UC Davis News: Teaching

UC Davis faculty members win art, music prizes

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

University of California, Davis, faculty members recently received prestigious awards in art and music.

The New York City-based Joan Mitchell Foundation named art professor Annabeth Rosen among the 25 recipients of $25,000 awards in the 2011 Painters and Sculptors Grant Program.

Rosen, who joined the art studio faculty in 1997, holds the Robert Arneson Chair in Ceramic Sculpture. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of Art and Design at Alfred University, N.Y., in 1978, and a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., in 1981.

The Joan Mitchell Foundation is named after the abstract expressionist painter and strives to fulfill her ambitions — to assist the needs of contemporary artists, and to demonstrate that painting and sculpture are significant cultural necessities. Mitchell died in 1992, and the foundation came into being the next year.

The Painters and Sculptors Grant Program dates back to the foundation’s first year, serving to acknowledge artists for creating works of exceptional quality.

Sam Nichols, a lecturer in the Department of Music, received one of two 2011 Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composer Awards for New Chamber Works.

Honoring the best in American music, each award comes with a $1,000 prize and a prominent forum: a performance in the Composers Inc. concert season in San Francisco.

The Left Coast Chamber Players are set to perform Nichols’ award-winning work, Refuge, for string quartet, during the Concerts Inc. Rifts and Refuge concert April 24.

Faculty honored for mentoring, trailblazing

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science has bestowed one of its five distinguished scientists awards this year on engineering professor Enrique Lavernia. The society has been presenting such awards since 1997, recognizing contributions to the field of science and dedication to teaching and the mentoring of under-represented minority students, in furtherance of the society’s mission to foster the success of Hispanic-Chicano and Native American scientists.

The American Chemical Society’s Women Chemists Committee has named its first group of Rising Stars, including Annaliese Franz, assistant professor of chemistry. Ten chemists comprise the inaugural class of Rising Stars, established as a way to recognize mid-career scientists who have made significant contributions to the chemical enterprise. Franz joined the Department of Chemistry in 2007 after postdoctoral work at Harvard University. Her work focuses on new ways to make small organic molecules and has particular relevance for pharmaceutical chemistry.

The National LGBT Bar Association has named 40 lawyers — including Courtney Joslin, an acting professor at the School of Law — to the association’s 2011 list of the Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40. Joslin is a scholar in the field of family and relationship recognition, with a particular focus on same-sex and nonmarital couples. The LGBT Bar, an affiliate of the American Bar Association, recognizes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender legal professionals “who have distinguished themselves in their field and demonstrated a profound commitment to LGBT equality.”

Ricardo Castro, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science, is the recipient of a Young Investigator Award from the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. Candidates for the Young Investigator Award must have contributed in an outstanding and innovative way to the progress of research in science and engineering.

UC Davis offers innovative new majors, minors

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Responding to increased student interest in sustainability, UC Davis this fall introduced a new major, sustainable agriculture, and a new minor, sustainability in the built environment. The innovative fields of study are among an array of new undergraduate and graduate programs planned for the campus, which is known as one of the nation’s most comprehensive universities.

“UC Davis is innovating in response to the evolving interests of students and faculty in ways that will enable us to better achieve our mission of addressing society’s most critical issues,” said Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph Hexter. “Our curriculum is dynamic and innovative — and will be even more so in the decade ahead, as we increase undergraduate student enrollment and add several hundred new faculty.”

Also new this fall: a minor in human rights and a doctoral program in communication. A master's degree in professional accountancy, now in the final states of review, is expected to admit students for fall 2012. And beginning in fall 2013, the university will offer new master’s and doctoral programs in the study of religion.

Meanwhile, the UC Davis Office of Graduate Studies is tracking proposals for about 15 additional new graduate programs.

"UC Davis is the most academically innovative campus in the University of California system, and one of the most innovative anywhere," said Jeffrey Gibeling, dean of graduate studies, who oversees proposals for graduate and professional degree programs as they move through campus and University of California approvals.

Today, UC Davis offers about 90 graduate programs, 100 majors and 108 minors.

But students don’t need to limit themselves to one field of study. UC Davis prides itself on its interdisciplinary programs, which give students the freedom to explore outside traditional disciplines and areas of research.

