The Geography Department held an open house for friends of Geography Friday afternoon, April 27, followed by an awards ceremony in honor of deserving undergraduates and distinguished alumni. Fliers were sent out to advertise the event, staff donated food and time, and grad students and faculty gave lab tours, demos, and presentations. Included among the latter were presentations by grad students Alan Glennon, Karl Grossner, and Kyle Cavanaugh; and Mike Goodchild gave a talk on “Visions for a Geospatial Future.”
Tables covered with goodies were a major attraction during the open house, and it was hard to navigate the first floor hallway of our new office site. Several staff members donated home-made treats, and special thanks go to Beilei Zhang for her mouth watering phillo pastry and cheese doodads; to Connie Padilla for her “award winning” salsa; to Devon Kelly for her chocolate chip shortbread cookies; to Jose Saleta for his banana bread muffins (from a box of mix, but he’s a guy); to Laura Harrison for her M & M brownies; and to Kathy Davis for her cheese balls smothered with chopped walnuts.
The main event of the day was the awards ceremony held in the Ellison Hall courtyard at 4 pm (once people could be torn away from the food tables). Our Chair, Oliver Chadwick, acted as Master of Ceremonies and opened the event by welcoming everyone, introducing faculty and staff, thanking the Office of Research people who enabled the renovation of the new Department offices, and then dragging Dean Martin Moskovitz up to the podium to “say a few words.” Martin has been the Dean of the Mathematical, Life, and Physical Sciences division of our College of Letters and Sciences for six and a half years, and his comments about the Department reflected his diplomatic skill: “This is the best geography department in the world—not just the nation, the world.” “You don’t teach Geography, you invent it.” “If I had it to do over again, I’d have taken Geography as a major.” High praise, indeed.
Dr. Chadwick then proceeded to present awards. First on the list was The Akella Family Scholarship. Mr. and Mrs. Jagannadham Akella, at the request of their daughter Mamata, established The Akella Family Scholarship in 2006. Mamata Akella was the 2006 winner of the Jack & Laura Dangermond Undergraduate Scholarship which is awarded to the most accomplished undergraduate student in Geographic Information Science (GIS) in the department of Geography. Not surprisingly, she was accepted as a Geography graduate student at Pennsylvania State University.
The Akella Family Scholarship is awarded each year to a talented and deserving undergraduate student enrolled in the department. The Scholarship is used to support an undergraduate student(s) based on the criteria of compelling family/personal circumstances and academic achievement. Highest consideration is given to those who have unique and challenging obligations (i.e., re-entry/non-traditional students, extended family responsibilities, etc). The award is available to all declared Geography majors (first year as well as continuing students), and this year’s honor went to Krista Lee.
The Nicholas Bourdakis Fund was established after the tragic death of Nicholas, who died in February 2001 when struck by a car in Isla Vista. He had just declared Geography as his major, and this fund helps to keep Nick’s memory alive by supporting future generations of outstanding undergraduate students in Geography at UCSB. The award is given to a newly declared Geography major with the highest GPA, and it is gratifying to see something so creative come out of such tragedy. This year’s recipient was Cara Moore, described by Kirk Goldsberry as the best student he’s had in 5 years of teaching.
The Jack & Laura Dangermond Undergraduate Scholarship is awarded annually to undergraduates at UCSB based on performance in the Geography 176 sequence and is a significant honor for the very best undergrad student in GIS. Nominations are made in the junior year, and up to $2,000 may be awarded in the senior year. Separate prizes may be awarded to Geography majors and non-Geography majors, and this year’s winner was Geography major Scott Raymon. The scholarship is endowed by Jack and Laura Dangermond who are the co-founders and President and Executive Vice President, respectively, of ESRI (Environmental Science Research Institute). Founded in 1969, ESRI is the leading Geographic Information Systems (GIS) company in the world, providing software such as ArcGIS and ArcView to clients in 90 countries. Jack Dangermond currently serves on the board of directors of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) at UCSB.
Jessica Sanders, An outreach coordinator from Associated Students Recycling, then presented Oliver and the Ellison Hall Sustainability Committee with the Green Award (see the April 25 article). Geography won first place this year, with Computer Science coming in second and the Office of Student Life third.
Oliver next introduced Professor Emeritus Ray Smith, who presented Professor Dawn Wright with The Raymond C. Smith Distinguished Alumni Award. Ray pointed out that Dawn received an Interdisciplinary PhD in both Physical Geography and Marine Geology while at UCSB—distinguished, indeed—and that she is currently an internationally distinguished marine geographer, teacher, and mentor at Oregon State University (see the September 26, 2005 article).
Dawn countered by commenting that “this award is really yours. I was lucky to come to UCSB and have mentors such as Ray Smith, Dave Siegel, and Libe Washburn. I’m trying to live up to their examples. I’d also like to ‘be like Mike’ (Goodchild)!”
G. Donald Richardson was the recipient of The Reginald Golledge Distinguished Alumni Award. Dr. Richardson was the department’s first PhD and currently works at the Institute for Defense Analyses (see the November 1, 2006 article). In his acceptance speech, Don commented: “I was lucky to have been a grad student in geography at UCSB and fortunate to have had Reg Golledge as my graduate advisor. My five years as a grad student were the most important years of my life. They formed the foundation of who I am, both professionally and personally. My academic training has allowed me to have a good career, one in which I am an equal partner with my colleagues who have PhDs in physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, and so on. In many ways, my academic preparation as a geographer is more broad-based and more relevant to solving today’s problems than the training of my colleagues.”
Friday’s events culminated in an outdoor evening dinner party/barbecue for donors, recipients of the undergraduate awards, and for faculty which was hosted by Mo Lovegreen, our CEO. With her usual flair for delegation, Mo conscripted her mother (Harriet Burke) and her sister (Kathy Scheidemen, MSO of ICESS), as well as some regular staff (take a bow, Connie Padilla) to lay on a lavish buffet and wine bar. The highlight of the evening was an after dinner announcement to remove the plastic flowers from the decorative pots on each table and to “dig in” for desert in honor of our new Chair, Oliver Chadwick (Oliver is a soils expert and is often and irreverently referred to as a "Doctor of dirt"). The desert “dirt” supporting the flowers on each table actually consisted of alternating layers of crushed Oreo cookies and pudding (with gummy worms added for verisimilitude), but it took awhile for Mo’s announcement to sink in—or for anyone to “dig in.” Well, the lighting was dim, and the “dirt” was very realistic! The use of human subjects in the field of geographic gastronomy may need further investigation, but Dawn Wright was adamant in saying that the barbecue was “the most terrific one that I have ever attended, and of course, I will never forget the ‘dirt.’” Not many of us will!
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