UCI ACADEMIC SENATE DISTINGUISHED FACULTY

JAMES N. DANZIGER

Daniel G. Aldrich Jr. Distinguished University Service Award, 1997

Dean of the Division of Undergraduate Education and Professor of Political Science

My discipline of political science provides interesting and conflicting interpretations of "service." From the "rational choice" perspective, there are very few occasions when an individual should engage in activities that do not directly benefit that individual or direct kin. For example, it is not rational to vote in the presidential election because the probability that one's own vote will alter the outcome is infinitesimally small and thus the effort associated with voting far outweighs any personal benefits. Similarly, you need not participate in the political actions of a large group, because you can be a "free rider" and take advantage of that group's efforts, sharing in any positive impacts without expending any energy.

However, most political science thinking takes a quite different view, emphasizing the virtues associated with serving others. First, from the group politics perspective, there are very few situations where an individual can have as much impact acting alone as when the individual works cooperatively with a group. This certainly applies to political action, and it seems true in many aspects of our lives. Second, there is considerable evidence that healthy and thriving societies are held together by the willingness of many people to interact in and contribute to the public domain. It is this sharing of responsibility to act positively in public life that creates community and supports democracy. And third, it has been persuasively argued since Aristotle that a citizen's public actions serve not only the collectivity, but are also one of the individual's most powerful ways to gain a sense of personal achievement and satisfaction (that is, what is called "self-actualization" in late twentieth-century jargon).

I was deeply honored that my colleagues in the UCI Academic Senate selected me to receive the Service Award. In my view, it recognizes contributions to all three of the great missions set out for faculty at the University of California. Our research mission is in direct service to the creation and refinement of knowledge about our world. I am fascinated by the puzzles and issues associated with my own primary research area--the nature and impacts of rapidly evolving information technologies on individuals, groups, and society. Our teaching mission extends this service to others, as we attempt to enhance their capabilities and to communicate concepts and understanding to them. For me, teaching is the most exhilarating and rewarding aspect of our service, since encouraging and facilitating learning and intellectual development in others are so exciting. And third, our explicit "service" mission encompasses the multitude of ways in which one can be an active contributor to the lives of others.

I have offered service in many forms, from coaching and refereeing in youth sports to involvement as a political activist at the local level to working in positions of responsibility in organizations both on and off the campus. These kinds of experiences, although time-consuming and sometimes frustrating, have persuaded me of the accuracy of Aristotle's vision--such service has given me a much stronger sense of self-worth. Given the invaluable benefits to themselves and their community, I suggest that everyone should make the time and effort to seize opportunities for involvement, participation, and service.

STANLEY B. GRANT

Distinguished Assistant Professor Award for Teaching, 1997-98

Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering

When I was 10 years old, my parents, older sister, and I moved to a remote Aleut-Russian village of 160 people on Spruce island in the Pacific Ocean, 140 miles south of the central Alaskan coast. The island was small enough that you could traverse its width in a good day's hike. We moved there to operate a shrimp processing plant that had gone bankrupt some years earlier. Within a year of our arrival, the plant was running around-the-clock processing 20 tons of shrimp a day, all destined for the fish markets in London.

Growing up in the village is a dangerous proposition unless you are blessed with guardian angels, and I had two of them. The first was Nonna Chernikoff, an octogenarian who tended a herd of cattle, tatted lace that would grace the walls of any museum, and had enough enthusiasm and love for 10 ordinary people. The second was the Baptist missionary's wife, Mrs. Smith, who played the role of village doctor without the benefit of formal medical training. She stitched cuts, administered antibiotics, paid house calls, and occasionally stabilized patients with serious injuries as they waited for a plane flight out of the village and into the world of modern medicine, all free of charge. (Students who ask me for a recommendation to medical school have a tough act to follow!) Mrs. Smith also taught me to play the piano, and thus initiated a life-long love of music that landed me, eight years later, a scholarship to study piano performance at the Eastman School of Music. With reluctance, I turned down a musical life in favor of studying science and engineering at Stanford University and later, Caltech.

