Dear Fellow
Phi Betes,
Now that the
election dust has somewhat settled and the holiday rush is not yet in full
swing, please take a moment to renew your membership in PBKNCA since all
current memberships expire on December 31, 2008. You may have sent a check to
National this year, but unfortunately that does not give you membership in the
Northern California Association. (See "Membership Fact Sheet", page 3
in this newsletter.) Hint: If you did not receive a September newsletter, it was
because you had not paid your 2008 dues.
Every membership is
significant. Please take time today to return the enclosed envelope with your
2009 dues and donations.
Why should you part
with $30 to renew your PBKNCA membership, or even contribute more? Membership
in our Association offers you an opportunity to help fund scholarships and
teaching excellence awards; meet new people; attend enjoyable, intellectually
stimulating programs; and benefit from being part of an award-winning
organization. Membership contributions and participation in our programs are
fundamental to our success. Since we are a 501c3, contributions are
tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.
Because volunteers
run our Association, most of your contributions benefit our scholarship and
teaching excellence recipients (We do have expenses for printing and mailing).
Your generous support in 2008 enabled us to award nine $5,000 graduate
scholarships and four $500 teaching excellence honoraria. A list of these
extraordinarily talented academics appears below and on page 2 of this
newsletter. In these challenging financial times, our deserving graduate
students need your help more than ever.
New member? The first 50 new members who join
at the $50 or above level will receive, at no extra cost, the very valuable
2008 Directory of Membership. This 56-page booklet contains the names,
addresses, schools, and emails, of nearly 1200 Association members. With
listings by last name, school, initiation name, and city, you can easily find
long-lost friends, Phi Betes in your neighborhood, or members who went to your
school.
Jean Ellen James, President
, President
Manisha Bahl* – UCSF – Medicine Joanna Nelson – UC Santa Cruz –
Matthew Fujita – UC Berkeley – Integrative Biology Environmental Studies
Lauren McGeoch – UC Davis – Ecology Veena Singla – UCSF – Cell Biology
Elizabeth McGuire – UC Berkeley – History Jessica Walter – UC Berkeley –
Physics
Victor Menaldo – Stanford – Political Science Leslie Wang – UC Berkeley –
Sociology
*Elizabeth B. Reed Scholarship
Joanne
Sandstrom, Third Vice-President, Scholarships
This year, PBKNCA
awarded $5,000 scholarships to nine out of twenty-three applicants from our
nine Northern California schools. Our thanks to the scholarship committee: Jeff Fenton, Lynne Fovinci, Jean James,
Gerry Richards and Joanne Sandstrom.
Manisha Bahl, E.B. Reed Scholarship, UC
San Francisco (Medicine), is working on a new, non-invasive method of
diagnosing non-alcoholic fatty-liver disease, a common cause of chronic liver
disease in North America. A goal of future work is to lead efforts in
immunology and to shape policy related to biomedical research. Manisha also has
a passion for patient care, especially in providing care to the medically
underserved (exhibited in her work in free clinics) and for teaching (exhibited
in her development of an interactive learning module for teaching anatomy and
radiology in the first-year medical school curriculum). Her letters of
recommendation cite her humility and kindness, creativity, originality,
dedication, and initiative.
Matthew Fujita, UC Berkeley
(Integrative Biology), is studying asexual Australian geckos, whose existence
represents a major conundrum in evolutionary biology. Such research can provide
critical insight on the origin and evolution of many genetic mutations that
induce pathological disease. Outreach is also important to Matthew: he
developed lessons for a seventh-grade biology curriculum at Adams Middle School
in Richmond, a school serving a largely Hispanic and disadvantaged population.
His letters of recommendation cite his dedication, deep motivation, rigor and passion
about communicating science to multiple audiences.
Lauren McGeoch, UC Davis (Ecology), is focusing on
habitat edges, on understanding the nature, causes, and consequences of edge
interactions, especially important as habitats worldwide become more
fragmented. Results of her study in Kenya have important, non-intuitive
implications for plant community ecology, livestock productivity, and
biodiversity conservation. Lauren was on the Collegiate Water Polo
Association's Women's All-American Team; she hiked the entire Pacific Crest
Trail in 2005. Her letters of
recommen-dation cite her focus, efficiency, curiosity, computer sophistication,
talent – and guts.
