Campus News

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Bored by the election? Wondering what’s at stake? A panel of faculty experts from the University of California, Santa Cruz, will discuss it all at a free public forum on Wednesday, October 30, from 7 to 9 P.M. The event, which is handicapped accessible, will be held in the Stevenson College Dining Hall…

A proposal to alter UCSC’s grading policy will be put to a mail ballot, it was announced at the Academic Senate meeting on Tuesday, October 15. The proposal would allow UCSC students to request letter grades in their courses and accumulate a grade-point average. The proposal was made by the senate’s Committee on Educational Policy…

UCSC faculty have been called on lately by national and international television for their expertise, including anthropologist Susan Harding, who was a consultant during the planning and production of a new six-part PBS documentary called "With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America." Harding was one of a handful of…

Theodore Holman Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Theodore Holman uses chemical and biochemical techniques to study the biological functions of enzymes that contain iron or other metal atoms. Two of his current projects explore metalloproteins that regulate heme biosynthesis and play key roles in the formation of fatty plaques that can trigger heart disease.…

The Stevenson Global Security Colloquium continues with a talk on October 21 by Susanne Jonas, lecturer in Latin American and Latino studies, on "Transnational Realities and Anti-Immigrant State Policies in the Americas" from 3:30 to 4:40 p.m. in Room 131, Cowell College. On October 28, Saskia Sassen of Columbia University will speak on "Immigration Policy…

MT. HAMILTON, CA–Computers soon will take total control of a 30-inch telescope at Lick Observatory, making it the most sensitive fully robotic telescope anywhere. The Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT), built by astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, will be dedicated Friday, October 25, by officials from UC Santa Cruz, which operates the observatory…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–The University of California’s Monterey Bay Education, Science, and Technology (MBEST) Center at the former Fort Ord military base will soon take another step toward recruiting new educational and research tenants, thanks to a $1 million grant from the Economic Development Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The new arrivals will join…

A two-month cruise off the Pacific Northwest this summer was a slam-dunk success for UCSC hydrogeologist Andrew Fisher and a team of researchers aboard the 470-foot JOIDES Resolution, flagship of the international Ocean Drilling Program. Fisher, the expedition’s cochief scientist, and his team drilled into the seafloor near the Juan de Fuca Ridge, where the…

Private services were held last week for Gail Ellen Rich, a former UCSC staff member who died Saturday, October 5, of a pulmonary embolism. She was 45. Rich worked at the Performing Arts Public Events Office from February 1984 to June 1994. Most recently, she had been helping her domestic partner, Neal Hellman, run Gourd…

It seems that everyone is interested in consciousness these days, prompted in part by the release last spring of philosopher David Chalmers’s book, The Conscious Mind. The book, which instigated lively debate in mainstream newspapers and scientific magazines, continues to draw coverage in the U.S. and abroad, notably, in the Economist, the Times Literary Supplement,…

Marc Mangel Professor of Environmental Studies Marc Mangel comes to UCSC from UC Davis, where he was director of the Center for Population Biology. Mangel focuses on the ecological implications of natural variation within populations of organisms. "It’s essential that natural scientists and environmental scientists work together to solve environmental problems," says Mangel. He has…

Long Marine Lab is recruiting new docents to give tours to the general public and help conduct classes for schoolchildren. A two-month series of docent-training classes begins in early January. Registration deadline is November 27. Lab educators will hold an orientation session for interested applicants at 6 p.m. Monday, October 21, at Long Marine Lab.…