At UCI, I teach and conduct research in the field of environmental engineering. My students and I study how to get small particles--like disease-causing viruses and bacteria--out of drinking water. The research is equal parts chemistry, physics, and microbiology, and is motivated by Southern California's increasing reliance on "recycled" sewage to supply its water needs. In my classes, I emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of modern environmental problems and, when possible, involve students in field-based studies. One success story in this regard is the "UCI Water Quality Survey," in which undergraduate students plan and carry out field-based research on a local wetland under the supervision of a panel of experts from local private firms, government agencies, and universities.

Overall, I see my central challenge as an educator as follows: to provide the intellectual tools my students need to achieve their life ambitions, and to instill the core values I learned from my village experience, namely, that life holds promise and that individuals can make a difference.

ELLEN GREENBERGER

Daniel G. Aldrich Jr. Distinguished University Service Award, 1997

Professor of Psychology and Social Behavior

As I write this essay, I am thinking especially of our many undergraduate and graduate students who are pondering their academic identities and perhaps their long-range futures.

I received my undergraduate degree in English at Vassar College, then a small women's college and now a little larger and coeducational. Thanks to a strong minor in psychology, I went on to obtain a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Harvard. As a faculty member and researcher in the ensuing years, I found my clinical interests dwindling and my imagination fired by other issues. I began to redirect my research, master other kinds of knowledge (including advanced quantitative methods), and "reinvented" myself as a developmental psychologist. A terrific undergraduate education--to which I had been deeply committed and given a great deal of time and effort--gave me the foundation for shaping and reshaping so much of my own destiny. Moreover, I did not lose out in terms of long-term career success for following my somewhat changing inclinations--a message your parents and other loved ones may not appreciate my sharing with you!

Even before joining UCI's School of Social Ecology 20-plus years ago, my research was shaped by the premise that the cultural and social contexts (or social ecologies) in which we live play an important role in human development throughout the life span. An early and continuing topic of my research concerns the measurable influence of the family and peer group on adolescents' development of independence and social responsibility. I also have an ongoing interest in the impact of men's and women's work lives on their physical and mental health, their parenting styles, and their children's outcomes. Currently, I am engaged in cross-cultural research in societies that are undergoing rapid social change. In urban locations in China, Korea, and various eastern European countries, and in Los Angeles and Orange counties, my colleague Chuansheng Chen and I and our students are examining alterations in family relationships, values, and mental health, and the degree to which these changes are linked.

People sometimes wonder what research (especially, a high commitment to research) has to do with teaching. In my case, the changing cultural environment we live in and the diversity of cultural backgrounds I have encountered among my students at UCI have expanded the scope and significance of the research questions I pursue. And the resulting research has made my teaching and mentorship more interesting to students and more attuned to current social issues. Having had my own identity--indeed, my life--transformed by experiences in college, I feel a sense of obligation to today's students at UCI. In my classes, I emphasize thinking carefully, logically, and creatively; and I keep a special eye out for those students, both undergraduate and graduate, who want to engage in real dialogue, real learning, and have some good laughs along the way.

DONALD McKAYLE

Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for Research, 1997

Professor of Dance

As a highly active artist in dance and theater, my work has spanned: creating choreography for dance companies around the world; conceiving, directing, and choreographing musical theater on Broadway, in London, and on the European continent; creating the dances for feature films and television; and staging the appearances of major celebrity performers. I bring all of this to my work at UCI where I cherish the laboratory that the studio/classroom environment affords me in the ongoing development of my art. The daily exchange with students is a revitalizing challenge into new discovery as well as a process of imparting established canons. Choreographic works that I have created on students for the annual University concert series have entered into the repertories of professional dance companies of national reputation: the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Company, The Limón Dance Company.

As graduate choreography advisor, I oversee all choreography thesis projects, and serve as a primary resource for students who wish to make contact with professionals outside of UCI. This work is often collaborative as well as advisory. Liaisons formed are maintained after graduation. In the undergraduate program, I have established the UCI Etude Ensemble, a preprofessional performance group. Aspirants are chosen annually through a highly competitive audition process. This performing aggregate is composed of Dance majors: freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors. The UCI Etude Ensemble has been presented locally, on and off campus, and nationally in concerts and lecture demonstrations. It has proven to be an impressive ambassador of UCI's Dance program. Alumni are presently employed in nationally prominent dance companies: Limón West, Momix, the Martha Graham Dance Company. The UCI Etude Ensemble can also be viewed on the Graphix Zone CD-ROM, Herbie Hancock Presents Living Jazz, and on the American Dance Legacy Institute's first interactive volume, The Rainbow Etude. This volume will be stored at the National Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs, New York, and at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

