Dear Fellow Phi Betes,
Although New Year’s is not the first thought that comes to mind when one thinks of September, this month is definitely the beginning of our Board’s new year. Not only is this the time to look forward to another successful year, it is also the time to reflect on the past year’s achievements. Of course, the culmination of our “old year” was our May Annual Meeting and Awards Dinner at the Berkeley Faculty Club, whose venue we enjoy thanks to member Mel Shattuck. This year, in spite of the dismal state of the economy, we were able to distribute $500 honoraria to three outstanding professors, while six fortunate and very talented graduate students were the recipients of $5,000 scholarships. Burt and Maria Norall’s generosity once again fully funded one of these scholarships. (You can find out more about the awardees on page three.) If you have never attended this event, please consider marking your calendar and joining us next May. It is a truly inspiring evening which validates all of the past year’s efforts. And even if you can’t attend, please remember that it is only because of your ongoing support that we are able to continue to make these significant awards.
The May meeting also affords us the opportunity to honor retiring Board members and welcome their replacements. This year we were especially fortunate, as we were able to retain almost all of our outstanding Board members with two notable exceptions. Letitia Sanders has now officially handed over the office of Third Vice President, Membership – along with all the electronic information - to Alex Harding. Georgia Maslowski’s job as corresponding secretary has now been passed on to Joanne Williams. Thank you, Letitia and Georgia, for your dedicated service; welcome, Alex and Joanne.
Reflecting on the past year, we can be proud of our successes. Looking forward, I am confident that the coming year will also be successful because of our wonderful members and outstanding Board.
Jean Ellen James, President
, President
Teaching Excellence needs Nominations
To date the Teaching Excellence Committee has received only one nomination for the Teaching Excellence Award. We strongly encourage everyone who has been taught by an inspiring professor at a Bay Area University to make a nomination. The nomination form is on page two. , Teaching ExcellenceChairScholarship and Teaching Excellence Awards Presented at the Annual Meeting, May 3, 2009
The Teaching Excellence awardees for 2009 are:
Kathryn Olmsted, Department of History, UC Davis
Noah Guynn, Department of French and Italian, UC Davis
William James Stover, Department of Political Science, University of Santa Clara
The Scholarship awardees for 2009:
What do James Dean and George Burns, Goldilocks and the three bears, and an ant lifting a crumb off the ground have in common? They are examples used by our scholarship awardees to help explain their research projects to people outside their fields.
We were pleased to hear from three of the awardees at our annual dinner meeting on May 3. The other three were unable to attend because they were doing fieldwork in Ecuador, Russia, and Bosnia. All expressed their gratitude to ΦBKNCA for our support of their work. We hope to tap them for Asilomar presentations in the not too distant future.
This year we received twenty-five applications. From these the committee had to decide on six, each of whom received a $5,000 award. As always, given the high caliber of the applications, making the selections was difficult. Thanks to Jeff Fenton, Lynne Fovinci, Jean James, and Gerry Richards for reviewing the applications and coming together to deliberate over them. The task is time consuming but highly rewarding.
Two of the awardees are from UC Berkeley, two from Stanford, one from UC Santa Cruz, and one from UC Davis.
Esther Cole, Ecology, UC Davis
"Landscape Control of Disease Dynamics in a High Alpine System"
Esther is studying how changing climate may be affecting disease dynamics as snowmelt comes earlier and minimum temperatures rise. She has done extensive work in Ecuador, where her work generated several important discoveries, including the discovery of a new species of frog, genus Cochranella. She will complete her fieldwork in the Trinity Alps here in California. As she writes, "This research will generate novel insights into how changing climate will influence natural disease regimes, potentially resulting in the extinction of native species."
Her professors called her "smart, articulate, self-confident," "a wonderful field biologist, incredibly well-organized," "intellectually nimble," and a woman with "a sense of humor and irony."