According to Gibeling, about two-thirds of the graduate programs at UC Davis are offered as interdisciplinary graduate groups, a greater proportion than at any other UC campus.

Patricia Turner, vice provost for undergraduate studies, said new academic programs reflect a need or interest among students, graduate schools or employers.

"Changes in curriculum signify our institution keeping up with what is going on in society," she said.

Proposals for undergraduate majors come through individual colleges and are vetted by committees of the Academic Senate as well as the Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors. In times of budget constraint, majors might be developed from existing courses, build on an existing minor or leverage external funding.

For example, a $180,000 federal grant helped build a Middle East/South Asia major in 2008 from a minor. This year, the program will establish its first visiting lecturer in Iranian/Persianate studies, a move that could be a step toward a minor in Iranian studies.

Neal Van Alfen, dean of the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, said the newest undergraduate major, sustainable agriculture and food systems, reflects a change in how scientists think about food and agriculture. The major will provide students with a multidisciplinary understanding of issues facing modern farming and food systems.

The new undergraduate minor in human rights is a combined effort of the Department of History, the Religious Studies Program and other academic units. It encourages students to link their major fields of study with the history, theory, practice and promotion of human rights.

The sustainability in the built environment minor, offered though the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will educate those who will design and maintain human-made surroundings in the challenges and potential solutions for improved sustainability.

Frank Loge, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the UC Davis Center for Water-Energy Efficiency, helped create the minor.

"So much of sustainability requires people from different disciplines to work together," he said. "This minor creates the opportunity for an array of disciplines to come together to design things for the built environment."

A total of 32,654 students started classes at UC Davis this fall.

By 2020, UC Davis expects to add 5,000 additional undergraduates, part of a plan announced by Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi during fall convocation to achieve financial stability and bring 300 new faculty to campus.

Renowned theater scholar dies

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Renowned theater scholar and Beckett specialist Ruby Cohn, a professor of comparative drama at the University of California, Davis, died Oct. 18 following a prolonged struggle with Parkinson's disease. She was 89 and lived in San Francisco.

For 30 years at UC Davis, Cohn was a member of the comparative literature and theater departments and affiliated with the English and French departments. She taught courses on modern and experimental drama, Shakespeare’s legacies in modern drama, dramatic genres, and Samuel Beckett and his contemporaries.

"Ruby Cohn was and will remain a much-respected and well-loved part of the Department of Theatre and Dance at UC Davis," said Professor Lynette Hunter, chair of the department.

"She brought a mind and heart open to the radical theater that emerged after the second World War in Europe, especially to studies of the work of Samuel Beckett, but also to the emerging voices of the newly enfranchised British working class. She was responsible for the acquisition of many of the theater materials in the Shields Library Special Collections, and for the shaping of a department that has continued to respond to the challenges of today's society."

Earlier in her career, Cohn was a professor of language arts at San Francisco State University, where she launched a comparative literature program and also joined a student strike to bring ethnic studies to the curriculum. Refusing to teach her courses on campus, Cohn resigned in protest in 1968.

In 1969, she joined the faculty of the theater school of the California Institute of the Arts. She joined UC Davis in 1972.

A recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, Cohn was also selected the 1978 UC Davis “Faculty Research Lecturer,” the highest honor bestowed by the Davis Division of the Academic Senate. She retired from UC Davis in 1992, yet continued to teach and write.

At her death, Cohn was the author or editor of more than 20 monographs and anthologies on modern and contemporary U.S., British, and Continental drama, among which was the first full-length study of Samuel Beckett.

Born Ruby Burman on Aug. 13, 1922, in Columbus, Ohio, she later moved with her family to New York City. While in high school, she saw the Federal Theater in action, including Orson Welles’ “Voodoo Macbeth.”

A graduate of Hunter College, she joined the WAVES during World War II, learned to install radar on battle ships and became an accomplished marksman.

She took her first doctoral degree at the University of Paris, reveling in Paris’ genial postwar ferment. One cold January night in 1953, she attended the first public performance of an obscure play called “En Attendant Godot” (“Waiting for Godot”), a work that would establish the reputation of “absurdist” theater in Paris, with its heady mixture of Sartrean alienation, linguistic experimentation, music hall antics, and an emphatic refusal to pander to conventional theater audiences.

