CAMPUS NOTES

The UCSB Division of the UC Academic Senate will discuss the draft campus Academic Plan when it meets on May 12 at 4 p.m. in Engineering Sciences Building 1001. The academic component is integral to UCSB’s Long Range Development Plan, which is being revised for presentation to the California Coastal Commission.

William J. Ashby has returned from a tour of five universities in Taiwan in which he talked about creative approaches to education in general and the UCSB College of Creative Studies (CCS), of which he is provost, in particular. The tour’s primary sponsor was the University System of Taiwan, the result of a merger in 2000 of four national universities in geographical proximity. Ashby spoke at three of those four campuses and at two others in Taipei and in Miao-Li. “They are very intrigued by creative studies and the CCS organizational structure,” he said.

Hyongsok “Tom” Soh, assistant professor of mechanical and environmental engineering, has won a 2005 Beckman Young Investigator award of $264,000 for research on separation methods for human stem cells. He was one of 25 researchers nationwide to be so honored.

David Valentine, assistant professor of geological sciences, has received a National Science Foundation “early career” award of more than $620,000 over five years to investigate the geochemistry of natural marine gas seeps. He is the fifth UCSB faculty member this year to win a NSF CAREER award.

William I. Robinson, associate professor of sociology, (left) and Richard P. Appelbaum, professor of sociology, have co-edited a distillation of a 2003 globalization studies conference at UCSB into “Critical Globalization Studies” (Routledge, 2004).

Cecilia Gomez is the new analyst in the Government Relations Office. She formerly worked in the offices of the Ventura County District Attorney and of Assembly member Carol Liu.

Bertha “Bert” Immel, retired contracts and grants manager for the Office of Research, died of lung cancer on April 2 in Burbank, Calif. The Texas native was 73. She worked at UCLA 3.5 years before being hired in 1975 by the UCSB Chemistry Department. She retired in late 1992, three years after her husband died. She is survived by three sisters, five children, and six grandchildren.