Awards

26 February 2003

Harry Hathaway receives Chancellor’s Award
Harry Hathaway ’59 of San Marino, California, has received the campus’s 2002 Chancellor’s Award. The award was presented by Chancellor Robert Berdahl at the UC Berkeley Foundation’s annual awards dinner on Feb. 7.

The Chancellor’s Award is the highest award given to a volunteer by the university. A nonprofit corporation that encourages private support of Berkeley and manages the campus’s endowment, the foundation honors one individual each year for consistently distinguished service. Hathaway has served as a trustee of the foundation for the last decade and chair in 1997-98. He was honored for his leadership during the Campaign for the New Century, which raised $1.44 billion for Berkeley, and for his efforts to raise Berkeley’s visibility and increase support in Southern California.

Over the years, Hathaway has also chaired and served on many of the foundation’s committee, and has served the campus with distinction as co-chair of the Greater Los Angeles Major Gifts Committee for the New Century Campaign and as a volunteer for the Keeping the Promise Campaign. In 1996, he received the Trustees’ Citation for his outstanding achievement in fundraising on behalf of the university.

While working toward his Cal degree in business administration, Hathaway was involved in fraternity affairs, served as president of Skull and Keys, and played freshman football. His family includes a number of alumni — his wife, Betsy ’62; his son, David ’89; and his father, Austin ’26. The former managing partner of the Los Angeles office of the Houston-based firm Fulbright & Jaworski, Hathaway is an ardent advocate of public higher education.

Alexis Bell
Professor Alexis Bell has been awarded the 2003 Robert Burwell Lectureship in Catalysis by the North American Catalysis Society. The lectureship is given in recognition of substantial contributions to the field of catalysis, with emphasis on discovery and understanding of catalytic phenomena, catalytic reaction mechanisms and identification and description of catalytic sites and species.

Bell’s research activities have led to more than 400 publications in prestigious journals in catalysis, chemistry, and chemical engineering. Over many years, he has applied cutting-edge spectroscopy and theory to study surfaces before and after catalytic reactions. The Burwell Lectureship comes with an honorarium and a stipend for travel to local clubs of the North American Catalysis Society.

Sociology quarterly ‘Contexts’
The quarterly journal “Contexts” — edited by Berkeley Professor of Sociology Claude Fischer — has been named the best new social sciences journal by the Professional and Scholarly Division of the American Association of Publishers. Subtitled “Understanding People in Their Social Worlds,” Contexts is published by University of California Press for the American Sociological Association.

Launched in March 2002, it features scholarly articles presented in an engaging, accessible manner, and aspires to be a place for discussion for social scientists and the public.

“This a very high-profile award in the publishing world and wonderful news for ‘Contexts,’” said Rebecca Simon, assistant director for journals publishing at UC Press. “The journal was competing against publications that are put out by large commercial presses; it’s a tremendous honor.”

Simon accepted the award, on behalf of the journal, at the association’s meeting in Washington D.C. on Feb. 3. “Contexts”’ web address is www.ucpress.edu/journals/ctx.

Alan Kolling
On Feb. 9, Alan Kolling, law and policy analyst in the office of undergraduate education, received the Donald D. Gehring Award at the annual Association for Student Judicial Affairs conference, in Tampa, Florida.

The award is given annually for “exceptional individual contributions to the area of student judicial affairs.” The awards committee cited in particular his work as chair of the constitutional review committee, which proposed fundamental changes in the association’s governance structure, allowing for more diverse representation in the organization’s leadership. One of the committee’s innovations was to institute regional representation on the association’s board of directors, which helped open up the leadership to minority representation.

The Association for Student Judicial Affairs is the national organization of student-conduct officers, deans of students, and student judicial-affairs staff.

Eugene Myers
Eugene Myers, professor of computer science and a prominent researcher involved in the sequencing of the human genome, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. The election is considered one of the highest professional honors for an American engineer.

Myers is the 87th faculty member at Berkeley to receive the honor. Among academic institutions, Berkeley maintains one of the highest representations in the academy, which named 77 new members and nine foreign associates this year — bringing the total U.S. membership to 2,138 and the number of foreign associates to 165.

Ken (Kyung-ho) Min
Ken (Kyung-ho) Min of the department of biodynamics has received the Republic of Korea’s Certificate of National Decoration for “his dedication, commitment, and outstanding contribution to the development of Korean Society.”

Since joining the Berkeley faculty in 1969, Min founded and built the campus’s world-renowned martial arts instructional program and helped to raise the profile of the martial arts internationally.

The Republic of Korea cited Min’s contributions to the advancement of Asian culture; the development of taekwondo as a worldwide martial art and Olympic sport, Korean sports education, and U.S. amateur sports; and scholarly exchange programs between the U.S. and Korea.

The longtime Berkeley teacher holds black belts in taekwondo, iudo, hapkido, and kendo and served as U.S. team leader for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. In 1995, the Republic of Korea gave a $1 million endowment, in his honor, to Berkeley’s martial arts program — the first-ever university endowment in martial arts.

Min received the award during a ceremony at the Korean consulate in San Francisco.