Another realm of deep involvement for me is the School of the Arts' annual mainstage performances at the Irvine Barclay Theater, presented jointly by the Departments of Dance, Drama, and Music. This is an area of instruction and practice in musical theater that is intrinsic to the development of the performer, the stage manager, and the costume, scenic, lighting, and sound designer. In the role of director/choreographer, I am afforded the opportunity to extend original concept to existing classics of this genre. At the same time, I work alongside the student staff and performers in the prime moments of creative experimentation. The students are full and equal participants in the highly creative and collaborative act of theater.

I look forward to new challenges, new collaborations, and to the discovery of new talent and new ideas.

PETER M. RENTZEPIS

Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for Research, 1997

Professor of Chemistry and UC Presidential Chair

I joined the Chemistry Department some 12 years ago because I was impressed by the faculty and students of the School of Physical Sciences. I found them to be extremely stimulating and ever-evolving toward new areas of research and methods for improving teaching. There seems to be a continuous influx of novel and exciting ideas for research: from theories on differential equations and geometry, to the synthesis and characterization of new materials and drugs, and from ultrafast spectroscopy and chemical dynamics, theory, and high-energy physics, to surface sciences, geosciences, and inorganic chemistry.

I usually teach quantum chemistry and experimental courses. My task is to teach and convince students that it is worth utilizing their native abilities and background knowledge, which is indeed amongst the best in the country, to understand the principles of quantum mechanics, and during the course to develop a working knowledge of science in general and physical chemistry in particular. In the laboratory we teach students how to apply scientific concepts and theories in laboratory experiments which are similar to those used professionally. The ultimate goal is for the students to be able to use the scientific concepts and analytical thinking, taught at UCI, advantageously in their professional lives.

My own research concerns the interaction of light with matter. More specifically, we study the first ultrafast events, occurring during molecular reactions induced by laser light. Some of the phenomena studied include photosynthesis and vision, where we found processes occurring in a millionth of a millionth of a second. We are also studying transient structures of Si and GaAs, two computer chip materials, under laser irradiation by means of picosecond resolved x-ray diffraction, a new technique which we developed at UCI.

Another research study, on two photon picosecond nonlinear processes, has led us into the concept of a novel three-dimensional computer memory. This 3D memory was developed to a practical prototype device in collaboration with Professor S. Esener of UCSD's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. As a result of our basic research, many patents have been applied for, issued to us, and assigned to the University of California; these are now licensed to industry in order to make a commercial two-photon 3D memory device. A number of students, postgraduate researchers, and faculty from many parts of the world have been continuously associated with both the basic research and the technology of this project.

This atmosphere of engineers and scientists from diverse scientific and geographic areas, working together, provides a most stimulating and fruitful habitat for the performance of excellent research. I believe that UCI's students have the opportunity for the best possible education, both in the lecture halls and the research laboratories. Every effort is made to have them well prepared to enter the professional world and be able to become successful professionals and great assets to UCI and society.

WILLIAM R. SCHONFELD

Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for Teaching, 1997

Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science

Universities were created in medieval times. They were called "universitas magistrorum et scholarium." The word, university, had nothing to do with the "universality" of knowledge or learning. Rather it identified the fact that this institution of masters (magistrorum or professors) and scholars (scholarium or students) was a company of persons, a community, a body, like other medieval guilds, organized for the sake of its own protection.

What was to be protected, and from whom? The University, from its origins, was not only a center of discussion, but also of critique. It considered issues critically, and thus often disapproved of policies enacted by the State and the Church. In an era of authoritarian control by both secular and ecclesiastical authority, this trait surely needed protection.

Today the challenges are more subtle. Perhaps the most important stem from the calls for career preparation as a centerpiece of undergraduate education. The university has not, is not, and cannot be a trade school. Rather it is a setting in which students acquire basic analytical skills capable of being applied to a range of diverse employments. It also provides society with a pool of intelligent, educated people.

Students and faculty must work together to ensure that the university remains a setting, first and foremost, of the expansion of knowledge and the increase in sophistication of thought. Undergraduates must insist on demanding curricula and rigor in the assessment of academic performance. Faculty must ensure that students learn to write clearly and precisely, understand basic mathematical and scientific thinking, and acquire in-depth knowledge in some academic area of interest to the student.

