Dear Colleagues:
Dear Colleagues:
Welcome to UCI. It is my pleasure to introduce you to a campus that has rapidly emerged as one of America's leading universities. Since opening in 1965, UCI has earned a distinguished reputation, both for our research and for providing students with the comprehensive education to prosper in an increasingly competitive world.
The world is different than it was ten years ago, and will be different still tomorrow. The universe of knowledge keeps growing. Therefore, our goal is to insure that UCI graduates are equipped to grow with it by giving them the skills and motivation to continue learning throughout life.
The idea that a college education is an insulated time of concentrated learning, after which you go out and "make it" in the world, is old-fashioned. It no longer works.
Education today must be an ongoing activity of individuals within the diverse society where we all live and work.
At UCI we offer the chance to gain experience in programs that involve interacting with people of different backgrounds and cultures. And we bring worlds together. Cultivating strong ties with the business, art, and technology communities of Southern California and beyond, UCI faculty are constantly looking ahead to what employers expect of tomorrow's professional workforce.
These collaborations, for example, have brought new computer programming capabilities to our campus that industry executives told us are in demand. They have also led to cooperative education programs, such as one between UCI art students and local schools. And as graduates or undergraduates, UCI students may participate in research, helping to shape ideas that change the way we think and act in the world.
In becoming a top research university, we have found strength in innovation. Much of the UCI curriculum cuts across disciplines by combining studies like medicine and business, art and information technology, the social sciences and ecology, anticipating the society in which our students will succeed. This campus is also committed to infusing computer technology into all aspects of the curriculum and campus life so that our students can excel in the information age.
Such an environment of innovation and vitality would be impossible without some of the most talented faculty in the nation. UCI faculty are outstanding as researchers, and as educators, for they are able to teach with the excitement that accompanies discovering new knowledge.
In 1995 two of our founding faculty became Nobel Laureates, making UCI the nation's first public university where faculty members in two different fields--physics and chemistry--received Nobel Prizes in the same year. Our strength in the sciences is balanced, as well, by strengths in the humanities. In fact six of our eight graduate programs are ranked among the top twenty-five in the nation, and two are in the top ten. And in 1996, UCI was invited to join the Association of American Universities (AAU), an influential organization of the 60 most respected research universities in the country.
We live in an era when the advantage goes to those who possess technological literacy, communication, and human relations skills in equal measure. That's why we have built a campus which thrives on intellectual and cultural diversity, preparing our students to flourish in the global society of the twenty-first century.
For those who choose a UCI education, these qualities translate to opportunities--both personal and professional. I invite you to use this Catalogue with a view to learning how our university will help you realize the opportunities you envision for yourself.
On behalf of the faculty and staff of UCI, we look forward to sharing in the rewarding academic career ahead of you.
Sincerely yours,
Laurel L. Wilkening
Chancellor
Daniel G. Aldrich Jr. Distinguished University Service Award, 1996
Dean of the Graduate School of Management and Professor of Management
At the heart of every top-notch M.B.A. program is outstanding teaching and a forward-looking curriculum. At UCI's Graduate School of Management (GSM) over the past several years, we have launched two new M.B.A. programs for working professionals and have bolstered the faculty with individuals who not only do excellent research in the various functional areas of management but who are able to translate these and other research findings effectively in the classroom. At present, GSM offers four separate M.B.A. programs linked by a common core curriculum, an undergraduate minor in management, and a Ph.D. program. All are characterized by a strong commitment to teaching quality.
As GSM's Dean over the past eight years, I have not had time to do much teaching myself, but I did help launch an unusual course in the full-time M.B.A. program several years ago entitled "Creativity in Business." And for two years I team-taught the course with someone who had helped create a similar course at Stanford's business school. The main premise of the course is that everyone is creative and everyone has leadership ability. The curriculum consists largely of tools and techniques that can help unearth and expand these abilities.
This process can be uncomfortable for people who are very "left-brained" but, if they are indulgent, also extremely beneficial because "soft skills" are in great demand these days in the business world. When mixed with strong analytical skills, this creates a potent combination. As someone who began his undergraduate studies as an engineer and then gravitated through mathematics into economics, I can personally attest to the benefits of adding some "right-brain" capability. In a related way, the combination of a major in engineering, physical or biological sciences, a social science, humanities, or the arts, with the minor in management offered by GSM offers an excellent opportunity for undergraduate students to add complementary skills and knowledge during their years at UCI.
