University News
Finalist Named for President of UT Medical Branch at Galveston
On April 16, The University of Texas System Board of Regents named Dr. David L. Callender as the sole finalist for the position of president of The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
The action came during a special called meeting of the UT System Board of Regents in which four candidates were interviewed, and comes less than a week after the applicants met with the UTMB community in Galveston in a series of campus visits.
Dr. Callender is currently associate vice chancellor and chief executive officer of the UCLA Hospital System in Los Angeles. He also is an adjunct professor of surgery at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and is a member of the governing board of the University Health Consortium. Callender previously held numerous positions at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, including executive vice president and chief operating officer, vice president for clinical programs and medical director of the center's Physicians Referral Service.
He holds a bachelor's degree from Midwestern State University, a medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine and an M.B.A. from the University of Houston.
Regents interviewed a short list of four candidates, who were narrowed from an original pool of more than 25 nominees and applicants from across the country. The newly appointed president will succeed Dr. John D. Stobo, who announced last year that he plans to retire by Aug. 31.
The board is scheduled to finalize its selection at its next quarterly meeting on May 9-10 in Austin.
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New Registrary for Cambridge
The University of Cambridge has appointed a new Registrary, its senior administrative officer, and only the 26th in its 800 year history.
Dr Jonathan Nicholls, who is currently Registrar of Birmingham University, will take up the post in October 2007 upon the retirement of Dr Timothy Mead.
The Registrary is the principal administrative officer of the University of Cambridge and Secretary to its Council. Dr Nicholls will take on management of an annual budget of approximately £27 million (US$54 million) and will be responsible for more than 750 staff.
Dr. Nicholls is a highly successful manager with a strong academic background who has devoted his career to higher education administration. He joined the University of Warwick in 1982 and became its Registrar in 1999, moving to Birmingham in 2004.
Nicholls was educated at Culford School near Bury St Edmunds. He took a first class degree in English from the University of Bristol in 1978 and in 1984 he gained a PhD in English from the University of Cambridge, where he was a student at Emmanuel College. He was the Herchel Scholar at Harvard in 1981/82.
He is a non-executive director of Graduate Prospects Ltd, a member of the national Joint Negotiating Committee for Higher Education Staff and a member of the Advisory Board of the Higher Education Policy Institute. He is also currently the Deputy Chair of the Association of Heads of University Administration (AHUA). He has served as a non-executive director of a NHS Trust and as a school governor.
Last year Cambridge celebrated the 500th anniversary of the post of Registrary, making it one of the longest continuously-held offices in UK higher education.
Previous notable Registraries include John Neville Keynes, the father of the economist John Maynard Keynes and a distinguished logician. The first Registrary, appointed in 1506, was Robert Hobys.
Dr Timothy Mead, the current Registrary, has held the post since 1997, a period that has seen great change in the University including a considerable expansion of the University estate.
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Stolper Named New Caltech Provost
Edward M. Stolper, William E. Leonhard Professor of Geology, has been named Caltech's new provost. Dr. Stolper, whose research is aimed at understanding the origin and evolution of igneous rocks on Earth and other planets, will start his duties on August 1, 2007, subject to the formal approval of the Board of Trustees later this month.
Stolper has been a member of the Caltech community for 28 years. He arrived on campus as an assistant professor of geology in 1979, having received his PhD that same year in geological sciences from Harvard. He was promoted to associate professor in 1982 and to professor of geology in 1983. In 1990 he was named the William E. Leonhard Professor of Geology.
He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1994.
In addition to his active research program, Stolper has held a number of significant administrative roles at the Institute. In a letter to the campus community announcing Stolper's acceptance of the position, Caltech President Jean-Lou Chameau said that Stolper had proved himself to be an "effective and visionary leader." Stolper served Caltech as interim provost in 2004 and as chair of the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences for 10 years (1994–2004). Added Chameau: "Ed is committed to the continued excellence of Caltech's educational and research programs, and, as many of you already know, he is an effective and eloquent advocate for students, faculty, and staff. The search committee noted that Ed was remarkably effective at recruiting, developing, and retaining outstanding faculty, and at engaging the faculty in promoting diversity."
