic senate voted overwhelmingly in February to make letter grades mandatory for entering UCSC students in fall 2001. Faculty members this spring were also poised to discuss a proposal that would amend the campus's traditional Narrative Evaluation System (NES).

The 154­77 vote in favor of instituting UC's traditional grading system may still be overturned by full vote of the senate, conducted by mail. (A request for such a ballot was made in late March; at press time, the results had not been announced.)

Specifically, the grades resolution approved in February permits students who enter UCSC a year from this fall to continue to be able to take courses on a "pass/no pass" basis. But no more than 25 percent of the course work applied toward graduation credit could be taken P/NP.The senate, meanwhile, was scheduled in late May to discuss changes to the NES, including a proposal that would have eliminated the requirement that instructors provide "narratives" in all lower-division courses; the plan, which would also apply to entering undergraduates in fall 2001, would continue the requirement for upper-division classes. That meeting, however, was canceled due to a student protest, and the NES discussion is expected to resume at the senate's fall meeting.

UCSC to establish UC portal for Silicon Valley

Continuing a process that commenced officially last summer, UCSC is making progress toward the establishment of a Silicon Valley Center. Supported in Governor Davis's proposed 2000­01 budget, the center will consolidate UCSC programs already serving Silicon Valley, while offering to the region for the first time direct access to UC resources.

A faculty committee has developed recommendations for academic planning principles, and a working group has identified prospective locations for a permanent site. The former will provide a basis for developing the teaching and research activities at the center. Meanwhile, existing activities operating in Silicon Valley are headquartered at an interim site in Cupertino.

Taking a relaxed approach to diving

For years scientists have puzzled over the ability of dolphins, seals, and othermarine mammals to perform long, deep dives that seem to exceed their aerobic capacities. Now, with the help of sophisticated instruments and video technology, a team of researchers has resolved the paradox and discovered a laid-back diving strategy that appears to be widespread among marine mammals.

The research team, led by Terrie Williams, an associate professor of biology at UCSC, studied Weddell seals hunting beneath the ice in the Antarctic, a northern elephant seal diving in Monterey Bay, a trained bottlenose dolphin diving offshore of San Diego, and a 100-ton blue whale traveling off the coast of northern California.

"Basically, they're turning the motor on and off in the course of the dive, and that enables them to reduce oxygen consumption by 10 to 50 percent compared with what they would need if they swam all the way down," Williams said.

 

Photo: UCSC Photo Services Dan Wood, executive director of UCSC's Office of Physical Education, Recreation, and Sports, explains the programmable workout functions of a new fitness bike to Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood.

A Workout with a View With a weeklong open house in February, UC Santa Cruz's Wellness Center officially opened to students, faculty, staff, and others affiliated with the university. Overlooking the Monterey Bay and the East Field, the center was constructed as a 10,600-square-foot, two-story building. The $4 million center is equipped with two complete floors of cardiovascular and strength-training machines.

Biologist receives Presidential award

Assistant professor of biology Yishi Jin is among a select group of young researchers to receive the 1999 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. The award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers who are in the early stages of their research careers. Jin went to Washington, D.C., in April to accept the award at the White House.

Jin studies the genetics of nervous system development. Most of her research is based on experiments with a tiny roundworm, C. elegans, known to molecular biologists as "the worm." The worm's nervous system consists of 302 interconnected nerve cells. The human brain, in contrast, contains at least one trillion nerve cells.

"We have learned a lot about behavior from studying the human brain, but we know little about how its structure develops and how all the neural connections are made," Jin said.

She has been identifying genes involved in creating the worm's relatively simple neural circuitry; so far, all of the genes she has found in the worm have had matching genes in humans and other organisms.

Arts program meets needs of on- and off-campus communities

It's quite common these days for UCSC student Jessica Fisher to take a walk downtown and be hailed enthusiastically by a group of excited preteens. It's not that she resembles Britney Spears. Rather, Fisher teaches in a local junior high every week, which has given her a small fan club of her own.

 

Photo: Barbara Mckenna

Seventh grader Jenna Escobar gets tips on a bookmaking project from Jessica Fisher.