At UCI, we have the potential to become one of the handful of great American universities. To do so, we must build on our solid foundation, and resist the calls to attempt to train undergraduates for specific jobs. We are poised to either address this challenge or succumb to the pressures for ordinariness which are common in the environment surrounding the university, and even on campus. The direction that we take will be determined by the extent to which faculty and students share a common commitment to create the highest-quality educational and research environment on the campus. If we do not have this commitment, greatness will elude us. If we develop and nurture it, we will achieve the potential which is ours. And the children of today's UCI undergraduates will ask their parents: "How did you ever manage to get into and complete studies at such an extraordinary University?"

JUDITH STEPAN-NORRIS

Distinguished Assistant Professor Award for Research, 1997-98

Chair of the Department of Sociology and Associate Professor of Sociology

After years of decline, the American labor movement is beginning to show signs of revitalization. Today's typical university student grew up in a world that was largely devoid of news and views on the roles and character of labor unions, so it is important that they understand the basics, including the history of the labor movement and its main goals. Yet when I begin discussing these topics, students sometimes ask why they should even care, given that many of them will end up in managerial positions. I explain that these are issues of concern to all of us who live in a democratic society, especially people who hope to be effective managers.

Most of my research is historically oriented: I investigate the role of politics within the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) unions, as well as the effects of unions' political efforts on the larger political scene during the 1930s-1950s. In my courses, I emphasize how this research impacts basic sociological concepts such as bureaucratization, the "iron law of oligarchy," and democracy. Interested students often go on to take independent studies with me, where I introduce them to primary data including archival materials, FBI files, oral history interview transcripts, and complex political maps. I also work one-on-one with a number of graduate students, and often coauthor articles with them.

My teaching is oriented toward developing students' critical thinking skills, so I often offer students some established facts concerning a topic, along with two or more perspectives on those facts. When teaching Introductory Sociology students about labor unions, for example, I first give a lecture that elaborates on what unions do and how they have evolved over time. During the next meeting I bring in two guest speakers, one from a local union and the other from management. Each gives his or her own view on the role and worth of unions, and answers students' questions. I think that students normally find the juxtaposition of these presentations to be very useful in their own search for answers.

Overall, I aspire to enhance students' understanding of the basic facts about important societal issues and prepare them to make informed decisions concerning them.

KEITH A. WOERPEL

Distinguished Assistant Professor Award for Research, 1997-98

Assistant Professor of Chemistry

In my first year of college I thought I wanted to be a physician. Since I had to take so many chemistry classes to prepare for this career, I decided I might as well get a degree in chemistry. In my second year I encountered organic chemistry, the study of carbon compounds. I studied the structures of organic molecules and how these molecules interact with each other to change their structures. I learned the structures of plastic wrap and the molecule that gives pine trees their characteristic smell. I learned that an overwhelming number of medications are organic compounds, synthesized in the laboratory from simpler molecules. The elegance, power, and relevance of organic chemistry persuaded me to pursue this subject as a career.

My passion for chemistry has only grown since my second year of college. Now I am no longer satisfied by what I read in books: I must know more. That is where research fits in. Research is the expression of passion so deep that one is motivated to create new knowledge.

My research involves the discovery and study of new organic reactions. I am particularly interested in developing methods for the construction of architecturally complicated organic molecules. Using the knowledge developed in our laboratories and laboratories like ours, a chemist in a pharmaceutical company can construct new molecules as potential medicines.

Research and teaching are not distinct activities. I incorporate my research experiences into my teaching, and research is itself an act of education. As with most professors, my research is conducted in collaboration with a team of undergraduate and graduate students. As students make new discoveries in the laboratory, I teach them to analyze data, formulate new hypotheses, and design experiments to test these hypotheses. My students and I are proud of our results and conclusions because they represent the efforts of our hard work and cooperation.

The love of chemistry that motivates my research is also expressed in my teaching. I see every class as an opportunity to convey my excitement to a new generation of students. Research requires me to be current on the most recent advances in chemical knowledge, so my students learn the most modern and relevant aspects of the discipline. I am fortunate to be at UCI, an intellectually stimulating environment where the pursuit and transmission of knowledge are intimately connected.