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2007 Guggenheim Fellowship Awards
Results of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation's eighty-third annual United States and Canadian competition have been announced by foundation president Edward Hirsch. The 2007 Fellowship winners include 189 artists, scholars, and scientists selected from almost 2,800 applicants for awards totaling $7,600,000. Decisions are based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisors and are approved by the Foundation's Board of Trustees, which includes six members who are themselves past Fellows of the Foundation – Joel Conarroe, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard A. Rifkind, Charles Ryskamp, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and Edward Hirsch.
Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. The diversity of the 2007 Fellows is worth noting. They range from the 30-year-old fiction writer Daniel Alarcón of Oakland, California, and the 29-year-old video and sound artist Kalup Linzy of Brooklyn, New York, to the 75-year-old medieval and Renaissance historian, Meredith Parsons Lillich, of Syracuse, New York. The 189 new Fellows range not only in age but also in their interests, as the following samples show: Jane Ira Bloom's musical composition based on Freud's Interpretation of Dreams; Warwick Anderson's research on the science of race mixing in the twentieth century; Rennan Barkana's study of gas and stars in the early universe; Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi's literary research on Jerusalem and the poetics of return; Timothy Beach's scholarly work related to the environmental history of the Maya lowlands; William Ferris' historical research regarding the Mississippi blues; and Dina Rizk Khoury's study of war and remembrance in Iraq.
The new Fellows also include Neil Foley, who is studying civil rights in Texas and the Southwest, 1940-1965; David Frankfurter of Durham, New Hampshire, who is researching Christianization in late antique Egypt; the poet, Erica Funkhouser, who is a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ann Gale, a painter from Seattle, Washington; Enrique García Santo-Tomás, who is studying fiction by war veterans in early modern Spanish literature, 1550-1680; Melissa James Gibson, a playwright from Brooklyn, New York, who is interested in the architecture of memory; Ed Folsom's study of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass; Susan Ashbrook Harvey's research on Biblical women and women's choirs in Syriac tradition; Carola Hein's scholarly studies on the global architecture of oil; Gail Hershatter's research on rural women and China's collective past; Paul Kroll of Denver, Colorado, who is studying High Tang verse; the poet, Dana Levin, of Santa Fe, New Mexico; the artist and photographer, Michael Light, of San Francisco, California; Samuel Nigro, a sculptor from Brooklyn, New York; Richard Owen Prum's research on the biology of feathers; Kay Kaufman Shelemay's study of Ethiopian music and musicians in the United States; David Treuer's work on contemporary reservation life; Michael Wachtel's studies of Pushkin's lyric poetry; Dava Sobel, a science writer, working on Copernicus; and Julie Stone Peters' research on theatrical censorship, obscenity, and the modern drama.
What distinguishes the Guggenheim Fellowship program from all others is the wide range in interest, age, geography, and institution of those it selects as it considers applications in 78 different fields, from the natural sciences to the creative arts. The new Fellows include writers, playwrights, painters, sculptors, photographers, film makers, choreographers, physical and biological scientists, social scientists, and scholars in the humanities. Many of these individuals hold appointments in colleges and universities with 77 institutions being represented by one or more Fellows. It is also worth noting that 51 of the new Fellows have no affiliation with academic institutions or hold only adjunct positions in them.
Since 1925, according to Hirsch, the Foundation has granted over $256 million in Fellowships to more than 16,250 individuals. The Foundation's scores of advisory panels make recommendations to the Committee of Selection, whose members this year are Roger D. Abrahams, Hum Rosen Professor Emeritus of Folklore and Folklife, University of Pennsylvania; John I. Brauman, J. G. Jackson - C. J. Wood Professor of Chemistry, Stanford University; Lynn A. Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, University of California, Los Angeles; Jack Miles, Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies, University of California, Irvine; Peter H. Raven, President, Missouri Botanical Garden and George Engelmann Professor of Botany, Washington University; and committee chair Neil J. Smelser, Director Emeritus, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California.
The full list of 2007 Fellows may be viewed at http://www.gf.org.