Fisher teaches art to two classes of seventh graders each week through ArtsBridge, a program created to increase arts enrichment in California's secondary schools.

UCSC launched the program last fall, sending 21 students into area schools to teach classes in the arts. This past winter quarter, 58 UCSC students were in classrooms in four counties--Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, Monterey, and San Benito--teaching art, music, drama, dance, and digital art and film. In all, they reach more than 1,700 secondary school students each week. The UCSC students are part of a cadre of some 600 UC students teaching through ArtsBridge across the state.

As its name indicates, the program was conceived as a bridge between two communities with common interests and symbiotic needs. "ArtsBridge is a wonderful way for UCSC students to cement what they have learned at the university by breaking it down and adapting it to the needs of individual classrooms," says Porter College provost and professor of theater arts Kathy Foley, who is the director of UCSC's ArtsBridge program. "At the same time, the program aims to be of service to the larger community and to bring the joy of learning and creativity into every classroom."

Admissions program launched by UCSC, 14 community colleges

Photo: R. R. Jones

Yishi Jin

UCSC is teaming up with 14 regional community colleges to increase the number of students transferring from community colleges to the University of California.UCSC Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood is collaborating with the presidents of community colleges in Silicon Valley and the Monterey Bay Area to make it easier for students to transfer to UC campuses. As a result of the first meeting of the newly formed Regional Council, made up of Greenwood and her counterparts at each of the schools, participants have launched a dual admissions program that guarantees community college students a spot at UCSC aftersuccessful completion of their first two years of course work.

"By offering a clear pathway to the university, dual admissions takes the uncertainty out of the transfer process," said Foothill College President Bernadine Chuck Fong. "Students know that once they have met the basic requirements, there will already be a spot at UCSC waiting for them."

Dual admissions is the first initiative of the Regional Council, which has the over-arching goal of supporting transfer-related activities, such as advising, campus visits, and staff assistance. "We know that many of our students aspire to transfer to the University of California, and the Regional Council's goal is to make that vision a reality for more students," said President Chui L. Tsang of San Jose City College. "Pooling our resources will allow us to do more for greater numbers of students." In addition to UCSC, participating colleges are Cabrillo, Cañada, De Anza, Evergreen Valley, Foothill, Gavilan, Hartnell, Merced, Mission, Monterey Peninsula, San Jose City, Skyline, and West Valley Colleges and College of San Mateo.

Major grant boosts Latin American and Latino studies

Photo: Jon Kersey

Patricia Zavella

Who would guess that pop music superstar Ricky Martin embodies a phenomenon that is shaking up the intellectual roots of Latin American studies. But the fact that Martin is a hit with audiences in his native Puerto Rico, across Latin America, and in the United States is a shining example of the way in which traditional social and cultural borders are becoming blurred.

That phenomenon has necessitated a "rethinking" of Latin American and Latino studies, and UCSC is at the forefront of a growing movement that is spreading throughout academia.

UCSC's effort to broaden the scope of Latin American and Latino studies got a major endorsement recently from the Ford Foundation, which awarded a $235,000 three-year grant to the Chicano/Latino Research Center and the Latin American and Latino studies program.

The grant will help UCSC researchers bring a greater "transborder" focus to such issues as migration, globalization, and techology, says Patricia Zavella, professor of community studies and one of the project's principal investigators.

 

Photo: Shmuel Thaler Robert Jason Jackson and Lise Bruneau in Shakespeare Santa Cruz's 1998 production of Othello.

Summer festival pairs Shakespeare, Sartre   For its 19th season, Shakespeare Santa Cruz will take its audiences across the ages, with plays set in ancient Britain, Renaissance France, and 19th-century England. The plays are Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Daniel Fish; Shakespeare's Cymbeline, directed by Danny Scheie; and Jean Paul Sartre's Kean, directed by Michael Edwards. The season opens with preview performances on July 12, with all three plays running in repertory between July 27 and August 27. The 2000 season features several Shakespeare Santa Cruz veterans, including SSC artistic director Paul Whitworth, who will play the title role in Kean, and directors Edwards and Scheie, both former artistic directors of the festival.For tickets and more information, call (831) 459-2159.

