Berkeleyan
News Briefs
12 March 2008
Sustainability awards nominations sought; April 4 deadline
The Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Sustainability is accepting nominations for the 2008 Sustainability Awards. Nominations of staff, faculty, students, and groups are open until April 4; recipients will be announced at the Chancellor's Sustainability Summit on April 21. The short nominee application is online at newscenter.berkeley.edu/goto/08sustainnom.
The awards provide the campus community with a chance to recognize those who have gone that extra mile to implement a "green practice"; taken steps to make sure the campus fulfills its strong commitment to sustainability; or been an unsung hero who reminds others to take care of our planet in small ways.
Visit sustainability.berkeley.edu/summit for more information about the Sustainability Summit; e-mail stevemar@berkeley.edu with questions about the nomination process.
Regents' Junior Faculty Fellowship applications due soon
Regents' Junior Faculty Fellowships provide summer salary awards in the amount of $5,000 for junior faculty. Interested faculty should submit application materials by Monday, April 7. Deadlines for the department chairs and deans who support those applications follow in successive weeks: department chairs on April 14, deans on April 21.
Awards will be announced in June. For information and the application, visit vpaafw.chance.berkeley.edu/regents.html or contact Cathy Romanski in the Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Faculty Welfare at 642-7759 or at romanski@berkeley.edu.
Cornell's Mermin to deliver Oppenheimer Lecture March 17
The annual J. Robert Oppenheimer Lecture in Physics will be delivered this year by N. David Mermin, the Horace White Professor of Physics Emeritus at Cornell. Mermin's interests include quantum computation and the pedagogy and conceptual foundations of special relativity. He is the author of It's About Time: Understanding General Relativity, a book aimed at the general reader, in addition to several other scholarly books and more than 100 research papers.
The title of Mermin's lecture, to be delivered at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, March 17, in 155 Dwinelle Hall, is "Spooky Actions at a Distance."
UC presidential selection committee to meet March 13
The UC Regents' Special Committee to Consider the Selection of a President will meet in closed session via teleconference on Thursday, March 13, beginning at noon, to discuss matters pertaining to the presidential search.
The committee was formed following the Aug. 13 announcement of President Robert Dynes' decision to step down as the university's systemwide leader. Its members include regents chair Richard Blum, who is the committee's chair; regent Sherry Lansing; Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger; Benjamin Allen, 2007-08 student regent; Eleanor Brewer, AAUC president and alumni regent; and regents Russell Gould, Eddie Island, Paul Wachter, Gerald Parsky, Norman Pattiz, and Leslie Tang Schilling.
In keeping with its bylaws and policies, the regents will undertake a national search for Dynes' replacement. The committee is consulting broadly with constituent groups of the university from across all 10 campuses.
Yale's Ackerman to lecture this Thursday, March 13
The Townsend Center's Forum on the Humanities and the Public World presents a lecture by Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale, entitled "The Death of Citizenship" on Thursday, March 13, at 5 p.m. in the Begalle Room, 220 Stephens.
Ackerman is the author of 15 books that have had a broad influence in political philosophy, constitutional law, and public policy. His major works include Social Justice in the Liberal State and his multivolume constitutional history, We the People; his most recent books are The Failure of the Founding Fathers (2005) and Before the Next Attack (2006). He is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Commander of the French Order of Merit, and a recipient of the American Philosophical Society's Henry Phillips Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Jurisprudence.