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Oxford's New Center for Classical and Byzantine Studies Opens
The Chancellor of Oxford University formally opened the new Stelios Ioannou School for Research in Classical and Byzantine Studies on April 24 and expressed his thanks to the Ioannou family for their generosity and vision. Lord Patten described the impressive new building at 66 St Giles' as 'adding polish to one of the jewels in Oxford's crown'.
The school is named after the late Stelios Ioannou, a Greek Cypriot businessman and philanthropist and founder of the international construction company J&P. The chancellor spoke of the strong partnership between the University and the Ioannou family. The opening was attended by a number of family members including Mr Stelios Ioannou's widow, Ellie, his son Dakis, his daughter Sylvia and his grandchildren.
The school will provide a home for Oxford's Classics research and teaching, with students and academics benefiting from one of the world's largest collections of Greek manuscripts. The new school will create a new Classics triangle co-locating the major teaching and research facilities; an extensive Classics collection in the Sackler library as well as a huge range of Classical art and archaeology in the Ashmolean Museum. The school will also provide a home for Byzantine Studies and give this subject both the facilities and profile it deserves.
The building blends tradition and innovation, with a large, light central atrium, off which are lecture and seminar rooms and a common room. The school will also be a home for an extensive Classics outreach program to recruit the next generation of students, including a program of school visits, summers schools, Classics' teachers days and an annual conference.
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HKUST Cross-Licensing Agreement Advances Hong Kong as Semiconductor IP Application Hub
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has entered a cross-licensing agreement with VSI Alliance (VSIA), a standards body for the electronics industry, which will see HKUST research and development incorporated into an international standard for evaluating semiconductor intellectual property (SIP). The agreement, the first of its kind by an organization in Hong Kong, represents a major step forward for Hong Kong in securing a place as a key player in international SIP qualification and strengthening its position as the center for SIP application in the Greater China region.
Under the agreement, HKUST has cross-licensed its SIP Deliverables Checklist Framework to VSIA and together VSIA and HKUST will further develop the methodology and tools within the VSIA Quality IP (QIP) Metric, an international standard adopted by leaders of the semiconductor industry worldwide.
HKUST developed the Deliverables Checklist Framework as part of the first phase of the Greater China SIP Trading Center project, funded by the HKSAR Innovation and Technology Fund and sponsored by the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation. The project seeks to provide a global collaboration network to facilitate SIP application in Greater China. The first phase is focused on SIP quality measurement and the legal framework associated with SIP licensing. HKUST's Deliverables Checklist Framework is an SIP tool that will allow third party providers to evaluate customer's IP by categorizing deliverables using quality evaluation line items. It can be used to automate the generation of objective evaluation data for the determination of customer's SIP quality, ultimately easing the process of IP integration.
The semiconductor business represents a huge market opportunity. It is currently worth US$30 billion in China alone and forecast to rise to US$100 billion in 2010. Among Hong Kong's competitive advantages as the SIP application center for Greater China are a solid legal framework based on common law and with established intellectual property protection; international business and financial know-how at world-class levels to support trading; the city's position as a major purchasing center for semiconductors and ICs; the Pearl River Delta's consumption of 75% of ICs in China and Hong Kong's role as the "Dragon Head" of the Pearl River Delta;and internationally enforceable low-cost legal arbitration through the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre.
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Arch Foundation Announces Arch Professorships Initiative
The Board of Trustees of the Arch Foundation for the University of Georgia announced at its meeting in Athens this week the Arch Professorships initiative to enhance faculty recruitment and retention. The board approved $250,000 from foundation general funds for the first professorship, and individual commitments from trustees of the foundation provided another $600,000 toward the new initiative.
Arch Professorships provide a revenue stream to supplement faculty salaries, support faculty research and provide funding for travel and related expenses. An endowment of approximately $250,000 allows UGA to create an Arch Professorship, although the amount varies by school and college.
Arch Professorships may be given through a variety of means, including checks, securities, gifts of real estate, bequests, retirement plans, life insurance policies, charitable gift annuities and charitable remainder or lead trusts. Gifts may be pledged and paid over a period of up to five years. An individual gift of $250,000 or greater allows for the naming of the professorship.
