UCSB Economic Forecast Says California Economy to Fare Worse Than Nation’s

The California economy is headed toward a recession and the state’s economy “will be worse than that of the United States,” according to the Economic Forecast Project at UC Santa Barbara.

Speaking at an economic forecast presentation in March, the project’s director, Bill Watkins, a former research economist at the Federal Reserve in Washington, said that California has an economy that is much more volatile than the nation’s. Its current weaknesses include the state’s budget crisis and the reduced availability of initial-stage venture capital. “These weaknesses, along with a decimated residential real estate sector, imply that, once again, Californians will suffer more difficult economic times than will most Americans,” Watkins said. “Even if the United States manages to avoid a recession, California likely will not.”

The UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project is a research unit that provides regional, statewide, and national economic data, analysis, and forecasts to the public. According to research by the project’s economists, California will lose jobs in the coming months, the tech sector will be weak, and unemployment will climb more rapidly than in the rest of the nation. In addition, domestic migration out of the state will accelerate and California’s state budget, already in crisis, will get worse. “Local governments will see serious fiscal challenges,” Watkins said.

“Our forecast,” Watkins concluded, “is for a relatively mild California recession, while we expect the United States to narrowly avoid a recession.”

Philanthropist Establishes Endowed Chair for Social Sciences

UC Santa Barbara has received a $500,000 gift from Sara Miller McCune and SAGE Publications Inc., the company she founded, to establish an endowed chair for the dean of social sciences in the College of Letters and Science.

The recent gift from McCune, the publisher at SAGE, will support the teaching, research, and special activities of Melvin Oliver, a distinguished UCSB professor of sociology and dean of the social sciences. In honor of the gift, the leadership position will be known as the SAGE Sara Miller McCune Dean of Social Sciences.

McCune is a longtime campus benefactor and a trustee of the UC Santa Barbara Foundation. SAGE Publications, with its headquarters in Thousand Oaks, is a leading global and commercial academic publisher.

“Dean Oliver adds so much value to our community that we consider it a privilege to support UCSB in establishing this named chair,” said McCune.

UCSB to Help Set Sustainability Standards for College

UC Santa Barbara is among a group of educational institutions in the U.S. and Canada selected to participate in a new initiative to develop standards for measuring progress toward sustainability on college and university campuses.

The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System (STARS) is a collaborative pilot program recently launched by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), of which UCSB is a member. Program participants include public and private colleges, community colleges, and research universities.

The STARS system will be similar to the Leadership in Energy Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system. STARS, however, will be applied to an entire campus rather than to a single building or set of buildings and will evaluate social responsibility as well as environmental stewardship. The new STARS rating system will be available early next year.

Go Back to School With UCSB Summer Session

Summer Session offers students from other universities, high school students and Central Coast residents the opportunity to work on college degrees during the summer.

Courses are offered in two six-week sessions: from June 23 to Aug. 1, and from Aug. 4 to Sept. 12.

On-campus courses cost $162 per unit, plus a campus-based fee, with non- University of California students paying a $140 application fee. Off-campus courses cost $108 per unit, with non-UC students paying a $140 application fee. For Summer Session courses, UC undergraduate students pay for the first 8 units and get all other units free.

For registration information and a list of classes offered at the off-campus sites, visit the UCSB Summer Sessions Web site at www.summer.ucsb.edu.

Another option for pre-college students is the Research Mentorship Program, which involves students in cutting edge research with UCSB faculty members and advanced graduate students. The program tuition costs $3,000 with additional costs if a residential option is selected. For more information, visit www.summer.ucsb.edu/precollegeprograms.html.

UCSB Alumni Can Now Get LinkedIn

UCSB alumni can now network with each other on the professional networking site LinkedIn.

An online network of more than 20 million professionals, LinkedIn offers free personal accounts with networking and introduction features.

To sign on to the site, log on to www.linkedin.com/e/gis/55812/ 60015D5F7092 and follow the instructions to create a LinkedIn profile if you do not already have one. Once you put in a request to join, you will be approved by the group manager as quickly as possible. About 500 people have already joined the UCSB Alumni Association group.