Back in the U.S., Cohn took a second doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis, where her husband, microbiologist Melvin Cohn, taught (they were amicably divorced in 1961). She developed her dissertation, on Samuel Beckett, into her first book, "Samuel Beckett: The Comic Gamut" (1962).

In the Irish-born, French-speaking Beckett, Cohn found a poet, novelist, and dramatist of stabbing wit and formal daring, one whose field of philosophical and literary reference encompassed the entire Western tradition.

"Samuel Beckett: The Comic Gamut," was one of the first full-length studies of Beckett, and it set a high intellectual bar for the vast industry of Beckett criticism that followed. With its epigraphs in French (Descartes) and English (Shakespeare), the book’s 13 chapters interweave careful analysis with biographical, translation and publishing information, all of which illuminate and explain Beckett’s paradoxes and arcana.

Throughout, Cohn homes in on Beckett’s words and the peculiar forms they take, sometimes matching his punning wit with her own. In the chapter, “Watt Knott,” Cohn notes Beckett’s comic couplings of, and puns on, names: “Cream and Berry, the hardy laurel, Rose and Cerise, Art and Con,” and wryly adds in a footnote: “Con [is] a French obscenity (as I learned through its homonym Cohn)….”

Beckett’s credo of failure — “to be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail” — was, for Cohn, testimony of his commitment to explore, through the discipline of art, the ludicrous ironies of human striving, the sham of sexual love, and, as Beckett himself famously put it, “the expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express…no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.” That obligation betokened, Cohn felt, Beckett’s deep humanity, which Cohn implicitly celebrated in her criticism.

Literary theory bored and angered her, but she read a great deal of it and read everything ever written on Beckett, no matter by whom. She walked out of bad theater performances sooner than she closed another scholar’s book. Her scholarly integrity is on view in her conscientiously trilingual bibliography for "The Comic Gamut" (her French was fluent, her German quite good), and in this way, too, she set a standard for Beckett research and criticism, although few had her comparatist’s skill in languages.

As Beckett’s canon unfolded, so did Cohn’s: "Casebook on Waiting for Godot" (1967), "Back to Beckett" (1974), "Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Criticism" (1975), "Just Play: Beckett’s Theater" (1980), "Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment" (1984), "From Desire to Godot: Pocket Theater of Postwar Paris" (1987), and, finally, "A Beckett Canon" (2001).

The latter is a beautiful book, written in the leisure of retirement, a rumination on the Beckett canon as it unfolds chronologically. It begins: “Having read nothing by Beckett, I fell in love with his ’En Attendant Godot’ in 1953, when it was performed at the short-lived Théâtre de Babylone in Paris.” She promises not “to impose coherence upon the many threads of Beckett’s tapestry” but rather writes for an engaged reader, “and I imagine her/him as one who has been drawn to Beckett in print or performance, and who is curious about other facets of his oeuvre.” In other words, a reader very like Cohn herself, starting on her Beckett journey in 1953.

Even when Beckett was not her obvious subject, his astringent forms influenced her taste in other dramatists, and she was determined to give full exposure to the best modern American and British drama in her "Edward Albee" (1969), "Currents in Contemporary Drama" (1969), "Dialogue in American Drama" (1971), "Modern Shakespeare Offshoots" (1976), and "New American Dramatists" 1960-1990 (1991).

In the 1990s, living half the year in London, she concentrated on British theater in her books "Retreats from Realism in Recent English Drama" (1991) and "Anglo-American Interplay in Recent Drama" (1995). In these years, she particularly admired the formally adventurous work of Caryl Churchill.

Cohn’s lifelong effort to join the immediacy of theater performance to the careful analysis of dramatic texts made her an eager if exacting theater-goer. She developed warm friendships with the experimental directors and actors who worked on Beckett’s texts, especially Joseph Chaikin and Herbert Blau, and she supported the Mabou Mines experimental theater company, when, with Beckett’s permission, founding member Frederick Neumann adapted eight of Beckett’s nontheatrical prose works for the theater.

Ruth Maleczech of Mabou Mines notes, “Ruby would put her finger on things very clearly. There was a level of trust between her and the company [and] she was interested in what we did even when it wasn’t Beckett.”

This would certainly hold true of Joan Holden’s San Francisco Mime Troupe, of which Cohn was a faithful supporter.

