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Campus PeriodicalsResources for ReportersSelected Administrative OfficesCalendarsMaintained by pioweb@ucsc.edu |
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Administrative Message November 9, 2004 To: UC Santa Cruz Community From: Martin M. Chemers, Acting Chancellor Re: Reasons to CelebrateWe've announced $1 million raised for student support and dedicated two new facilities for teaching and research…all since last Friday. Please join me in celebrating these milestones and in thanking the members of University Relations, the Baskin School of Engineering and others whose efforts made these endeavors so successful. The sold-out Scholarships Benefit Dinner last Saturday was a triumph, with more than 300 donors, alumni, faculty, staff, and other friends convening to raise funds for undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships. Many individuals contributed to this success, and I want to spotlight a few of the teams that led the effort. Under University Relations Vice Chancellor Ron Suduiko's overarching leadership, the Development group generated a total of $1 million in donations from the dinner and related activities; the Public Affairs team created an array of effective promotional and presentation materials and fostered positive news coverage; the Alumni Office engaged the Alumni Council and organized the silent auction; and the Special Events staff marshaled myriad details with precision and quality. The event also benefited greatly from the participation of leaders of the UCSC Alumni Association and the UC Santa Cruz Foundation. In particular, Foundation President Ken Feingold and Alumni Council President Ken Doctor played active roles in creating and presenting this world-class event. Similarly, the dedication of the Engineering 2 Building and Baskin Engineering Auditorium involved a number of individuals working together to build success. Dean Steve Kang and many engineering faculty and staff led planning for the event, and members of the University Relations team and others contributed. The result was a stellar opportunity to spotlight faculty research, while celebrating completion of two wonderful new facilities that will benefit students for decades to come. Additional highlights were announcements of a $1 million gift to create an endowed chair and donation of $575,000 in equipment from Cisco Systems. Copied below is an article reporting on the engineering dedication printed in the San Jose Mercury News. Immediately following are links to coverage of the dedication and the dinner in the Santa Cruz Sentinel and Currents Online. New engineering building heralds UCSC's growth In a hint of the enormous changes in store for the University of California-Santa Cruz, UC and campus officials last week dedicated a new building that doubles the size of the engineering school. The campus's long-range plan, released late last month, calls for increasing the number of students by the end of the next decade to 21,000, an increase of about 45 percent. The plan also calls for doubling the square footage of building space by 2020 to meet the needs for new research facilities, classrooms and campus housing. Sixty-five percent of the new development would occur in the already-developed portion of the 2,000-acre campus. The other buildings would be located in a forested area to the north. The plan is expected to trigger a heated debate at City Hall and among city residents, especially those who live in the city's Westside neighborhoods, already overrun with cars heading to and from the campus. On Friday, though, the opening of the new engineering building was a time for joy, not fiery public discussion. "This is really a big day for us," said Sung-Mo "Steve" Kang, dean of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering. At a dedication ceremony attended by UC President Robert Dynes and other dignitaries, Kang also announced a new $1 million grant for the school from Kumar Malavalli, co-founder and CEO of InMage Systems. Cisco Systems donated $557,000 to the school, Kang said. Launched in 1997 Almost from the start, UC-Santa Cruz, which opened in 1965, had engineering and computer students. But the engineering school was not established until 1997, after Baskin, a retired engineer and general contractor, donated an initial $5 million. The school focuses on blending engineering, biotechnology, information technology, chemistry and nanotechnology, among others. One strong goal is to help people with life-threatening problems and serious disabilities. Wentai Liu, professor of electrical engineering, is working on a project to help the blind see with the aid of tiny video cameras hidden in eyeglasses, wireless transmitters and microchip devices inserted into eyes. The project already has had limited success on six patients. "It's exciting to be involved in solving society's problems," said Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam, a student of Liu's. Liu also is working on similar systems that might eventually help people with serious spinal injuries stand and perhaps even walk again. David Haussler, professor of computer science, has already moved into the new engineering building. Haussler played a major role in mapping the human genome, essentially the blueprint for a human being. UC-Santa Cruz in July 2000 was the first to post the genome on the Internet (www.genome.ucsc.edu) to share with other scientists. In an interview in his office Friday, Haussler said the human genome is now "99.9 percent complete." Considering that humans are genetically "99.9 percent" identical, the mapping of genes has gone just about as far as it can, he said. Tracing evolution The mapping will now allow Haussler and other scientists to trace how humans evolved from ape-like creatures. And they hope it will lead to cures for dozens of diseases. Posting the genome was "one of our proudest accomplishments," Haussler said. The second engineering building, which creates a kind of minicampus within a campus, has added 150,000 square feet of new offices, laboratories and classroom space. The project includes the new Jack Baskin Engineering Auditorium, a 212-seat lecture hall and a large open plaza where engineering students can gather and enjoy the Santa Cruz sunshine. By 2010, Kang said, the engineering school hopes to have 1,500 undergraduates and 700 graduate students. ##### http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2004/November/06/local/stories/06local.htm http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2004/November/07/local/stories/07local.htm http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2004/November/07/local/stories/08local.htm http://currents.ucsc.edu/04-05/11-08/dedication.asp http://currents.ucsc.edu/04-05/11-08/chair.asp http://currents.ucsc.edu/04-05/11-08/dinner.asp
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