Ph.D. programs rated among nation's best

Three ph.d. offerings at UCSC are among the best in the country, according to the 2001 edition of U.S. News & World Report's popular guide helping students select graduate schools. The rankings appear in the magazine's "Best Graduate Schools" guide.

Specifically, UCSC was highly ranked nationally in the following Ph.D. program areas:

* Geology. In the overall rankings in this field, UCSC made the top-25, finishing in a tie for 23rd. The campus's Earth Sciences Department, which offers bachelor's and master's degrees in addition to a Ph.D., has been highly ranked in other national assessments. A National Research Council survey in 1995 ranked Earth sciences in the top quartile of all doctoral programs in that field; the assessment takes place every ten years.

* Third World Literature. UCSC made the top-10 ranking, finishing fourth in the Third World Literature "specialty" in the field of English. The campus's Literature Department offers bachelor's and master's degrees in addition to a Ph.D. The doctorate offers concentrations in American, British, and other English literatures; French literature; modern literary studies; pre- and early modern studies; Spanish, Latin American, and Latino literatures; and world literature and cultural studies.

* Astrophysics/Space. UCSC made the top-10 ranking, finishing tenth, in the Astrophysics/ Space "specialty" in the field of physics. The campus's Astronomy and Astrophysics Department, which offers a doctorate and an undergraduate minor, has also been highly ranked in other national assessments. UCSC astrophysicists, were recently ranked first in a survey measuring the impact of research on the field. The survey, evaluating the top 100 federally funded U.S. universities, was completed by the Institute for Scientific Information and ranked universities whose research papers attracted the most attention from other scholars between 1994 and 1998.

Women's studies program turns 25

Not long ago, the idea of women's studies was little understood or regarded. But then came the Women's Liberation Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and, along with it, a whole new perspective on the importance of the role of women in history, literature, science, and myriad other fields.

One of the country's most highly regarded and long-standing women's studies programs turned 25 this year. The program, located at UCSC, began with a single class in 1971. The following year some 700 students petitioned the administration to establish a full-fledged program. In the spring of 1975, the first degrees in women's studies were conferred. At that time, UCSC was one of the few schools in the country to offer a major in the subject.

Since it was established, UCSC's Women's Studies Department has gained international distinction as the home of some of the country's most outstanding scholars in the field.

"Women's studies at UCSC has shown itself to be a world-class model for an academic discipline--deepening our body of knowledge and, at the same time, making the world a better place to live," says Chancellor Greenwood.

UCSC teams up with Nature Conservancy

Anew partnership between UCSC and the Nature Conservancy aims to put the best available scientific information to work in the area of marine conservation and management. A cooperative agreement signed this spring provides the foundation for an effective working relationship between UCSC's Institute of Marine Sciences (IMS) and the Conservancy's Coastal Waters Program, says IMS director Gary Griggs.

"The Nature Conservancy can help us in our efforts to understand the biology of marine environments, and it also provides an urgently needed conduit to export this knowledge and apply it in marine conservation and management," Griggs says.

The Nature Conservancy focuses on preserving habitats and species by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. The organization currently manages 1,340 preserves around the globe.

Physicists and astronomers work on gamma ray telescope

UCSC scientists are now involved in several aspects of the Gamma ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), scheduled for launch in 2005. After years of planning and evaluation of proposals, NASA has announced the main investigations on which the project will focus.UCSC's Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP) will take the lead in designing and building one of the principal components of the instrument, the silicon strip detectors used to record the direction of gamma rays. In addition, a proposal by associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics Stephen Thorsett was chosen as one of four "interdisciplinary scientist investigations" to broaden the scientific expertise involved in the project.

GLAST will explore the most energetic and violent events in the universe. Scientists will use the instrument to investigate objects

such as distant galaxies powered by supermassive black holes at their centers, remnants of stars that have exploded as supernovae, and many other phenomena at the extremes of mass and energy.