Recently, GSM's faculty endorsed information technology management and global business as its dominant themes. I am pleased to have played a role in moving this agenda forward within the School and to have supported the development of GSM's considerable computing/communications infrastructure.
UCI offers an opportunity to be creative and entrepreneurial. Perhaps its youth is partially responsible for this, but I think it's UCI's atmosphere of openness to new things that is the primary reason. That sort of culture is why many of us came to UCI as faculty members and continue to thrive here. It is an aspect of campus life at all levels--undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral--that is available to anyone willing to "get involved." Such involvement is crucial to the establishment of the strong sense of community that is characteristic of every great institution of higher learning. And UCI is clearly on that path.
Distinguished Assistant Professor Award for Teaching, 1996-97
Director of the Program in Film Studies and Associate Professor of Film Studies
I remember how terrified I was to stand before my first class of students six years ago, and how relieved I was when I began my final lecture for that year--"I've made it," I thought to myself. I spoke too soon. For just as I asked that the lights be turned off so that I could screen the final film of the year, I managed to slip behind the podium and hit the floor with a loud thud. There were murmurs and giggles from the students. All I could think to say was: "Don't worry, I'm okay." That's how my first year of undergraduate teaching ended, with me on the floor of the classroom, reminding myself that I should never speak too soon. Things have improved since then.
While teaching is, on the one hand, a highly subjective experience, one deeply connected to instructors' individual personalities, on the other it is a skill that can improve over time. I, for one, have sought improvement on an ongoing basis. One of my credos is a commitment to offering at least one creative assignment to students per course. What that has meant in my courses, which focus on the field of Film and Television Studies, is, for example, asking students to adopt different personas in their oral and written presentations, encouraging them to explore imaginary scenarios when they write essays or answer exam questions, and allowing ambitious students to make videos and write short screenplays, even for critical studies courses. Once I began allowing students to get creative both in the classroom and in assignments, the quality of their work improved substantially.
Another significant element of my teaching style, which I have developed with one of my colleagues, is integrating instructional technologies into the classroom. Studies that focus on student retention of classroom material suggest that students retain more information, they learn more, if there is a visual component to lectures. In Film Studies, adding visuals is a fairly simple and necessary task. However, I have also begun to add computer-generated presentations to my lectures. The presentations, which appear in the form of computer "slides," offer images and text to augment what I provide in the way of a lecture. This presentation technique allows students to focus better on the crucial points of the lecture and course as a whole.
For me, teaching is connected to my research in so many ways. I learn from my students in an ongoing fashion, both how to express my ideas more clearly, as well as how to expand my perspective on theoretical and critical approaches to subject matter. The best teachers are, I think, those who remember that their students are teachers too. Thus, I approach teaching as a collaborative art, one that is intended, surely, to pass along important and engaging educational information to students. But one that, also, engages students as instructors of sorts, instructors whose perspectives lend important elements to class discussions.
When I do my research, then, when I write articles and books, I keep my students in mind. I try to remember to write in a fashion that will be accessible to my undergraduate students and I do my best to interrogate my own perspectives on subject matter, always listening for the important points of view that my students proffer.
Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for Research, 1996
Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science
I teach about politics, a subject that is not only thought of as fascinating, as it is, but one that is in the end thought of as not too difficult to explore. Students often take it for granted that the study of the natural sciences or of mathematics is or must be much more difficult. And especially when it comes to politics perhaps the most resistant part to its study is that most people approach it on the assumption that they already know a lot from their day-to-day life experience so they should be able to fathom its deepest secrets without too much trouble. But in an unexpected way, once they try to come to grips with the subject of human relationships, to their surprise they quickly learn that society and its political aspects may be even more complex than the world that the natural scientist faces.
