Campus News

SANTA CRUZ, CA–A miniature forest of robotically controlled optical fibers has sprouted from the end of the 120-inch Shane Telescope at Lick Observatory near San Jose, letting astronomers capture and analyze faint rays of light from dozens of distant stars or galaxies at the same time. Named the multi-object spectrograph (MOS), the device is the…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–A best-selling romance novelist has made a gift to the University of California, Santa Cruz–her alma mater–to establish an important library endowment. The endowment comes from Jayne Ann Krentz, whose contribution of $10,000 has established the Castle Humanities Fund. Interest from the fund, established in Krentz’s maiden name, makes it possible for the…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Next week’s mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope has a distinctly blue-and-gold flair: UC Santa Cruz alumnus Steven Hawley will be one of seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery, while professor of astronomy and astrophysics Harland Epps helped design one of the telescope’s sophisticated new instruments. Discovery is scheduled to lift…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–The recent signing of the Guatemalan peace accords ended one of this century’s bloodiest civil wars. Susanne Jonas of the Latin American and Latino studies program at UC Santa Cruz is a leading U.S. authority on the war in Guatemala, and she will be participating in a two-day workshop on peacemaking at UCSC…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–A floating team of scientists poking into the Pacific Ocean floor off Costa Rica has unearthed mud that raises puzzling questions about what fuels the volcanoes 125 miles away on shore. Researchers aboard Leg 170 of the Ocean Drilling Program explored the origins of Central American volcanoes and other geological mysteries during a…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Professor Ray T. Collett, director of the Arboretum at the University of California, Santa Cruz, received the California Horticultural Society Annual Award in San Francisco on Monday, February 3. Collett was honored for his lifelong contributions to California horticulture, including establishing the UCSC Arboretum, introducing new plants to California gardens, and breeding new…

Professor of physics Joel Primack and his wife Nancy Ellen Abrams were recognized by the Templeton Exemplary Papers Program for "In a Beginning… Quantum Cosmology and Kabbalah," an article they published in the January/February 1995 issue of Tikkun, a bimonthly Jewish critique of politics, culture, and society. The article earned an award as an exemplary…

Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood discussed her selection as president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the national biweekly newspaper _The Scientist, _as well as in "Reuters Health," a daily online news service for physicians. Founding Crown College provost and famed botanist Kenneth Thimann, who died on January 15 at age 92, was…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–From the upset victory of Democrat Loretta Sanchez over incumbent Republican Congressman Robert Dornan in Orange County to the passage of Proposition 209, Latinos had a lot at stake in the 1996 elections. The Chicano/Latino Research Center at UC Santa Cruz is hosting a panel discussion entitled "Lessons from the 1996 Elections for…

A celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life may rightfully honor the civil rights leader for possessing "greater courage and sense of sacrifice than most of us," said Harvard University scholar Cornel West in a recent UCSC lecture. But, he added, his legacy is better viewed in the context of an ongoing struggle for social…

The Stevenson Program on Global Security Winter Colloquium continues on Monday, February 3, with a talk by Jonathan Fox, associate professor of Latin American and Latino studies, on the topic "Taking Stock of the World Bank’s ‘Sustainable Development’ Reforms: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." The colloquium is held from 3:30 to 4:40 p.m.…

Harry Berger, professor emeritus of literature, is the author of a collection of Shakespeare essays called Making Trifles of Terrors: Redistributing Complicities in Shakespeare, which is being released by Stanford University Press at the beginning of February. The book was edited by UCSC alumnus Peter Erickson (who earned a Ph.D. in literature in 1975). A…