Fiercely opinionated and capable at times of quite memorable rebukes, Cohn was also memorably committed to her students who benefited from her scholarship and lucid criticism, and to her legions of friends on whom she lavished her concern and loving attention.

She is survived by all these people and by her goddaughter, Polly Richards, and her family.

UC Davis gets $4 million grant to create poverty research center

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The University of California, Davis, has received $4 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to establish a Center for Poverty Research — one of only three such centers nationwide designated to study the causes and effects of and policies aimed at addressing poverty in the United States.

The interdisciplinary center, led by UC Davis economics professors Ann Huff Stevens and Marianne Page, will promote research and education on poverty, with an emphasis on labor markets and poverty; health and education programs; the transmission of poverty from one generation to another; and immigration’s role in poverty. The grant, administered through the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, will be spread over five years, with $800,000 distributed each year.

“We are facing some of the country’s biggest challenges since the Great Depression,” said George R. Mangun, dean of the Division of Social Sciences at UC Davis. “We have more people living in poverty now than at any time in almost 70 years. Yet, we have one of the most powerful economies in the world, and our country’s higher education system is the envy of the entire world. With centers such as the new Center for Poverty Research at UC Davis, we can transform society.”

Besides UC Davis, national poverty research centers are located at Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Being chosen to lead one of only three national poverty research centers in the country is a tremendous recognition of our faculty's intellectual capacity, and of the excellence and multidisciplinary breadth of their research," said UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi. "Their efforts will help to inform and guide research and public policy around this most urgent issue."

The center’s research will draw on the expertise of scholars across campus and involve faculty, graduate and undergraduate students. In addition to funding research and outreach, the grant will help establish a freshman seminar in poverty to encourage students early in their college careers to consider poverty as a field of study.

“UC Davis is home to an incredibly productive group of researchers working on poverty. The center will build connections across campus that further strengthen this research, support the training of students to continue this research agenda and provide an improved structure for sharing our critical findings with other researchers, policymakers and the public,” said Stevens, who chairs the Department of Economics and will direct the new center.

UC Davis was chosen because of its strength in research on poverty and related issues. Among recent findings:

Impacts of the Great Recession are not uniform across demographic groups — the recession’s effects have been felt most strongly by men, black and Hispanic workers, youth and undereducated workers.
Infant health improves when disadvantaged pregnant women have access to government assistance, such as supplemental nutrition programs or the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Providing information about college admission requirements to disadvantaged high school students early in their high school careers can substantially improve the odds that they apply to and enroll in college.
Long-term declines in real wages in the U.S. during the past several decades have made it significantly more difficult for the working poor to escape poverty.
In contrast to prior research, immigrants do not reduce the well-being of low-wage U.S. workers and may actually stimulate the economy.

The grant calls for the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research to fund poverty research projects at other educational institutions, as well as finance graduate and undergraduate poverty research and study.

The research of the center can help identify which anti-poverty programs work and what the long-term effects of high poverty are likely to be for future generations, Stevens said. The research will also help to inform policymakers, she added.

Stevens, who will direct the center, is chair of the economics department and has conducted extensive research on poverty and labor issues, particularly how job loss affects individuals and families. Her recent work considers the relationship among job loss, unemployment and health. The center’s deputy director, Marianne Page, served from 2005 to 2010 as director of Economy, Justice and Society, an interdisciplinary program at UC Davis involving faculty in the departments of economics and sociology, and the school of education. Stevens and Page are both research associates with the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“It is critical that we study the ramifications of this country’s increasing poverty so that we, as a nation, can create change for a healthier and more prosperous society,” Mangun added. “This new center will provide the knowledge and understanding we need to put the next generation ahead, as our parents did for us.”

RANKINGS ROUNDUP: UC Davis among top 10 public universities, rates high in sustainability, public service

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

For the second consecutive year, UC Davis earned a ninth-place ranking among the top public national universities in U.S. News & World Report’s annual “Best Colleges” issue. UC Davis’ distinction for 2012, released today (Sept. 13), follows the campus’s top 10 honors for its commitment to sustainability (Sierra magazine), contributions to society (Washington Monthly) and student happiness (Newsweek), announced earlier this summer.

