|
|
 |
 |
Coastlines
Magazine |
Annual Report | Gaucho
eNews Newsletter | Alumni
Authors |
| |
|
|
Coastlines
Magazine - Online Feature Article
Table of Contents
Online Feature Article
Coastlines Milestones - Information
Update Form
Advertising
Our Advertising Partners
Alumni
Calender of Events
|
| |
Summer 2005
|
| |
|
| |
Pride and Joy
How UCSB Transforms Lives Revealed at Awards Ceremony |
| |
|
| |
The pride and joy of association with UCSB and
how that association has transformed lives were the themes of this year’s
UCSB Alumni Association Awards Banquet June 4. Eight awards were presented at
ceremonies held for the first time at Francisco Torres residence hall in Isla
Vista, purchased and renovated recently by the university. Fred Kavli, Sara Miller
McCune, and Peter Steiner were inducted as honorary alumni. Professor Emeritus
of Economics Walter Mead received the Teaching Award. Mary Jane Salcido ’62
was the recipient of the 2005 Graver Alumni Service Award. Steven E. Cooper ’68
was honored for Lifetime Achievement. And, finally, Sunne Wright McPeak ’70
and Lynn Scarlett ’70, M.A.’73 received Distinguished Alumni Awards.
In all but one instance, the recipients knew in advance that they would be receiving
the awards. Peter Steiner’s award, however, was presented by the Association
board of directors as a surprise at the last awards banquet he would preside
over as alumni director. Following are excerpts from the citations and the awardees’ remarks. |
| |
 Honorary Alumnus
Fred Kavli
Fred Kavli is a distinguished scientist and leader of industry as well
as a generous philanthropist dedicated to the advancement of science to benefit
the human condition. He founded Kavlico Corporation, a developer and manufacturer
of sensors for aeronautic, automotive and industrial applications. Through its
success he established the Kavli Foundation which has provided two endowed chairs
for the College of Engineering—one in optoelectronics and sensors and the
other in mechanics of microscale systems. Because of his significant support,
the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics is now named in his honor. In fact,
his endowment of this institute has served as a model for similar endowments
he is providing to nine other research institutes in the United States and Holland.
Starting in 2008, scientists in the fields of astrophysics, neuroscience, and
nanoscience will be awarded $1 million Kavli Prizes. The awards will be presented
in Oslo, his native country. Fred Kavli serves UCSB as a trustee of The UCSB
Foundation and as a member of the UC President’s Board on Science and Innovation.
Fred
Kavli: Thank you for the honor. Yes, it truly is an honor to be a virtual alumnus
of UCSB. It is an honor because there is so much to be proud of at UCSB, and
to be a friend of all you who have helped make this university so great. It’s
a real pleasure to join all of you lucky souls that have the opportunity to get
your education here in this beautiful paradise. With leaders like Henry
and Dilling Yang, who are the soul of this university, the embodiment of excellence
to education and research, and with five Nobel prize recipients, not to mention
that UCSB has an extensive and very impressive list of members of the national
academies of art, science, and engineering, UCSB truly has a renowned faculty.
It has been a special pleasure getting to know David Gross and many of the great
scientists at KITP who are probing and pushing to extend the limits of scientific
knowledge. And professor like Noel MacDonald and Larry Coldren who have chairs
alright, but they are not sitting in them, they are still running with them at
the leading edge of science. We live in an increasingly competitive world.
Many people around the world, especially in Asia, have tremendous personal ambition
and drive and excellent education to better compete and excel. Well, we tend
to forget. It used to be that the brightest and most ambitious were competing
keenly to come here. In a flat world, where the Internet has torn down the borders
of communication and employment, this is not so much the case anymore. We must
do a better job of educating our own people, especially we must do a better job
of K-12 science education and interest more people to study science and engineering.
Thank you for honoring me tonight and including me as a part of your family.
I am proud and honored. |
| |
 Honorary Alumna
Sara Miller McCune
Numerous entities at UCSB have benefited from the vision and
generosity of Sara Miller McCune. She has provided generous leadership support
to a wide variety of activities including a recent donation in support of the
library in the Mosher Alumni House. Other beneficiaries include the UCSB Libraries,
the University Art Museum, the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Religion,
The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education.