Elizabeth McGuire, UC Berkeley
(History), is exploring the relationship between the Russian and Chinese
revolutions through the experiences of individual Chinese Communists in the
Soviet Union. Her study shows the mismatched assumptions between the two
revolutions. It is based on archival research and interviews with children of
famous international revolutionaries who were sent to school at the Interdom –
opened in 1933 and still operating. Her work renders "the Sino-Soviet
romance" useful to international, cross-cultural, or comparative scholars
seeking to conceptualize this relationship. Letters of recommendation cite her diligence, conceptual acuity,
creativity, resourceful-ness, fearless enthusiasm, and tact.
Victor Menaldo, Stanford (Political
Science), is conducting research that challenges the Tocquevillean thesis that
extending the franchise in unequal societies shifts the decisive voter to the
left, causing redistribution of wealth. His study also overturns conventional
wisdom: in the long run, he has found, there is no relationship between natural
resource reliance and authoritarianism. "Democracy in and of itself may
not be the panacea for remedying inequality that it has been purported to
be." Instead, populist politicians, unable to raise taxes on the wealthy,
raise revenue by expanding the money supply, thereby causing inflation.
"The ultimate result is a cruel irony: democratization trends to worsen
income inequality." Letters of
recommendation cite his creativity, energy, enthusiasm, and sense of humor.
Joanna Nelson, UC Santa Cruz
(Environmental Studies), is studying the interactions of nitrogen pollution and
sea-level rise in salt marsh habitats, investigating the multiple drivers of
ecological change, and incorporating different knowledge systems to shed light
on the changes. Joanne examines the linked roles of biological diversity and
cultural diversity, connecting scientific knowledge with local knowledge. In
her teaching role, she designed and taught “Pathways from Research to
Conservation” at the Hopkins Marine Station. Letters of recommendation cite her remarkable research intuition,
adeptness at spotting flaws in thinking (including that of her professors),
energy, creativity, and patience.
Veena Singla, UC San Francisco (Cell
Biology), is studying stem cell models of disease to uncover the molecular
bases by which mutations result in disease, thereby – it is hoped – providing
insight into the development of novel treatments. As a teaching assistant for
UCSF biochemistry classes, she designed interactive and engaging lessons – for
example, having students pretend to be base pairs of DNA undergoing a repair
mechanism. For such ingenuity, she was awarded the UCSF Richard Fineberg
Memorial Teaching Award. Letters of
recommendation cite her exceptional talent, initiative, and tenacity, and her
quirky, outside-the-box way of looking at problems.
Jessica Walter, UC Berkeley (Physics),
is studying cellular metabolism and the balance of energy in living cells. At
the beginning of her studies at Berkeley, she had to set up her own lab on
campus, where her advisor wasn't yet a faculty member. As a result of this
early research, scientists can now directly influence the organisms they wish
to study in order to test their hypotheses. Jessica is co-inventor of
(patented) biologically derived nanorobots and their use. She is the recipient
of several teaching awards. Letters of
recom-mendation cite her intelligence, independence, creativity, and
willingness to take risks.
UC Berkeley (Sociology), is studying the
"missing children" in China in an era of "high quality"
citizens. As a result of the state's population policies, healthy
"excess" daughters and disabled or special-needs children (mostly
boys) have been abandoned. Whereas the healthy girls have been adopted by
affluent Westerners, the vast majority of special-needs children will remain in
orphanages - some run by the state, some by Western evangelical Christian NGOs.
The study analyzes the issues that emerge when processes of globalization
enable Westerners to become embedded in the local dynamics and politics of
developing countries. Letters of recommendation cite her depth of sociological
insight, analytical intelligence, thorough empirical work, and strong
motivation.
Joanne Sandstrom,
Second Vice-President, Scholarships
Dr. John
G. Forte – Department of Molecular
and Cell Biology – UC Berkeley
Dr.
Arthur Havenner – Department of
Agricultural and Resource Economics – UC Davis
Dr.
Garrison Sposito – College of
Natural Resources, Department of Environmental
Science,
Policy and Management – UC Berkeley
Dr.
Elizabeth Tallent – English
Department – Stanford
Narcinda Lerner, Teaching Excellence Chair
A common question
about membership:
"Haven’t I already joined the Association? I sent a check to Phi Beta
Kappa in Washington, D.C." To clear up the confusion implicit in this
question, here is a brief primer on the differences between the national Phi
Beta Kappa Society and our Northern California Association of Phi Beta Kappa.
The Phi Beta Kappa
Society (PBK) in Washington, D.C.
