CAMPUS NOTES

    Helping members of the UCSB community be better prepared for emergencies is the aim of a new campus Web site.
    The site, which can be found at <http://emergency.ucsb.edu>/, was developed by the staff at the Department of Environmental Health and Safety, where campus emergency planning efforts are based. The site assembles, in one place, information on resources and procedures to be used in a campus emergency, including information from the campus’s emergency flip chart. It also will include a series of videos. The first is a message from Ron Cortez, associate vice chancellor for administrative services, who makes the point that the campus takes safety seriously, and takes a proactive approach to emergency planning. “Emergency preparedness is everyone’s responsibility,” he says, “and UCSB urges students, parents, faculty and staff to become familiar with campus response procedures and plans.
    ”Future videos on the site will focus on specific aspects of emergency preparedness, including demonstrations and explanations of terms and concepts such as “shelter in place.”

    The Academic Senate is currently accepting nominations for several awards, including the Faculty Research Lectureship, Distinguished Teaching Awards, Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards, and Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award.
    The deadlines are as follows:
    Distinguished Teaching Awards and the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards, Friday, December 11; Faculty Research Lectureship, Wednesday, January 13; Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award, Thursday, February 4.
    Information about the awards, including nomination forms and guidelines, can be found at <www.senate.ucsb.edu/awards>.

    The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF), a student-governed committee awarding grants for sustainability projects on campus, is soliciting proposals for 2009-10. Any UCSB student or staff or faculty member is eligible to receive funding for projects that reduce the university’s impact on the environment. The deadline for submitting applications is Monday, January 25. For information on previously funded projects or to download an application, go to http://sustainability.ucsb.edu/tgif. Questions can be directed to Jill Richardson, TGIF grants manager, at jill.richardson@vcadmin.ucsb.edu.

     Hundreds of faculty and staff members —active and retired — took part in forums held in early November by representatives of the President’s Task Force on Post Retirement Benefits. Among the topics discussed were financial issues affecting UC post employment benefits, including the need to review potential benefit changes.Individuals who were unable to attend any of the sessions can access the Task Force briefing at <http://hr.ucsb.edu>.

     In the 2009 rankings from the Institute of Higher Education at Shangai Jiao Tong University in China, UCSB placed 35th among the top 50 universities in the world. Seven UC campuses were included in the rankings, which are based on several indicators of academic/research quality and productivity, such as major international awards won by alumni or faculty, highly cited researchers, articles published in selected top journals, and articles indexed by major citation indexes. Other UC campuses to make the list are Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego, San Francisco, Irvine, and Davis.

Celesta Billeci, director of Arts & Lectures, has received the Santa Barbara Dance Alliance’s inaugural Award of Distinction. The new annual award recognizes Billeci’s service to the local dance community.

Jeff Dozier, a professor and founding dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, has received Microsoft Research’s 2nd Annual Jim Gray eScience Award. The award recognizes innovators whose work has made an especially significant contribution to the field of data-intensive computing.

Shirley Geok-lin Lim, professor of English, is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS). The award will be presented at the Modern Language Association’s annual convention in Philadelphia this month.

Francisco A. Lomeli, chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and professor of Chicana/o Studies, has published “Camino Real: Estudios de las Hispanidades Norteamericanas” (University of Alcalá de Henares, 2009) and “Imagined Transnationalism: U.S. Latino/a Literature, Culture, and Identity” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). “Camino Real” was co-edited with Luis Leal, professor of Chicana/o Studies..

Rita Raley, associate professor of English, has published “Tactical Media” (University of Minnesota Press, 2009). It is among the first books to focus exclusively on the tactics and goals of new media art activists.