In one sense, like all of us, students are certainly correct in thinking that they do know a great deal about social relationships. It is for that reason if what they learn does not ultimately resonate with what they have experienced, the knowledge they acquire will have little meaning. But in another sense, once they have begun to plumb its depths they will come to appreciate that there is a vast gulf separating the knowledge that comes from ordinary, common experience and the understanding that arises from trying to probe the underlying causes of why we act the way we do in politics and why our political institutions do or do not take the form they do. That is one of the first and most difficult lessons that students new to the study of politics have to learn. Current events, knowledge based on what is thought of as common sense, folk wisdom, the opinions of political pundits, the accepted commonplaces of the mass media, and the like are all judgments coming from the enormously varied ways in which people participate in politics. But whether such common observations and opinions about how the political processes and institutions work are valid or just that, mere opinions, is quite another matter.
There is a vast gap between what is common knowledge and what is understanding based on solid evidence collected and assessed in a way that can be confirmed or denied by highly and rigorously trained social scientists. It is this very fact that is frequently difficult for the new student of politics to fully grasp. Over centuries of laborious research, physicists learned that to even understand the way the common kitchen table hangs together it had to be reduced to its subatomic parts, unobservable to the naked eye, but constituting the very fundamentals of matter. In much the same way, over the centuries social scientists as well have learned that if we are to understand the fundamentals of political relationships, the everyday experiences of political life need to be broken down into their fundamental constituent parts, and these are seldom obvious or easy to reach or simple to comprehend. It is this search for a more profound and factually confirmable kind of knowledge about political life that drives the scholar and makes for the true excitement of inquiry into human relationships. It is a grand voyage into the truly unknown in search of the basic secrets of human nature as it expresses itself in social interaction. This often leads to research into fields that appear distant from the observations that we make of ordinary life. So far does it lead us from the beaten path, in fact, that for many of those who have not gone this route to understanding, it appears that students of politics may not be dealing with the real world, just as when the subatomic physicist may seem to have abandoned an interest in the nature we see around us. But in both cases we would be very much mistaken. At times the longest way home is, in the end, the easiest way to get there. It is also the most adventurous and exciting.
Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for Teaching, 1996
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Director, University of California Education Abroad Study Center in Egypt (1995-97)
Often one hears a characterization of the University of California as a "research" university, and in some uninformed minds, this is untruly interpreted as teaching being secondary to research. A university is a place where knowledge is made and where knowledge is passed on, making research and teaching complementary. It is true that research is emphasized at UCI, but not at the expense of teaching quality but rather by allowing faculty release time from teaching (in comparison with what is termed a "teaching" university) to pursue their creative endeavor.
My research emphasis is in mitigating earthquake hazard on structures such as buildings, tanks, bridges, and dams through reliable seismic design, retrofit of existing deficient structures, and if needed, repair of seismically induced damage. Such a research endeavor has had a major impact on the education of my students. For example, in my research grants and contracts, opportunities have been created for undergraduate research assistants to work side-by-side with graduate students to enhance their learning experience. Some, through their hands-on engagement in setting up and testing structural samples in the UCI Structural Test Hall, have developed a natural feel for the behavior of structural elements, thereby helping them to become successful engineers. Experience has shown that enrollment in senior-level courses elevates the performance of freshmen and sophomores, even though they may not have the prerequisite knowledge to understand all the details of the testing. A subtle favorable influence of my research involvement is my ability to remain worthy of the students' trust as a source of current knowledge and creative insight.
I am deeply appreciative of this special award which I value the most of all other recognitions in research and professional services that I have received. Early in my life, dating back to junior high school, I realized that I had a natural ability to effectively disseminate information to my fellow students. My aspiration for teaching and my interest in engineering shaped my career as an engineering professor. Yet my success as a teacher has its roots in placing teaching as the top priority of my professional duties, setting a high standard for my interaction with students in lectures and laboratories, and at counseling and guidance sessions, and most importantly, motivating and challenging all students to achieve their fullest capabilities.
I have been privileged to be associated with UCI, an environment where I, as a scholar, am engaged in the pursuit of knowledge and, as a teacher, am helping my students in their own quest for learning.