The McCune Conference Room in the Humanities and Social Sciences Building comfortably
and elegantly hosts gatherings of members of the university family throughout
the year. Sara Miller McCune is the founder of Sage Publications, a leading
academic publisher whose authors include many UCSB faculty members. She is also
founder of the McCune Foundation, and a trustee of The UCSB Foundation. She has
received awards for both her entrepreneurship and her philanthropy.
Sara Miller McCune: This wonderful
university has grown in excellence and stature since I moved here in 1992. I
am proud and honored to be one of your honorary alums. I know that this is a
very distinguished list, and I’m
not quite sure that I belong, but I’m grateful anyway. I want to
thank and acknowledge UCSB, which is going to the heights in the world, not only
because of the wonderful things we are doing in the sciences, where there is
the potential of saving and improving so many lives, but also because of what
we do in the social sciences and in the humanities. I have been concerned for
a number of years now with issues relating to equality, gender, [and] children.
The social sciences in particular offer the potential of solution to some common
problems in our society that should not exist in a country as rich as ours. The
humanities offer us a way of learning about these issues that touches our hearts
and our minds at the same time. There are all sorts of ways that the humanities
open our eyes and then our hearts. And so I want to recognize this university
not only for its excellence in all of those areas but also for its encouragement
of interdisciplinary cooperation because in the area where disciplines overlap,
we find answers, knowledge, [and] greatness. And I wish all the blessing of all
those things in the future to this university.
|
| |
 Teaching award
Walter J. Mead
Walter Mead taught economics at UCSB for more than three decades.
His students credit him with excellent and engaging teaching as well as with
significant help in achieving their professional goals. They use words like “generous, honest,
fair, knowledgeable, and challenging” to describe this mentor and friend.
He made his students feel respected for their opinions, and he worked to help
them succeed, they say. He was “inspirational” while being “firm
but fair.” “Dr. Mead’s undergraduate economics classes were
my most rewarding classes,” wrote one in nominating Professor Mead for
this award. “His support and encouragement were invaluable considering
that women were rather rare, and not always encouraged, in the Department of
Economics at the time,” wrote another.
Walter Mead Thank you very much.
I love this honor. I will cherish it.
I arrived in Santa Barbara in 1957. There was no Economics Department in 1957.
There were five people housed in the Social Sciences Department, of which an
anthropologist was chair. There were 122 majors in all of the social sciences.
Today, economics alone has 2,084 majors. It’s the largest department on
campus in terms of majors. It has now a distinguished senior faculty and a group
of promising young professors coming up, and it’s on its way to greatness.
As of July 1 of last year, the campus hired Finn Kydland, getting him away from
Carnegie Mellon. That’s hard to do, and it could not possibly have happened
except that the department had a brand new chair provided by Jeff Henley. You
can’t get a man of that talent to come except with something beyond what
the generous University of California salary can provide. I mean that, it is
generous, it just isn’t enough to get top talent. And that’s what
we want. The department has one other chair, the Raznick Chair, and it is occupied
by Ted Bergstrom, who is doing pioneering work in behavioral economics. The
economics market is a very tight one. Trying to hire the top talent is rough.
The currency of economics in addition to salary is an endowed chair. That’s
what you have to have, or you can’t get the top talent. The department
wants to move to a world-class position, and they can do it. World-class means
top-10 in the nation and therefore in the world. What does it take? It takes
about 20 additional endowed chairs. That’s the price. The department just
produced a report outlining its 10-year plan. It’s called “A Vision
of Excellence.” I’ve read it – it’s a brilliant statement.
Is this doable? I think it is, and I expect to see it in my lifetime.
|
| |
 Graver Alumni Service Award
Mary-Jane Fuerst Salcido
B.A. 1962
Soon after graduation in 1962, Mary Jane Salcido became an active volunteer
alumna. She returned to the Delta Gamma House to serve as a mentor to the young
women there and has remained in that capacity ever since. This service included
a term as chairman of the House Advisory Board. With a cadre of other devoted
alumni in the Santa Barbara area, she helped form the Santa Barbara Chapter of
the Alumni Association to raise money for scholarships. With a phone bank provided
by the university, this group used their own address books to call friends who
were fellow alumni. Then they augmented the funds raised through this telemarketing
effort by selling pumpkins along highway 101. The chapter also gathered for social
occasions with memorable New Years Eve and Fiesta parties. She was elected to
the Alumni Association Board of Directors in 1980 and served until 1986. During
that time, the Association established the Pub in the University Center, and
she chaired the Pub Committee, becoming known as the Pub Mother. Since 1993 she
has continued to serve the Association as a staff member, coordinating board
activities, reunions, and the awards program. Her devotion to UCSB is reflected
in her family. Her husband, Bard, and both her sons, Bard Jr. and Mark, are all
UCSB graduates.
