Laurels
Blue ribbons, gold stars, honorable mentions
09 April 2009
BERKELEY — Barbara Needell, a principal investigator/research specialist in the School of Social Welfare, has been awarded the American Public Human Services Association's 2008 Peter Forsythe Award for her leadership in the field of public child welfare. Needell, with the school's Center for Social Services Research, was cited for providing important technical assistance to 25 California counties that are implementing the foundation-sponsored "Family to Family Initiative, a foster-care program, and for other work in support of the APHSA's mission.
The campus Emeriti Associ-ation has announced three award-ees for the 2009-10 academic year. The Dickson Emeriti Professorship goes to Hubert Dreyfus, who, since retiring from the Department of Philosophy in 1994, has remained active in scholarly activities, and regularly teaches large introductory philosophy courses as well as an upper-division class on Heidegger. The Berkeley nominee for the systemwide Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award is Louise George Clubb, a leading authority on the impact of Renaissance Italian drama who has mentored graduate students since her retirement from the comparative-literature and Italian-studies departments. And the chemistry department's Ignacio Tinoco was named Berkeley Emeritus of the Year for, among other post-retirement achievements, advancing our understanding of how proteins are made in the cell. That work was recently published in the journal Nature.
The Commission on the Status of Women — which annually "recognizes and honors the efforts of extraordinary women who live, work, or learn in Berkeley, and who have done outstanding work in the Berkeley community" — this year honors two campus women. Lupe Gallegos-Diaz, of the Office of Multicultural Student Development, is active in a wide variety of community activities, including roles with the Bay Area Hispano Institute for Advancement, the Voter Registration and Education Project, and the Greenlining Institute. Arlene Blum, an internationally known mountaineer who earned her Ph.D. at Berkeley and is now a visiting scholar with the chemistry department, recently launched the Green Science Policy Institute, and has been a public-policy leader in efforts to remove fire-retardant chemicals from household products.
The C.V. Starr East Asian Library has been named one of eight recipients of the American Institute of Architects' 2009 Library Building Awards, celebrating "the finest examples of library design" by U.S.-licensed architects. Judges, representing both the AIA and American Library Association, particularly noted how the structure is "embedded in Berkeley's hilly landscape and thus experienced in a dynamic way," and praised the architects' efforts to reduce its environmental impact through the use of innovative design elements.