“It is an honor to once again be recognized among the top universities in the nation and to be acknowledged for our commitment to sustainability,” Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi said. “This public acknowledgement is a testament to our outstanding faculty, students and staff and our steadfast supporters, all of whom have worked very hard this past year to ensure that UC Davis can continue its land-grant mission of applying academic excellence and innovative research to solve the world’s most critical issues.”

More about the rankings:

U.S. News & World Report

The magazine ranked UC Davis 38th among all national research universities, public and private, up one position from last year.

In addition, UC Davis was included among 17 universities lauded for its excellence in teaching writing across the disciplines.

“These colleges,” the magazine reported, “typically make writing a priority at all levels of instruction and across the curriculum. Students are encouraged to produce and refine various forms of writing for a range of audiences in different disciplines.”

The “Best Colleges” issue also includes ratings for two undergraduate programs: business and engineering. UC Davis’ undergraduate engineering program rated 34th nationwide. UC Davis does not have an undergraduate business program.

More about the U.S. News rankings and methodology.

Sierra magazine

In its September-October issue, this magazine ranked UC Davis the eighth greenest campus in America, with Sierra especially recognizing the university for its strong foundation and recent accomplishments in nurturing sustainable methods of food production.

The publication specifically mentioned UC Davis’ new 34,000-square-foot winery, brewery and food-processing complex, which received official LEED Platinum certification in 2010 — the highest environmental rating awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council — making the complex the first LEED Platinum winery, brewery or food-processing facility in the world. The $20 million “green” facility was funded entirely by private donations; no state or federal funds were used in its design or construction.

More about Sierra’s rankings and methodology.

Washington Monthly

This magazine ranked UC Davis eighth among all national universities for its contributions to society, and made special mention of the university’s research funds, which totaled almost $679 million last fiscal year.

Washington Monthly’s rankings, released Sept. 1, are based on a university’s success in recruiting and graduating low-income students, fostering scientific and humanistic research, and fostering an ethic of service to the country.

More about Washington Monthly’s rankings and methodology.

Newsweek

According to Newsweek, UC Davis is one of the happiest places in the country to go to college. The publication ranked the campus 10th for happiest schools in the nation. Additionally, the magazine ranked UC Davis 11th for “greenest schools,” 19th among the best schools for “computer geeks” and 23rd among U.S. colleges for best weather.

More about the Newsweek rankings and methodology.

UC Davis launches agricultural sustainability degree

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The University of California, Davis, this fall will launch an undergraduate major focused on agricultural sustainability.

The Bachelor of Science degree in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems uniquely integrates several subjects to provide students with a thorough understanding of the many issues facing modern farming and food systems, including production, processing, distribution, consumption and waste management.

“This is an exciting addition to the college that reflects a change in how we think about food and agriculture,” said Neal Van Alfen, dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “Students will gain a broad perspective of what it takes to put dinner on the table in an era of greater demand and fewer resources.”

Students will focus on the social, economic and environmental aspects of agriculture and food — from farm to table and beyond. The program is designed to help students obtain a diversity of knowledge and skills, both in the classroom and through personal experiences on and off campus.

Nine faculty members from eight departments are affiliated with the new degree program.

“The skills and knowledge gained through this interdisciplinary curriculum will prepare students to become 21st-century leaders in agriculture and food systems,” said Professor Thomas Tomich, the major adviser for the program and director of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis.

The major is new, but UC Davis has been covering the subject in field- and classroom-based interdisciplinary learning opportunities at the Student Farm for more than 35 years, said Mark Van Horn, the Student Farm director who will teach a core course in the major.

“Learning through doing and reflection adds a valuable dimension to students’ education because it helps them see the connections between theory and practice in the real world,” Van Horn said.

Continuing students have already begun transferring into the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems major. Applications for freshmen and transfer students to enter the major will be available in November.

Experts on SB 48 curriculum changes

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The following UC Davis experts are available to comment on Senate Bill 48, signed July 13 by Gov. Jerry Brown, which will amend the education code to include social sciences instruction on the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, as well as people with disabilities and members of other cultural groups.

Social sciences curriculum

Rebecca Rosa is a supervising lecturer in the UC Davis School of Education who specializes in social sciences teaching and curriculum. She has conducted research on gay and lesbian issues in teaching. Contact: Rebecca Rosa, School of Education, (707) 718-3644, robrien@ucdavis.edu.