Mary Jane Salcido: In 1958 my parents chose UCSB for me. That
was how college choices were often made in those days. I thought I might like
to attend UCLA as many of my Arcadia High School classmates were going there,
but my father said I could not go to UCLA, as it was full of communists. So
they drove me to Santa Rosa Hall and said goodbye. I cried for the entire
fall semester. The second semester, I started to listen to the music that Carl
Zytowksi was playing. I began to understand the history lessons that Bob Kelley
explained. I was moved by the poems that Double-L Willson read. That spring
semester I also learned how to drink beer and kiss boys on the beach. I
was becoming a Gaucho! Joining Delta Gamma was the beginning of a life-long
relationship with wonderful, dedicated women. The friendship of these collegiate
and alumnae women has been a major influence in my life. Eight of my Delta Gamma
sisters are currently or have served on the Alumni Association Board of Directors
or The UCSB Foundation. These women live the DG motto of “Do Good.” I
met my future husband, Bard, wrapped in a bed sheet at a toga party at the Lambda
Chi Fraternity House in Isla Vista. Our two sons are Gauchos and they married
Gauchos. In the mid-1960’s the Santa Barbara Chapter of the Alumni
Association was formed by dedicated volunteers. Bard and I planned a very wild
New Years Eve Party that was held by the chapter in this very room in 1969. The
chapter took a sabbatical for a few years after that party. In 1980, Doug
Schmidt nominated me to the Board of Directors of the Alumni Association. That
was a wonderful and varied experience. I complained about the inappropriateness
of the Association running a pub on the campus, so to loosen me up, President
Chuck Graver appointed me to be the chair of the Pub Committee. Bob Stansbury,
Chuck Loring, and I would sneak out to the Pub on Fridays to check on the behavior
of the students. We would have to drink a beer to make sure that the quality
was up to our standards. During my years on the Board of Directors, a successful
coup took place. The leaders, still loyal to UCSB, are sitting here tonight. Following
that revolution, Doug Schmidt, Phil Kirkpatrick, Chuck Graver, and I decided
that board members who had survived that battle should be honored. So we formed
Valhalla—a
place of honor for all those who have served on the UCSB Alumni Association Board
of Directors. My responsibilities on the Alumni Staff have been varied
and I have had the opportunity to become friends with a wide range of Gauchos—from
the Riviera Gauchos to the current students. I have been so involved with the
Riviera Gauchos that I sometimes think I went to school on the hill too. I
would like to close by saying what a privilege it is to share being a Gaucho
with all of you!
|
| |
 Lifetime Achievement Award
Stephen E. Cooper
B.S. 1968
College of Engineering graduate Steve Cooper is a longtime leader in
the electronics manufacturing industry. He has led such companies as Silicon
Systems, Bipolar Integrated Technology, and Etec Systems. He led Etec Systems
through an initial public offering and its later acquisition by Applied Materials.
As vice chairman of the UCSB Center for Entrepreneurship and Engineering Management,
he took an active role in supporting and mentoring the student winners of a business
plan competition. Through the investment of his expertise and capital, that business
plan has emerged as Inogen, an innovative medical device company, where he is
chairman of the board. He is also chairman of the board of another UCSB spinoff,
Agile Technologies. A member of the Board of Trustees of The UCSB Foundation
since 2001, he will serve as its chair in 2005-2006.
Steve Cooper: The interdisciplinary
cooperation that exists within UC Santa Barbara is absolutely unique from my
experience with universities, and it is what differentiates us from other institutions
throughout the world. I am so proud to be a part of it and to be a graduate of
UC Santa Barbara. I intend to work as hard as I can to make this the greatest
institution we can be. I want to read to you something that has made my
career worthwhile. “Thank you, thank you, thank.you. We received
our new Inogen One three weeks ago. What a difference it has made to our daughter’s
life already. Mary Elizabeth will be 5 on April 25th, and is on oxygen as needed.