For more information, contact Susan Goodale, Alumni programs director, at (805) 893-4611 or at susan.goodale@ ia.ucsb.edu.

Faculty Awards

David Awschalom, a professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering, has been named Faculty Research Lecturer for 2008. Awschalom is director of the Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation and associate director of the California Nanosystems Institute, a collaborative endeavor between UC Santa Barbara and UCLA.

Paolo Cascini, an assistant professor of mathematics, has won a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for his research in algebraic geometry.

Miguel Eckstein, a professor of psychology who is affiliated with the Vision and Image Understanding Laboratory, has been named one of two winners of the National Academy of Science’s $50,000 Troland Research Award.

Joel Feigin, a professor of music, has received a $10,000 commission from the prestigious Fromm Music Foundation to compose a concerto for piano and chamber Faculty Awards orchestra for Israeli-American pianist Yael Weiss.

Michael Gazzaniga, professor of psychology at UC Santa Barbara and director of UCSB’s Sage Center for the Study of the Mind, is the recipient of a 2008 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association (APA). Gazzaniga has also been invited to present the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 2009.

Daniel Hone, professor emeritus of physics and director of outreach and education for the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, has been named UCSB’s Edward A. Dickson Emeriti Professor for 2007-08. The honor comes with a $10,000 grant to support the awardee’s research-related activities.

Thuc-Quyen Nguyen, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has won UC Santa Barbara’s 2007-08 Harold J. Plous Award, given annually by UCSB’s Academic Senate, on behalf of the faculty, to an assistant professor from the humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences, who has shown exceptional achievement in research, teaching, and service to the university.

Matthew Tirrell, dean of the College of Engineering, recently received the William H. Walker Award for outstanding contributions to chemical engineering literature.

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) will recognize Chancellor Henry T. Yang in April for his pioneering aerospace research. Yang, who is also a professor of mechanical engineering, has been selected to receive the AIAA Structures, Structural Dynamics, and Materials Award for 2008.

Bren School Dean to Retire Next Year

Ernst von Weizsäcker, dean of the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, has announced his plans to retire next year.

A search committee has been formed to fill his spot, according to Chancellor’s Staff Advisory Council Nominations Co-Chair Eve Rothfarb.

Dean von Weizsäcker said he had planned to head up the Bren School for about three years, but that he may extend his time as dean if necessary.

Dean von Weizsäcker, who joined the Bren School in January 2006, had previously been policy director of the United Nations Centre for Science and Technology for Development.

Library Wins National Award for ‘UCSB Reads’

The UC Santa Barbara Library has received a prestigious national award from the American Library Association (ALA) recognizing outstanding achievement in library public relations for “UCSB Reads for Earth Day,” a 2007 community-wide effort to raise awareness about global environmental issues.

The award includes a cash prize of $5,000.

The “UCSB Reads for Earth Day” program was praised by the ALA for “reflecting the values of the Santa Barbara community, home of the original Earth Day, and for leading a campus-wide initiative to read, discuss, and even recycle (for other readers) the book, ‘Field Notes from a Catastrophe.’”

Held in collaboration with the Santa Barbara Public Library, Patagonia, and many campus partners, the program reached a wide range of community members beyond the university, from high school students to Patagonia employees to users of recordings for the blind and dyslexic.

UC Santa Barbara Awarded $2 Million for Alzheimer’s Research

The University of California, Santa Barbara has been awarded nearly $2 million from the Larry L. Hillblom Foundation for innovative research in Alzheimer’s disease. The grant will support research on the neurofibrillary tangles that, in addition to amyloid plaque, are a hallmark of the disease.

The research effort will be led by Kenneth Kosik, co-director of UCSB’s Neuroscience Research Institute and Harriman Professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology. He will head the Larry L. Hillblom Center for Neurodegeneration Research at UC Santa Barbara, which will exist for the duration of the fouryear, $1,970,291 project.

Kosik has spent most of his career studying the neurofibrillary tangles of Alzheimer’s disease. His research group at Harvard University, where he was previously a faculty member, was one of the first to discover that “tau” is the protein involved in the tangles. Recent discoveries in his lab at UCSB helped to attract the foundation’s attention.