Gay and lesbian rights

Courtney Joslin is co-author of the 2009 book, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Family Law.” She is a past staff attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, where she litigated cases on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their families. She is a UC Davis law professor. Contact: Courtney Joslin, Law, (415) 902-7981 cell, cgjoslin@ucdavis.edu.

Curriculum expansion and changes

Steven Athanases is a professor in the UC Davis School of Education and is a former high school English teacher. His research interests include an emphasis on teaching diverse youth in urban, public schools. He is interested in teachers holding onto best practices while continually examining ways to meet the learning needs of all youth. Contact: Steven Athanases, School of Education, (510) 501-9357, szathanases@ucdavis.edu.

UC Davis forms partnership with Sun Yat-Sen University

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The University of California, Davis, is forming a partnership with Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangdong, China, to promote collaboration in research, teaching and cultural exchanges.

UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi and Anlong Xu, vice president of Sun Yat-Sen University, signed an agreement of cooperation June 9 at a ceremony at SYSU’s Guangzhou campus.

UC Davis and SYSU representatives will now develop more specific working agreements that will cover collaborations in various areas. Among the areas on which the two universities expect to collaborate are medicine, agriculture, marine sciences, transportation and social sciences, said Harris Lewin, vice chancellor for research at UC Davis.

UC Davis is internationally recognized as a leader in research in agricultural and environmental sciences, medicine and biology. The campus includes a medical school and teaching hospital ranked in the top 50 in the U.S., one of the nation’s foremost veterinary medical schools, the Bodega Marine Laboratory and the Institute of Transportation Studies.

Founded in 1924 by Chinese leader Sun Yat-Sen, the university is located on four campuses in Guangdong Province on the banks of the Pearl River and the coast of the South China Sea. Its mission is to advance knowledge and educate students in arts, science, technology and other academic areas that will best serve China and the world in the 21st century.

With this signing, UC Davis now has agreements of cooperation with 136 international universities and institutions, including 22 in China and five in Taiwan. UC Davis recently signed an agreement with BGI, the world’s largest genome sequencing institute, based in Shenzhen, China.

Kids get hands-on with brain science

Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

May 15, Sunday — Seventh- to 10th-graders and their parents from around Northern California will spend a day at UC Davis learning about the brain, with talks, demonstrations and hands-on activities that will include dissecting sheep brains. Organized by the UC Davis Graduate Group in Neuroscience, the event will give students and their parents the opportunity to learn about cutting-edge science and technology from experts in the field. From 10:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., participants will engage in hands-on activities of visual and perceptual illusions; from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m., they will take part in sheep brain dissections and measuring brainwaves. Hands-on activities will take place in the Sciences Laboratory Building, Hutchison Drive, on the UC Davis campus, and lectures will take place in the adjacent Sciences Lecture Hall. The participants are taking part in Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth.

Teaching innovation conference to meet at UC Davis

Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The first meeting of the Pacific Coast Teacher Innovation Network will be held at the UC Davis Conference Center on May 17, drawing K-12 teachers from Del Norte to Ventura counties.

Participants, including teachers from the Davis Joint Unified School District's Patwin Elementary School and Harper Junior High School, will present projects that showcase creative and innovative approaches to engaging and motivating students. Presentations will take place from 10:30 a.m. to noon and from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Featured projects range from teaching Spanish to native speakers in Sonoma County to teaching science and math to at-risk youth in Yolo County.

The projects were funded through a $1 million grant to the UC Davis School of Education from the California Postsecondary Education Commission. Through the program, faculty from UC Davis and Humboldt State University work with teams of teachers at public, private and charter schools to improve teaching skills and mastery of the subjects they teach. In all, 51 teacher teams have received two-year grants of up to $30,000 each.

"The meeting is an opportunity for teachers to network and to tell us a little bit about what they are up to. We want the teams to have an opportunity to showcase the early results of their efforts and to begin thinking about how to expand and sustain the great ideas, energy and best practices they are already putting into place,” said Joanne Bookmyer, a research affiliate with the UC Davis School of Education.

Researchers from Humboldt State will also present findings from their evaluations of the projects’ impact in the classroom. California Postsecondary Education Commission administrator Marcia Trott will also be present.