I remember our last trip to our home in Spokane, Washington from our old home
in Benicia, California. We took 26 bottles of oxygen in the back of our pickup
to allow for the trip. It was horrible to pack them, but what else was there
to do. We pay for O2 every time we fly and leave her home often as it is just
too difficult to drag around the tanks. Last week I had to make a 12-hour round
trip across the state to pick up an extra wheel chair for her. She was thrilled
to be able to go with me. We plugged her Inogen 1 into the car charger and we
were off. We just unplugged it to go in to eat and do our little shopping and
plugged it back when we returned to the car to complete our trip. It was the
easiest trip we have made since her birth. We hung the bag on the back of her
wheel chair and had nothing to drag around with us. It brought me to tears to
hear this little girl say ‘I like my new oxygen, Mommy, now I can go with
you.’ She
knew at four years old that her oxygen was a barrier to things. She now wants
to know if she can ride Cat in the Hat at Universal Studios in Orlando. I had
forgotten that she was not allowed on with a tank. Thank you for making a wonderful
product that has changed the way of life of our little girl.” This
is the result of one sophomore in economics and one sophomore in microbiology
and one senior in economics who participated in the UC Santa Barbara business
planning competition and had the foresight of an idea. And we provided the environment
to make that a reality, which is changing the lives of so many people around
the world.
|
| |
 Distinguished Alumni Award
Sunne Wright McPeak
B.A. 1970
In a career that continues to unfold, Class of 1970 president and former
Alumni Association President Sunne McPeak has become an extremely influential
Californian. Following 15 years on the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors,
where she promoted regional solutions for Bay Area policy challenges, she went
on to lead the Bay Area Economic Forum and then the Bay Area Council. Now she
is secretary of the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, a
Democrat appointed by a Republican governor. In this post she oversees departments
with such diverse responsibilities as CalTrans, the California Highway Patrol,
Motor Vehicles, Real Estate, Alcoholic Beverage Control, and Managed Health Care.
Her work has won her many commendations. She has been named repeatedly among
the Most Influential Women in Business, as a Woman Who Could Be President, and
recipient of the California Water Policy H2O Leadership Award. California State
University, Hayward awarded her an honorary doctorate.
Sunne McPeak: My parents
always valued education. I grew up on a dairy farm in the San Joaquin valley.
They wanted me to go to college. But when it came time in 1966, there weren’t
the resources. The Regents of the University of California and the taxpayers
of this state made it possible. The last thing I came to college for was to meet
a husband, but I did, I met John McPeak first day of freshman year in a calculus
class. Nineteen seventy was the year the Bank of America in Isla Vista
branch was burned. Our graduation was cancelled. It was my job to negotiate it
back from Dean Palmer. Which we did. Then we went on as a class to make some
contributions. We had a little help along the way from the class of ’69 – [including]
Paul Sweet, Associated Students president, and George Kieffer, vice president.
I was involved with the Alumni Association, as president in 1977. George Kieffer,
president in 1976, orchestrated my election to succeed him. And he’s the
one who orchestrated my appointment to Governor Schwarzenegger’s cabinet.
I owe it all to the investment that this state has made in this grand institution.
For me, my whole life changed because I got to go to UCSB. With all due
respect to Walter [Mead], I’m going to make my own award in
education tonight to my husband. My husband graduated with me in 1970 with a
degree in electrical engineering, always wanting to be a teacher. But, teaching
doesn’t pay very much. He got his
credential after age 40, and while I try to make a difference every day to this
state to improve the economy, I know that my husband as a math teacher does.
So this institution changed my life in a way I never had anticipated. So, on
behalf of the Class of 1970, I do accept this award. So, since no good deed goes
unpunished, Chancellor Yang had no idea that when he talked to me about his civil
engineering degrees, that he was now going to be drafted to help us with the
Bay Bridge and every other transportation project in the state of California.
Governor Schwarzenegger is going to build this state like no governor before.
So if you like the University California, stick with us, folks, California has
not even begun to see its best days.
|
| |
 Distinguished Alumni Award
Patricia Lynn Scarlett
B.A. 1970
M.A. 1973
Common sense environmental policy is the hallmark of Lynn Scarlett’s
career. She has developed and implemented innovative partnerships between government,
environmental groups, industry, and everyday citizens to protect and conserve
the environment. She has achieved this because she has a thorough familiarity
with diverse points of view. While she is a Libertarian serving a conservative
Republican administration, as a college student in the late 60s, she became well
acquainted with the prevailing liberal rhetoric and says she may have been seen
wearing a flower in her hair at times. Her analyses of the appropriate roles
of government and free markets in managing natural resources, and dealing with
pollution, land use and other public policy questions are well known for being
both comprehensive and thought provoking. She is now assistant secretary for
policy, management and budget in the United States Department of the Interior,
which manages twenty percent of U.S. land, operates national parks and thousands
of other recreational sites, and maintains relationships with 562 Indian tribes.
