Campus Memos
Memoranda mailed to deans, directors, department chairs and administrative officers issued on the chancellor's mailing lists. For copies, contact originating offices.
Deans and directors memos are also available on Infocal under "campus directives." Connect to Infocal via Gopher, WWW or telnet software at infocal.berkeley.edu. For assistance using Infocal, call 642-8507.
The following is a list of recent memos. Questions about memos should be directed to Aileen Kim, 642-3100, or send email to aileen_kim@maillink.
Jan. 4, Request for Proposals From the National Science Foundation for Funding Under the Academic Research Infrastructure Program, from Joseph Cerny, vice chancellor for research.
Jan. 5, Discontinuance of the Forest Products Undergraduate Major and Name Change for the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Policy's Undergraduate Major, from Carol T. Christ, the vice chancellor and provost.
Awards and Honors
Eric Brewer, assistant professor of computer science, and graduate student Paul Gauthier had their new World Wide Web search engine called Inktomi recognized in the December 1995 issue of Wired Magazine as a hot item for 1996.
Inktomi introduced parallel computing to the Internet to create the fastest and most comprehensive search engine now available to search the web. (See Berkeleyan Nov. 1-7, 1995.)
A new word to many, Inktomi is pronounced "ink to me' and is the name of a mythological trickster spider of the Plains Indians.
Up and running since August, the Inktomi search engine can be found at the web address http://inktomi.berkeley.edu.
Other hot items selected by Wired included clear plastic fashions and free after-hours digital cell calls, as well as Soul Train and the Toys 'R' Us Visa Card.
Kenneth Jowitt, professor of political science; Kent Lightfoot, professor of anthropology; and Leon Litwack, professor of history, were recognized with 1995 Distinguished Teaching Awards by the Division of Social Sciences in the College of Letters and Science.
The awards were for sustained excellence in teaching large undergraduate lecture courses.
John J. Ohala, professor of linguistics, has been elected a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. He was cited for his efforts in integrating the study of speech acoustics into linguistics.
He was also elected president of the International Phonetic Association.
Founded in 1889, the association promotes the interests of phoneticians around the world and maintains standards of use of the international phonetic alphabet, the universal alphabet for representing the pronunciation of any spoken language.
Randy W. Schekman, professor of molecular and cell biology and an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute on campus, is a co-winner of a 1996 Gairdner Foundation International Award for work on the mechanisms whereby proteins are manufactured within the living cell.
By applying genetic analysis to yeast cells, Schekman helped establish the intricate mechanisms that control the biological assembly line along which proteins are moved as they are processed. This research has contributed to a new understanding of brain function and disease.
Robert Twiss, professor of landscape architecture, reports the Research Program in Environmental Planning and Geographical Information Systems has just been recognized as the Best University Geographic Information Systems Site by the journal GIS World, based on a survey of users.
The research program was cited for developing computer tools and applying them in environmental planning, management, research and teaching to manipulate and analyze geographic spatial data.
It was particularly credited for support of open computing hardware architecture, public domain software and access to digital information on the environment and land use.
Twiss said the most likely basis for this wide interest is a feature developed by his group called GRASS-Links, which he believes to be the world's first on-line service of this type providing access to the San Francisco Bay/Delta geo-database on environment and land use.
Readers can see for themselves at http://www.regis.berkeley.edu/.
Staff Enrichment
Employee Development And Training
For more information, for copies of the 1995-96 Employee Development and Training catalog or for information on how to enroll in classes, call 642-8134.
Operational Planning:
The Basis for Budget
Development and Control
Feb. 16, 8:30 am-4:30 pm
and February 23, 8:30 am-noon.
Participants will learn how to formulate departmental goals and objectives, relate these to higher level strategies and goals, identify means to measure whether or not departmental objectives are met, develop departmental action plans and monitor operational actions and budgets to meet objectives.
Improving Your Writing Process
Feb. 26, March 1, 4, 8, 11, 15, 18 and 22, 12:10-1:30 pm.
In this eight-session noontime course, participants will learn to analyze their own writing process, modify their writing and gain confidence as writers.
In a comfortable workshop environment, writing exercises will be offered and partnerships will be formed to allow for cooperative learning.
Resolving Conflicts, for Staff
Feb. 27, 8:30 am-4:30 pm.
In this workshop you will discuss and analyze typical workplace conflicts, assess your style of dealing with conflict, learn to select a strategy for dealing with conflict that is appropriate to the situation and use case studies and role plays to practice listening and speaking skills.
Roadmap to Career Development
Feb. 28, 8:30 am-noon.
Confused about where to start in your own career development? Do you want an overview of the various career development options that are available to you? This class is designed to answer some of these questions and provide basic information about career development.
Health*Matters
Computers at Work
Feb. 7, 2-3 pm.
Learn about health issues related to computer use. Design a user friendly workstation. Practice exercises to relieve computer related aches and pains. For information or enrollment, call 643-4646.
Publications
Teaching Children to Read and Write: Becoming an Influential Teacher
By Robert B. Ruddell, professor of education, and Martha Rapp Ruddell, professor of education at Sonoma State University (Allyn and Bacon, 1995).
In this book, the authors urge every educator to become an influential teacher of reading and writing--a teacher who will change the lives of children.
They provide detailed teaching strategies as well as the research and theory basis underlying their suggestions.
The many instructional strategies included in the book are carefully constructed to be consistent with current educational beliefs, knowledge and theories, say the authors.
Head of the Class
By Gabrielle Morris, oral historian, Bancroft Library (Twayne Publishers, 1995).
Affirmative action has become a central issue of debate at the state and national level. This book demonstrates that for years, trailblazing black Americans have excelled at Berkeley and then moved on to successful careers in law, finance, politics and education.
These experiences are collected into Morris's book, which tells the stories of Ida Louise Jackson, the first black woman to earn a California teaching credential, former California Supreme Court Justice Allen Broussard and former Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson, along with 10 others who earned college degrees before affirmative action began to reshape American society.
In their own words, these pioneers describe what they faced and how they coped in the years before affirmative action was put in place.
An afterword by Troy Duster, director of Berkeley's Institute for Social Change, juxtaposes this historical picture with the experiences of today's students. Duster argues that minority students still face discrimination and isolation, even though the university's population has become more diverse.
Morris has been an interviewer and editor for the Regional Oral History Office of the Bancroft Library for more than 25 years. Her book began as a series of interviews she conducted for the university's Black Alumni Project and includes interviews from the Black Women Oral History Project of Radcliffe College. The complete interviews are on file at the Bancroft Library.