Once you are initiated into Phi Beta Kappa - usually in your
senior year in college - you become a lifetime member of the Phi Beta Kappa
Society. The Society sends out yearly solicitations for donations and
sustaining memberships in order to maintain its services at the national level.
It also publishes a newsletter called The
Key Reporter. The Society's website at www.pbk.org provides an excellent
source of additional information about the national organization.
Phi Beta Kappa,
Northern California Association (PBKNCA)
Today there are 61 active PBK alumni associations across the
nation that support the aims of the national Society by promoting the value of
a liberal arts education and awarding scholarships. Our Association, PBKNCA,
ranks among the top in the nation, not only in the size of our membership, but
also in the number of social activities we sponsor and in the amount of
scholarship money that we distribute each year. National recognized our efforts
by an award at the 2003 Triennial, and our Asilomar Conference (see page 6) has
been featured in articles in the 2006 summer and fall issues of The Key Reporter. You can learn more
about us and what we do by visiting our website at www.pbknca.org.
Our primary goals are
twofold:
* Recognizing
excellence in teaching by honoring professors who have been nominated by former
students belonging to PBK. This past April at our Annual
Meeting and Awards Dinner we awarded certificates and honoraria to four
outstanding professors.
*Helping outstanding
graduate students by granting scholarships. In addition to honoring the professors, we awarded
$45,000 in scholarships to nine deserving students. (Both the professors and
the students are listed on page 1 of this newsletter.)
Our Board consists of
hard-working, dedicated, and talented volunteers who run PBKNCA. Unlike
National, we have no paid employees. That means the only significant costs we
need to cover are postage and printing of our newsletters and, every three
years, a directory. Therefore, we are able to put our members' dues and
donations fully into our scholarship and teaching excellence funds.
We also offer our members opportunities to get together
socially, often for private tours of educational or cultural institutions. (See
pages 4-7 of this newsletter for examples of both our tour offerings and our
wonderful Asilomar Conference.) All of our events serve as social
opportunities, as well as fundraisers for our scholarship program.
Any Phi Beta Kappa member - even if initiated at a
university in another state - is welcome to join the Northern California
Association. In fact, many of our most active members were initiated into PBK
at a college outside of California, so we would be delighted to get to know
you!
Please join PBKNCA in
2009 by sending in the enclosed membership envelope.
Members may request a copy of the FY 07-08 Financial Report by contacting the Treasurer
Letitia Sanders,
who has done an outstanding job for our Association for the past 9 years as
Third Vice President, Membership, is relinquishing her job. Therefore, we are
looking for a replacement for her to begin in July 2009. This person needs to
have a PC (or Mac that can boot to Windows) and have some familiarity with
Microsoft Access (we can supply Access if you don’t have a copy). Although
there are over 2500 members in our database, we have only about 1300 active
files. After the November newsletter requesting membership renewal is
delivered, your busy season begins, requiring about 10 hours a week December
through April to receive our membership envelopes, record dues and
contributions, and pass this information and money on to the treasurer. In
addition, you will work closely with the newsletter chair to produce mailing
lists from Access not only for the newsletter, but for other communications as
well.
After the busy
winter and spring season, the job requires about two hours weekly to update
records and respond promptly to emails from fellow board members, the national
society and the public. Finally, as a board member, you would be expected to
attend Saturday morning board meetings every other month.
Please think about
volunteering for this position, keeping in mind that it will require 10 hours a
week for a few months, in addition to your normal work-week activities. It is
vital to our Association. (And the good news is that Letitia will be on hand at
the beginning to help you get started, and our newsletter chair, Ray, will also
be available for consultation.)
If you are interested, contact Nominating Committee Chair
The largest collection of Hispanic murals in the world outside of Mexico are found in San Francisco's Mission District. Chronicling Latino history, we will see approximately 80 of the almost 200 murals in a tour led by Gary Holloway, Bay area walking tour guide extraordinaire. Included in our visit to the Mission District will be a stop at the Precita Eyes Mural Center, home of Mujeres Muralistas, where about 90% of the murals are created by women and where we will also have a chance to learn about their educational programs and community outreach efforts. The tour also includes a visit the Cesar Chavez School and Balmy Alley, both displaying a collection of fantastic murals. Our visit will culminate in a stop at San Francisco's oldest ice cream parlor, the "St. Francis", complete with its original soda fountain and where we might enjoy lunch or some good ice cream concoctions.