GLAST will be built and used by an international collaboration involving more than 20 institutions from six countries. "We were working under the assumption that we would do the project, but NASA's decision formalizes it," says SCIPP's Robert Johnson, an associate professor of physics.Thorsett's project will use GLAST to study gamma rays emitted by pulsars. Pulsars are the collapsed cores of massive stars left behind after supernova explosions. Spinning rapidly in deep space, a pulsar sends flashes of radiation sweeping across Earth like the beam of a lighthouse. "The energy range of GLAST is a natural place to study the physics of pulsars," Thorsett says.

Photo: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

The Gamma ray Large Area Space Telescope, shown in this diagram, will be used to study some of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, such as pulsars and supermassive black holes.

Artist sets her sites around the world

When it opened this spring, the new National Government Center in downtown Saitama, Japan, became one of the busiest pedestrian corners in the world, with some 50,000 people crossing the plaza each day. As they traverse the area, many of those people glance downwards toward their wrists to check on the time.

UCSC artist Nobuho Nagasawa, who installed one of her many "site-specific" works in the plaza, hopes that a glance downward will evoke a more primordial sense of time.Nagasawa's project, commissioned by the Ministry of Construction in Japan, covers 15,700 square feet of the plaza with an iridescent lunar calendar that is periodically sprayed by a mist fountain."The genesis of this proposal was to question the concept of people's perception of time and space in the contemporary urban world," says Nagasawa, an assistant professor of art.

Another piece in the works is a collaboration with a landscape artist for the McEnery Children's Park in downtown San Jose. For the project, Nagasawa designed wind vane sculptures in the form of insects. The idea was inspired by the park's proximity to the Guadalupe River. "These insects, dragonflies in particular, are important monitors of river ecology," she says.

College Nine to accept students this fall

 

Photo: R. R. Jones College Nine administrative officer Deana Slater, surrounded by four current UCSC students on the site of the campus's newest college

For the first time since 1972, UCSC is establishing a new college. College Nine will serve as the intellectual home of students interested in global and international studies, the first of whom will enroll in the fall.

"Like the campus's other eight colleges, College Nine will integrate living and learning environments by bringing together students with shared interests," Chancellor Greenwood says. "Students affiliated with the college during its first years will have the opportunity to work with faculty and staff to develop the college's theme of global studies and to shape the aca-demic direction of the college."

Located in a redwood grove next to Social Sciences 1 and 2, College Nine is the first college to open at UCSC since College Eight was established in 1972. As dean of Social Sciences, Martin Chemers has been closely involved with the establishment of College Nine."College Nine's affiliation with the division will strengthen the academic themes of global studies, including economics, ethics, and cultural diversity," says Chemers.

"We want to encourage undergraduate research, interdisciplinary studies, and experiential learning through academic field programs and internships."Deana Slater, the college's administrative officer, will oversee the student affairs functions of the college, including co-curricular and academic programming, administration, and residential life. Campbell Leaper, associate professor of psychology, has been named associate dean of the college and will fulfill the responsibilities of college provost.

Construction of apartments that will accommodate 280 continuing and transfer students is under way and is expected to be completed this fall; residence halls that will house 400 students are slated to open in fall 2001.

Nobuho Nagasawa inspects a model of a 12-piece installation that she has created for a new park in downtown San Jose.

The book of Jerry Falwell

Over the years, UCSC anthropologist Susan Harding has studied Jerry Falwell and American Christian fundamentalism of the 1980s. The result of that years-long effort is Harding's new book, The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics. Harding found that Jerry Falwell and his fellow preachers masterminded the stunning transformation of "stay-at-home" Christian separatists into a daunting force that has forever changed this country's cultural and political landscape.

"For most of the 20th century, fundamentalists were in self-imposed exile," Harding says. "They were separatists who shunned the secular world as profane and corrupt."

But the 1980s marked a dramatic reversal, during which the definition of "good Christian" became synonymous with "engagement" at all levels of secular society, including politics.

Scholar appointed to chair in India studies

Professor of theater arts Kathy Foley, chair of the Theater Arts Department and provost of UCSC's Porter College, has been appointed to hold the campus's Chandra Bhandari Endowed Chair in India Studies--one of the country's few endowed chairs in India studies and a cornerstone of the campus's burgeoning program in South Asia studies.