Previously she served in a number of leadership posts, including president, at
the Reason Foundation of Los Angeles, a Libertarian research and advocacy group.
Lynn
Scarlett : UCSB is paradise, but it was actually the intellectual vigor that
sustained me here, first as an undergraduate during the tempestuous cultural
and political upheavals of the late 60’s. Later I was sustained as a graduate
student by the more formal disciplined discourse of the Political Science Department
and its seminars. UCSB pioneered the reintroduction of interdisciplinary inquiry
while elsewhere fractionation of fields of study had grown commonplace. Interdisciplinary
inquiry was just what I sought—linkages of policy, governance, economics,
organization, and social theory. The second hallmark at UCSB was the insistence
on analytic rigor. I want to single out one professor—Michael Gordon. I
was inspired by his capacious knowledge. I especially benefited from his insistence
that clarity of expression is a key element in clarity of thought. He underscored
that finding the right words in the right sequence helps hone precision of thought.
I was fortunate that my connections to UCSB did not end with completion of my
studies. Through The UCSB Foundation I was able to appreciate the leadership
of Chancellor Yang and the efflorescence that I have seen over these recent decades
of academic opportunities here. Through the Bren School of Environmental Science
and Management we see again an affirmation of the importance of integrating disciplines--law
science, economics, ecology, management—just exactly what we need as we
try to address the complex interdisciplinary challenges of environment not only
in California, but in this nation and around the globe. I have the great good
fortune to serve this United States at the Department of the Interior. As you
heard, we manage one in every five acres in the United States—20 percent
of this nation’s land mass; some 388 national park units, 545 wildlife
refuges. Our mission, when you think of it, lies at the confluence of people,
land, and water. My job, therefore, lies at the junction of law, science, economics,
organization theory, public administration, even art. My years at UCSB have helped
me perceive the interconnectedness of those fields. Years of graduate study also
secured my appreciation for the art of dialogue. What the author Walter Isaacson
calls “conversation with a center, not sides.” I can assure that
serves me well in Washington.
|
| |
 Honorary Alumnus
Peter E. Steiner
Through changes in campus leadership and budgetary downturns,
Peter Steiner has remained focused on the goal he was brought here to realize-–building
a UCSB Alumni House. The need to adopt new sites and even a change in architects
have not deterred him from rallying support behind the establishment of a base
of operations for alumni activities on campus. Now construction is about to begin
on Mosher Alumni House, and it will be a testament to his leadership when it
opens in 2007. A generational Cal Bear, he has adapted well to the Gaucho environment.
His 15 years at UCSB now exceed the time he spent in various capacities at that
other campus. His devotion to making the Alumni Affairs Department at UCSB successful
has brought in successive waves of effective volunteer leadership and nurtured
a highly professional staff.
Peter Steiner: I am surprised and thrilled. I thank
the board of directors and the Association for this honor. I was turned
down at UCSB. (Laughter) I don’t see the humor in that.
(Laughter) It is really true. And it’s not funny. In 1960 I
was a sophomore at the northern campus, or sister campus, as the chancellor likes
to refer to it, the one that has not had a Nobel Prize in the last 50 years in
the sciences. I was a sophomore at Berkeley, and I tried to transfer to Santa
Barbara for Spring Semester. I had made housing arrangements in my fraternity,
SAE, I had visited the campus, I had made some friends here, and I was all set
to go, and was turned down to transfer by the Letters and Science Department
at Berkeley which said it would hurt my record. In those days they discouraged
it. I have had to wait all this time to become an alum of UCSB. So this is a
true thrill. Ever since moving here in 1990, Anne and I have felt so accepted
in the community, we love the place. You as an alumni body have welcomed us.
You have never really held it against us that we didn’t go to school here.
This is a wonderful university. I think you’ve had evidence of this tonight.
|
| |
Photography by Rod Rolle |
| |
© 2005, UCSB Alumni Association - All rights reserved |
|
|
