Berkeleyan

Awards

08 November 2006

Economist Card honored by Bonn institute

David Card, a Berkeley economist known for his work in labor and immigration, is a 2006 recipient of the prestigious Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) Award in Labor Economics.

In announcing the award, the research institute based in Bonn, Germany, said Card and co-winner Alan Krueger of Princeton University "have stimulated labor economics for many years with their original research approach, the practical relevance of their results, and their remarkable use of natural experiments to test commonly accepted models."

Card and Krueger, the institute said, have analyzed the impacts of education, training, and human capital on earnings and found that the quality of one's schooling is a major influence on future earnings. The two wrote numerous papers and a book together while both were at Princeton from 1983 to 1997.

Card's work has focused on such topics as immigration, welfare reform, Medicaid, pensions, minimum wages, strikes, and collective bargaining. Currently, he is researching "neighborhood tipping," or how white residents tend to move out of neighborhoods when increasing numbers of minorities move in; the relationship between individual savings and job loss and unemployment insurance in Austria. He has also analyzed Catholic and public schools in Ontario, Canada, where both are financed by the government.

The award was established in 2002 as essentially a lifetime achievement award, says Card. It was to be presented during a ceremony in Berlin on Wednesday, Nov. 8, and includes a cash award of $64,000.

Ohala receives career achievement award

John Ohala, an emeritus professor of linguistics who served on the Berkeley faculty from 1970 to 2004, was awarded the 2006 International Speech Communication Association Medal for Scientific Achievement at ISCA's annual meeting last month in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Founded in 1988, ISCA has given the award 11 previous times to recognize cumulative scientific contributions to the field of speech communications. In introducing Ohala at the opening plenary session of the group's meeting, Hiroya Fujisaki, of the University of Tokyo, said, "What makes him an extraordinary scholar is the uniqueness of his ideas and approaches, which go far beyond the conventional limits of linguistics and phonology."

Ohala's research is centered in experimental phonology and phonetics and ethological aspects of communication, including speech perception, sound change, phonetic and phonological universals, psychological aspects of phonology, and sound symbolism. He continues to serve on the Academic Senate's Committee for Undergraduate Scholarships and Honors.

GSE's Hull wins community-outreach award

Glynda Hull, a professor of language and literacy, society and culture in the Graduate School of Education, has been named as one of three winners of this year's Ernest A. Lynton Award for Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach. The New England Research Center for Higher Education (NERCHE) at the University of Massachusetts Boston created the award in 1996 to recognize faculty who connect their expertise and scholarship to community outreach.

Hull, a 2003 recipient of Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award, is a co-founder of DUSTY (Digital Underground Storytelling for Youth), a community technology center. DUSTY employs a multidisciplinary approach designed to engage grad students and undergrads, as well as Oakland youth and adults, in a collaborative learning model aimed at creating multimedia stories about their communities, families, and lives. The program also seeks to reconnect youth to school, and to cultivate college-going identities by fostering a mix of resources, opportunities, and social relationships needed for them to become successful border crossers and global communicators.