Symposium on 'Bayh-Dole @ 30': Turning research into innovation

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Academic experts and industry leaders from UC Davis and around the world will meet to address one of today’s most pressing legal and economic questions: How can intellectual property rights and patent law best be used to maximize the economic and social benefits from taxpayer-funded scientific research? The event, titled “Bayh-Dole @ 30: Mapping the Future of University Patenting” in reference to the 1980 federal legislation that assigned intellectual property rights for government-funded research discoveries, is jointly hosted by the new UC Davis Center for Science and Innovation Studies, UC Davis School of Law, the UC Davis Division of Social Sciences, and the UC Davis Science and Technology Studies Program.

The symposium will take place from Friday, April 29, to Saturday, April 30, at the UC Davis Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center and UC Davis School of Law’s Martin Luther King Jr. Hall.

Program details:

Friday, April 29

AGR Room, UC Davis Alumni Center

2:15 p.m.-2:30 p.m.: Welcome

Dean George R. Mangun, UC Davis Division of Social Sciences

Dean Kevin R. Johnson, UC Davis School of Law

2:30 p.m.-4 p.m.: Dan Burk (UC Irvine): "Is University Patenting Technology-Specific?"

Comment: Pamela Samuelson (UC Berkeley) and Mario Biagioli (UC Davis)

Response: Mark Lemley (Stanford)

4:15 p.m.-5:45 p.m.: Alan Bennett (UC Davis): "Managing University Intellectual Property in the Public Interest"; and Shubha Ghosh (University of Wisconsin): "Exporting Bayh-Dole: Identifying the Institutional Connections in Patent Commercialization"

Comment: Anupam Chander (UC Davis)

5:45 p.m.-6:45 p.m.: Reception and book party: Alain Pottage and Brad Sherman: "Figures of Invention" (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Saturday, April 30

Room 1001, UC Davis King Hall

9 a.m.-10:30 a.m.: Arti Rai (Duke): "Accountability and Government Rights: Agency Implementation of the Bayh-Dole"; and Martin Kenney (UC Davis): "Bayh-Dole and Entrepreneurship Reconsidered: University versus Inventor Ownership"

Comment: Keith Aoki (UC Davis)

10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.: Peter Lee (UC Davis): "Transcending the Tacit Dimension: Markets, Relationships, and Organizations in Technology Transfer"; David Winickoff (UC Berkeley): "Bayh-Dole, Research Tools, and the Scientific Enterprise"; and Brian Kahin (CCIA, Harvard): "Working Knowledge: The University Envisions Innovation"

Comment: Andrew Hargadon (UC Davis)

12:15 p.m.-1:30 p.m.: Lunch

1:45 p.m.-3:15 p.m.: Brad Sherman (Griffith University, Brisbane): "The Patenting of University-Based Research in Australia"; and Tim Lenoir (Duke): "Federal Funding and Innovations in Bionanotechnology: U.S.-China Comparisons"

Comment: Madhavi Sunder (UC Davis)

3:30 p.m.-5 p.m.: Alain Pottage (London School of Economics): "Synthetic Biology: Reconstructing the Public in the Wake of Bayh-Dole" and “The Digital Commons and Bayh-Dole"

Comment: Joseph Dumit (UC Davis)

5 p.m.-5:15 p.m.: Pamela Samuelson (UC Berkeley): Concluding remarks

More information on the speakers is available online from the UC Davis Center for Innovations Studies website at http://innovation.ucdavis.edu.

The Bayh-Dole Act was enacted by Congress in 1980; it assigned intellectual property control to universities, businesses and nonprofits for discoveries arising from government-funded research. Prior to Bayh-Dole, control would have belonged to the government. The act figures prominently in numerous high-profile legal battles over intellectual property and patents, including the current U.S. Supreme Court case Stanford v. Roche, a dispute over Stanford University’s intellectual property rights to federally funded drug research.

The Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center is located on the east side of Mrak Hall Drive across from the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. The School of Law is about one block north of the Mondavi Center on the west side of Mrak Hall Drive.

Media may park at no cost in any regular parking space, but must place a media business card on the driver's side dash to avoid getting a parking ticket. Freelance journalists without a business card should call (530) 754-7173 in advance to make parking arrangements.