INDEX 1996

OCTOBER 11, 1996 (Vol. 17, No. 4)

 

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 –The reopening of Powell Library is giving students unprecedented access to the latest in computing technology for both classroom and individual use with the opening of the College Library Instructional Computing Commons. The commons provides both open-computing laboratories and instructional computing classrooms in the same venue. . . . Health Care - The newly formed UCLA Center for HIV and Digestive Diseases is one of five leading AIDS organizations to share more than $500,000 raised at a Sept. 27 fashion show, Macy's/The American Express Card Passport '96 for the fight against HIV/AIDS. . . . The College - A new undergraduate course this fall will explore a little-known aspect of American art and culture: Asian-Pacific-American contemporary music and performing arts.

 

FACULTY TO REVIEW HUMAN-TEST POLICIES - UCLA has appointed a faculty committee of to examine policies and procedures for research involving human participants and to provide a strategy for making UCLA's program a national model, Chancellor Charles E. Young announced. Studies involving human participants at UCLA have led to numerous advances in the health and life sciences. Achievements range from improved vaccines for childhood illnesses to new treatments for cancer. In conducting this research, UCLA works closely with the federal government to ensure that it always is done with the utmost care, adhering to the highest ethical standards. UCLA aims for the strictest standards of integrity in all aspects of research with human participants.

 

CHANCELLOR YOUNG'S GOAL: BESTING LAST YEAR'S BEST - Calling upon the resources of the Internet, campus e-mail and Bruin OnLine, Chancellor Charles E. Young last week sent a letter to all members of the campus community welcoming them back to UCLA for the new academic year. A major challenge facing the campus this year, he said, would be surpass the achievements of the past year.

 

VOLUNTEERS EASE WAY FOR LIFELONG LEARNERS - When most classrooms go dark and foot traffic along Bruin Walk slows to a few souls plodding homeward, UCLA takes on another persona as a place for lifelong learners. That's when a small, stalwart band of volunteers appears in the night to become the public face of UCLA, to help dazed UCLA Extension students figure out the maze of parking structures and to make sure classrooms are ready to welcome them. "We are the loving hands on campus after most people have gone home," said Gertrude Trauring, a 16-year volunteer with Friends of UCLA Extension, a group whose members are carefully selected and trained to anticipate every need from helping students find a restroom to summoning emergency medical care.

 

NEWS IN BRIEF – Newly Appointed - Two high-level appointments were recently announced. UCLA historian David N. Myers, a scholar of modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history, has been appointed director of the Center for Jewish Studies. . . .In UCLA=s newly formed Department of Urology, Jean B. DeKernion, professor of urology and an internationally recognized expert on the treatment of urological cancers, has been named its first chair. . . . Zip Drive - In an effort to make mail delivery more efficient, UCLA Mail Services is reminding the campus community to use UCLA's zip code, which was changed nearly two years ago to 90095. . . .Standout Students - The UCLA Alumni Association is now accepting nominations for Outstanding Senior and Outstanding Graduate Student awards. . . .Encore - Following the successful 1995 Conference on Leadership and Management led by the UCLA Administrators & Supervisors Association for UC-wide staff, UC Davis is hosting another system-wide conference Oct. 27-29 at the Radisson Hotel in Sacramento.

 

GRAD STUDENTS FACE EVOLUTION IN EDUCATION - Chancellor Charles E. Young challenged graduate students to become part of the dynamic evolution in higher education that's occurring at UCLA at the annual Graduate Address Oct. 2. "You may not realize it, but you're on the precipice of a great and exciting evolution in higher education," Young told the students who gathered at Freud Playhouse. "Our most treasured traditions remain intact while other boundaries are falling away, as they should, to pave the way for scholars from different disciplines to collaborate on solutions to important contemporary problems. UCLA is at the leading edge of this historical time line."

 

DID YOU KNOW? - To move the 150,000 volumes temporarily housed in Towell back to the newly restored Powell Library required 20 workers and 220 special carts to accomplish the job over four days in July. The books, all 2.4 linear miles of them, were put onto carts, wheeled out the west entrance of Towell, loaded onto trucks and driven around to the rear entrance of Powell.

 

ASTRONOMER SEARCHES FOR ORIGIN OF STARS - To understand the advances being made at the outer limits of astronomy, consider the method by which UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez "looks" through the eye of the Hubble Space Telescope. She e-mails a request to NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; in response, they simply e-mail her back the "pictorial" data. For Ghez, a prize-winning investigator of such profound mysteries as the origin of stars, these "remote observations," although important, lack the innate romance of viewing the phenomenon of stellar "nurseries," regions where stars begin to form, through the W. M. Keck Telescope from the 14,000-foot summit of Mauna Kea. Or ensconced under Chile's "Big Eye" telescope at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory.

 

NAMES AND FACES – Notables – George C. Emmanouilides, Sandra Graham, Howard Gadlin, G.B. Tennyson, and Patricia Ganz. . . .Honors – Alan J. Ardell, Shelley E. Taylor, Wiley F. Barker, and Wesley Moore. . . .In Memoriam – Julie Roque.