Jordan Gans-Morse, Political Science, UC Berkeley
"Out of Chaos? Business Elites and Property Rights in Russia"
"The collapse of the Soviet Union presented social scientists with a daunting set of challenges. . . . Comparativists . . . sought to develop theories capable of explaining transitions from tradition to modernity, underdevelopment to development, and authoritarianism to democracy." Jordan's dissertation research analyzes why institutions that protect property develop in some countries but not others, why some laws and regulations remain mere scraps of paper. He focuses on the interest-group politics underlying institutional formation. He hopes to uncover valuable insights into the institutional foundations of economic prosperity. He was in Russia at the time of the Awards Banquet, testing the preliminary predictions of his model.
His professors noted his "extraordinary potential" and his "quiet determination and commitment" and they think that "his research holds the promise of improving the foundations on which policy prescriptions can be made." "He is a rising star in the field."
Emily Jacobs, Neuroscience, UC Berkeley
"Individual Differences in Cognition: Genetic and Hormonal Influences on Prefrontal Function"
Emily is determined to pursue science in combination with humanitarian values. Her research centers on how dopamine functions in the prefrontal cortex. As she put it, it's a Goldilocks and the three bears scenario: you don't want too much or too little dopamine – just enough. The key goal of her project is to understand how individual differences in baseline dopamine levels in adolescents lead to greater susceptibility to depression, early-onset schizophrenia, and ADHD. Being committed to sharing her work with the public ("secret knowledge . . . is less than science"), she helped found S.E.E. (Science Everyone Everywhere), a nonprofit organization aimed at bringing science and the public a step closer together. She also works with a "brain fitness" campaign in San Francisco geared toward raising awareness about the health benefits of staying mentally and physically active as we age.
Her professors commended her "maturity and curiosity," "dedication to service," and "boundless energy" ("bottle it and we could solve the worldwide energy crisis!"). Everyone noted that she is more like a colleague than a student.
Mariangela Lisanti, Physics, Stanford (Norall Family Scholarship)
“Physics Beyond the Standard Model at the LHC”
As Mariangela noted in her application, the Standard Model of particle physics cannot explain dark matter and dark energy in the universe, and says nothing about the gravitational force or how elementary particles obtain their mass. She works on building and studying extensions of the Standard Model that address these fundamental issues. "Whether scientists explore the unimaginably large or the inconceivably small, they strive to comprehend some aspect of the unknown. The fact that the same fundamental laws of physics can explain dramatically different scenarios is nothing short of amazing; for instance, the same forces that explain how an ant is able to lift a crumb off the ground can also explain the interactions of particles a few seconds after the Big Bang." Mariangela worked at the Tevatron collider at Fermilab, outside Chicago. That work resulted in "a sea change in how to design searches for new physics."
She is "a role model for women students," "an effective mentor," and "a clear and organized speaker who can lay out the most complex arguments in a way her audience can grasp."
Laurel Seely, Literature, UC Santa Cruz (Elizabeth B. Reed Scholarship)
"The Transition to Postsocialism: Cultural Discourses of Bosnian Identity, 1980-Present"
Laurel's title is standard academese. The first paragraph of her application is not. "In winter 2008, the city of Sarajevo coated its sidewalks with a substance designed to prevent people from slipping on ice, an event that provoked outrage among some of Bosnia's Serb and Croat politicians. The problem: the coating was green, a color associated with Islam." In her work, Laurel uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine the intersection of culture and politics in transformations of identity in postsocialist Bosnia. Her dissertation examines transformations of Bosnian identity effected through key cultural products. By presenting and analyzing materials that are lesser known or difficult to access (she has also translated Bosnian literary works into English), she aims to make a variety of texts available for the first time to English-speaking scholars.
Her letters of recommendation cite her "personal independence, perseverance, originality of thought, and her no-nonsense hard work." She is "critically innovative," "a model of the best kind of contemporary literary and cultural studies."