Distinguished Assistant Professor Award for Research, 1996-97
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Professor Malkki has done her principal research in Tanzania and is the author of Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (University of Chicago Press, 1995). She has written articles on nationalism, racism, and xenophobia; internationalism and cosmopolitanism; humanitarianism; and anthropological fieldwork. Her current research is exploring how Hutu exiles from Burundi and Rwanda who have found asylum in Montreal, Canada, imagine scenarios of the future for themselves and their countries in the aftermath of genocide in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
Presidential Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research, 1996
(Faculty-member recipient)
Professor of History
When I was in high school, I hated history. The teachers who taught history doubled as junior varsity basketball coaches and driving education instructors; they were much more successful at introducing students to a good jumpshot, aggressive rebounding, and parallel parking than to the French Revolution or the First World War. I took almost all of my required history courses in summer school to minimize the pain. I am always delighted when I meet students whose passion is history, but my own past experience gives me much sympathy for students who think that history consists of little more than lists of dates and famous names; it was scarcely that for the teachers I encountered in high school. Although college offered me some other, far preferable examples, it was not until I'd graduated and spent two years working and living in Berlin that I began to see history as a complex story of change over time with immediate implications for my understanding of my own place in contemporary society. History was not only this magnificently complex mystery story, it was also something that could do much to illuminate the world in which I lived.
For as long as I've been a teacher, I have been trying to figure out how best to communicate to students that history is more than "facts" and that what they learn in the classroom relates to their lives outside the classroom. Initially, I thought that I could improve on the model of my graduate mentors by offering even more richly detailed accounts of key historical developments, but I quickly came to see that more was not necessarily better. I've also worked hard at ways to create spaces in the classroom for students to share their own responses and perceptions. This has been facilitated in part by introducing a range of historical sources into the classroom, from printed materials, published at the time of a historical event, to sources like political posters and art and even music, from popular songs to opera. I think it's also important for students to see and even hear history.
I think that students best understand how history is written when they have the opportunity to write history themselves; the process of sifting through mounds of evidence and constructing a coherent story makes immediately apparent to students that facts bear meaning only as part of an interpretation. Like good investigative journalists--or crime detectives--students learn to put the pieces together and make their case. The opportunity to do historical research is one of the things I most like about my job; watching others discover the joys of this form of intellectual work is one of the greatest pleasures that I have as a classroom teacher.
Distinguished Assistant Professor Award for Research, 1996-97
Associate Professor of Earth System Science
Human activities are changing our environment. In my lifetime, Earth's population has nearly doubled, rising from 3 to 5.7 billion people. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by 15 percent, methane concentrations by 70 percent. Both are now at higher levels than at any time in the past 150,000 years. We have produced and released a number of compounds not previously found in nature, such as chlorofluorocarbons (found in refrigerants and spray cans) and DDT (a pesticide). Land cover has changed from forests to pasture and planted fields in many parts of the world. What are the consequences of these changes for air and water quality, for regional weather patterns and global climate? How do present rates of change compare with what the earth has experienced in the past? My goal as a scientist, teacher, and resident of the planet is to contribute to an understanding of how the earth system works, and to use that knowledge to predict the consequences of human activities for our environment.
Future citizens will need to make informed decisions about how to use resources, recycle and dispose of wastes, and find ways to balance concerns of the environment with those of the marketplace on a global scale. With my colleagues in Earth System Science, I try to teach students the science fundamentals needed to understand issues like global warming, ozone depletion, and acid rain. My goal is for students to be sufficiently informed to be able to make their own conclusions about these topics, as well to expose them to the scientific process.
My own research explores the role of terrestrial ecosystems in determining the composition of the atmosphere. I use a variety of tools, ranging from soil samples collected by shovels to a nuclear physics accelerator at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. One of the things I enjoy most is working outdoors in remote field sites (including tropical forests in Brazil, boreal forests in Canada, and the Sierra Nevada). I try to include as many students as possible in the field expeditions, and am establishing sites a little closer to home in order to give more students a chance to make direct measurements of environmental parameters.
The Department of Earth System Science at UCI is unique in its focus on issues of global environmental change. Helping to establish the Department has been an exciting challenge, and has influenced my research in unexpected ways. In particular, I have realized that teaching provides a chance for me to place my work in broader context, helping me recognize critical issues and ultimately do better science. In turn, I try to bring my discoveries to the classroom, to better inform students about not only the facts, but the joy of the scientific process.