Foley, who will serve as chairholder through the spring of 2001, is a respected scholar in the field of Indian and Southeast Asian dance and theater. Her areas of research include the arts and culture of India. Foley received a Ph.D. in Asian theater from the University of Hawaii, where she specialized in Indonesian puppet theater. She studied the dance art of Tamil Nadu in the l970s and conducted research as a Fulbright scholar on the impact of Indian arts and culture on the German Romantic movement. Her recent research has focused on interconnections between South and Southeast Asian performance and visual iconography and has resulted in exhibitions on South and Southeast Asian puppets and Vietnamese water puppets.

The Bhandari Chair was established by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Narpat Bhandari in honor of his wife, Chandra, in 1997. Since its inception, the chair has supported a number of important events, including two international conferences that have brought scholars together from around the world to examine India's economy and the art and culture of India, as well as a visit to India by a campus delegation, which has sewn the seeds for a variety of multidisciplinary collabo-rations between UCSC and institutions in India.

"Professor Foley is a respected leader at UCSC with a deep regard for and understanding of South and Southeast Asian arts and culture," Chancellor Greenwood says. "Under her leadership, this program will serve as a bridge between the university and the community at large, supporting activities that promote an understanding of India and drawing upon the rich resources of the area's active Indian community as well." Narpat Bhandari says he is confident that Foley "will further our vision to establish UCSC as an international focal point for India studies that can support interdisciplinary collaborations with academic and nonacademic colleagues around the world."

Foley plans to generate multidisciplinary activities, drawing on campus, community, and international resources. "I am looking forward to working collaboratively with the Indian community in the Santa Cruz­ San Jose area," she says. "I would like to build programming that allows students to interact with the community to learn about the rich history of Indian culture and also to understand its important contributions to American culture, economy, and the arts."

Setting record straight on affirmative action

The most gratifying feedback Faye Crosby has received on her new book, Sex, Race, & Merit: Debating Affirmative Action in Education and Employment, came from a student who was a strong advocate of affirmative action --until she read the section of Crosby's book that presents arguments against the policies."What she read made her think more deeply about the issue, and at first she was disturbed to find herself questioning her own beliefs," says Crosby, a psychology professor at UCSC, who coedited the book with Cheryl VanDeVeer of the campus's Document Publishing and Editing Center.The book brings together a rich array of material, including articles and essays by leading scholars on both sides of theissue. "If people are going to argue about this, let's argue on the basis of information," Crosby says.

In Memoriam

Peter Rushton, a longtime UCSC lecturer in Chinese language, died of cancer in April; he was 50.

Rushton held a Ph.D. in Chinese language from Stanford University. He joined the Language Program faculty at UCSC in 1984, where he taught the full range of Chinese language curriculum from Chinese 1 to advanced courses in Chinese literature and philosophy.

"His reputation as a leading young Chinese scholar in the U.S. reflected highly upon not only the Language Program, but on the division and the campus," says Jorge Hankamer, Humanities Division dean.

His wife, Jacqueline Ku, is also a lecturer in Chinese language at UCSC.

A scholarship fund in Rushton's memory is being established to benefit students studying in China. For more information, call (831) 459-2501.

courtesy san francisco asian art museumTraditional Indian art is one of the many subjects studied at UCSC with support from the Bhandari Chair.

Photo: Barbara Mckenna

Margaret Gordon, with Jayne Ann Krentz's latest romance novel

Librarian lends a hand to 'Wicked Widow'

Although well known in the Santa Cruz community, UCSC librarian Margaret Gordon never had to cope with widespread fame. Now Gordon's name is known to just about every romance novel fan in the country, thanks to a dedication in a New York Times best-seller.

The book, Wicked Widow, is authored by UCSC alumna and best-selling romance novelist Jayne Ann Krentz. (The book is credited to Amanda Quick, one of Krentz's many pen names.)Krentz's thanks are for Gordon's research on the historical setting of the book. Gordon provided Krentz with information on the Vauxhall Gardens--the pleasure gardens of 18th-century Regency England.