Amelia Wolf, Biology, Stanford
"Strategic Trade-offs in Ant-Plant Mutualisms Worldwide"
"Can a tree emulate James Dean, or bear a resemblance to George Burns? . . . James Dean famously lived fast and died young; Burns persisted in the limelight for years and years. Different trees, too, follow these divergent life trajectories," burning out after a short and productive life or fading away after persisting and reproducing for many years. Amelia works on ant-plant mutualisms that occur in tropical regions worldwide, including the neotropics. Her work in Costa Rica is yielding information similar to what she found in Kenya. Such cross-continental comparisons are rare and valuable, because they can help determine the degree to which ecological processes are generalizable. She is also an avid photographer and last year had a photograph (of giraffes in Kenya) published on the cover of Science (11 January 2008).
She was recommended for her "endurance, creativity, and imagination, and a willingness to take risks." She is a "broad, creative, synthetic thinker, and highly motivated." Her "wholly original research has already yielded amazing results."
We are pleased to acknowledge a most generous gift by Burt Norall and former Board member, Maria Norall, in memory of Cordie and Max McLain. The McLains were wealthy rice farmers from Burt's home town in Butte County who enabled him to attend UC Berkeley by providing him with funds for his expenses. Burt chose to fully fund one of the Northern California Association’s scholarships this year in their names because he has seen how dedicated Maria and other Board members are, and he knew the full amount would actually go to a deserving student. Click here for more information.
** Elizabeth B. Reed Scholarship
The Elizabeth Buttler Read Scholarship, established in 1992 by the Association following a bequest from her estate, honors a remarkable woman who exemplifies the breadth of professions and skills one determined woman can master with enough grit and innate talent. Click here for more information about this outstanding woman.
ΦBKNCA PARTICIPATES IN CHAPTER INITIATIONS
In the spring and summer of 2009, ΦBKNCA volunteers attended initiation ceremonies at all eight of our affiliated college chapters in Northern California: UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, University of the Pacific, Mills College, San Francisco State University, Santa Clara University, and Stanford University. There were over 880 new initiates this year, ranging from ten at Mills College to over 300 at UC Berkeley. Our representative usually makes a few remarks about our NCA activities and the importance of Teaching Excellence nominations. Receptions follow each ceremony.
Thanks go to our volunteers for 2009: Marci Coglianese, Jean James, Narcinda Lerner (attended two), Janiece Nolan, Joanne Sandstrom (attended two), and Margaret Williams.
Starting in January, we will begin to learn the dates for the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa initiation ceremonies at our affiliated college chapters. At that time, we will start planning who from our association will attend each ceremony. Please let me know now if you would like to volunteer for a particular school. If there are any of you out there with a connection to UC Santa Cruz or Stanford University, we could really use your assistance!
Our Association participates in these chapter initiation ceremonies to increase awareness of our nation-wide ΦBK alumni associations, increase nominations for our teaching excellence awards, as well as applications for our scholarships. Participation gives our volunteers a chance to meet faculty, parents, and students at a campus. Some volunteers have mentioned what a great opportunity it is to network at a particular school. Besides, it’s fun!
Thank you.
Janiece Nolan, Ph.D., Chapter Liaison,
Tour Description: Join us for a two-hour trip down Steamboat Slough and up along tree-enveloped Sutter Slough. We will return down the Sacramento River and the historic upper Steamboat Slough. This area is one of the most scenic areas of the Delta, with vistas that include luxuriant riparian forests and numerous wildlife species. Our tour includes an ongoing and thorough narrative of the history of this little known region. After the boat tour, we can use the picnic area to enjoy lunch and also take some time to walk around the nursery grounds and check out their seasonal produce stand!
“Exercise is a dirty word. Every time I hear it I wash my mouth out with chocolate.” 
Come experience the excitement of Filoli’s spectacular nine-day Holiday Traditions event. Shop the Holiday Boutique, with its wide range of unique holiday gifts, while performers sing and play seasonal melodies. Filoli will be decorated for the holidays from top to bottom, both inside and out. Weather permitting, we will be able to explore the gardens as well as doing some holiday shopping. For those who would like to stay for lunch as well, reservations will be made for you.