 

PROF SEEKS TRUTH IN SAGAS - For Jesse Byock, the 13th-century Icelandic tales of adventure on the high seas, land deals gone awry and naked power grabs are far more than entertaining fiction. To him, these stories of violence, feuds, loves and jealousies are a window onto one of history's most fascinating experiments in state-building. Through an interdisciplinary approach that unites history, anthropology and literature, Byock, a social historian and professor of Old Norse, uses the sagas and legal documents from the period to reconstruct how Viking-age pioneers settled the immense uninhabited Icelandic frontier. Populated by farmers who sought refuge from the powerful kings and overlords of their Scandinavian societies, Iceland was one of the first true rugged-individualist societies.

 

WHO'S NEW – Julia Buckley

 

WIRED WORLD – Computer Central - To give students the benefit of the work being done by faculty and programmers from six physical science departments working under the auspices of Professor Orville Chapman's Science Challenge, a computer lab in the Geology Building has become a centralized learning center for undergraduates in the physical sciences. . . . Under the Skin - A UCLA researcher and his colleagues at the University of Washington and St. George's Hospital Medical School in London have demonstrated that a new technique that lets doctors see nerves in the body for the first time can help them localize nerve injuries without surgery. The technology, called magnetic resonance neurography, is currently in use at the UCLA Medical Center. . . . Digital Storehouse - Anne Gilliland-Swetland, assistant professor of library and information science, is developing ways of cataloging and preserving images and records in a digital environment. She is currently working with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to digitize and archive computer images of the museum holdings. . . . When In Rome - In the near future, Internet visitors will be able to take a virtual-reality tour of ancient Rome, walk around its famous sculptures, stroll through the Forum, watch Cicero give a speech and witness the evolution of Rome over 1,000 years. Diane Favro and Bill Jepson of architecture and urban design have teamed up with Bernard Frischer of the Classics Department and Aimee Dorr of education to put together "Rome Reborn," a virtual-reality tour with education applications at all levels, from elementary school to university level.

 

EXTENSION CLASSES GO ONLINE TO GLOBAL LEARNERS - Imagine being in the comfort of your own home, a hot cup of coffee close at hand and the family dog dozing at your feet as you sit back, relax and get ready to take a college class in, say, short-story writing or anthropology or business management. A what? Where? Yes, a college course. From your living room or home office. No parking hassles. No sprinting across campus to get to class on time. No notebooks and papers spilling out of your hands as you maneuver for a seat. That is what UCLA Extension is offering via computer hookup to continuing education students worldwide through a partnership with The Home Education Network. Building on a foundation of eight classes offered last spring, Extension has developed a slate of 28 courses for the fall covering such fields as business, creative writing, humanities and professional and graduate school test preparation.

 

UCLA CHARTING NEW COURSE FOR INFO TECHNOLOGY - A major initiative is under way to create a comprehensive strategic plan that will outline how computing information services should be deployed campuswide and how departmental and central computing resources can best be used cost effectively to support new information technologies. The effort is being guided by a steering committee chaired by Executive Vice Chancellor Charles F. Kennel. In addition, the joint Academic Senate and administrative Instruction and Research Computing Committee is serving as the primary advisory group to the project.

 

LESSONS FOR LIFE GLEANED FROM TRAGEDY - So many questions. Why do we have to go traffic school to slow down? Why do we have to get sick to get healthy?Why do we have to go into debt to bring order into our lives? Why do we have to know death to learn about life? The most depressing, emotional and yet inspirational two-week period of my 10 years at UCLA -- a period in which I learned a lot about myself and about what is important in my life -- began on Sept. 15, a Sunday night, when I received a phone call at home telling me there had been a murder on campus. I learned the next day that it was Kevin Jeske, an 11-year employee, who had been gunned down after delivering receipts from a theater performance to the Central Ticket Office.

 

SLOW DAYS, SLEEPLESS NIGHTS - Watching the new crop of freshmen roaming Bruin Walk and Westwood with their eager, lost, bewildered, awed or anxious expressions, I can't help but think of a time not so far back when I was a wide-eyed, bushy-tailed baby Bruin experiencing my first quarter at UCLA. Charles Dickens could have been describing my first fall quarter when he wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." I had more ups and downs than a yo-yo. Ironically, some of my fondest memories are linked with some of my worst.

 

DON'T BLAME THE TEACHERS, MR. DOLE - When Bob Dole blamed teachers' unions for the failure of public education, he was tapping into the negative image that they are self-serving and obstacles to school reform. While that perception may be somewhat justified, Dole's mean-spirited remarks missed the point. Unions, and the 3 million teachers they represent, must be partners in any reform movement. One has only to look at the American workplace to see why. After spending five years in leading manufacturing plants with a team of graduate students, it became clear to me that to restore economic prosperity a new compact built on cooperation between managers and labor must be struck. The lessons we can draw from industry are every bit as applicable to education.

 

FOR THEM, YOU'D GO BACK TO SCHOOL - There's a good chance that most of us could count the number of great educators in our lives on one hand. There's the teacher who got you excited about a subject you thought you hated. There's the one who upended your prejudices and the one who nurtured your professional dreams. There's the teacher who taught you to think. Here we present a full hand of UCLA's best educators: the five tenured faculty winners of the 1996 Harriet and Charles Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award. Those chosen have little in common in respect of their areas of expertise, yet they share the corny-but-true characteristics of all great teachers: tirelessness, purpose and passion.