Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef surprised UC Davis professor Brenda Deen Schildgen with a $40,000 teaching prize during her lecture at Olson Hall on Tuesday.

The UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement has been awarded to one outstanding professor each year since 1987 and is believed to be the largest undergraduate teaching prize in the nation.

The winner is selected based upon the recommendations of faculty, students and research peers, said Meg Stallard, chair of the UC Davis Foundation Board of Trustees.

This prize is presented each year in the belief that excellence in undergraduate teaching, combined with distinguished scholarly achievements, is what distinguishes universities, she said.

This honor also reinforces UC Davis’ commitment to its students by recognizing that the quality of their education starts with the caliber and success of the faculty, Stallard said.

Schildgen has been teaching at UC Davis since 1988 and is a scholar of medieval European literature and biblical studies. She has worked with literature in English, Italian, French, Spanish, Greek and Latin and has taught courses in areas including Comparative Literature, Humanities, and English.

As Schildgen lectured her English 171A class called Bible as Literature, Vanderhoef entered the room with a crowd of photographers and a large cake to announce her as this year’s recipient of the award.

Though the prize was awarded on April Fool’s Day, Vanderhoef said it was not at all a joke.

Each year the prize is given to an extraordinary person, he said. [Schildgen] is among the best of the best. She loves teaching and students feel that – they feel that they are continuously learning.

On course evaluations at the end of the quarter, Schildgen twice received the highest possible rating – five out of five – from every student in her class. The two classes were upper division Comparative Literature courses.

One of the popular lower division courses that she teaches is Comparative Literature 6, Myths and Legends.

Myths and Legends was a large class, but she ran it as if each one of us was being taught personally by her, said Kris Ide, junior majoring in English.

Schildgen is very knowledgeable not only about the texts she’s specifically teaching, but also how it relates to other texts, time periods, people and cultures, Ide said.

She puts what you’re learning into a wider context, he said.

In addition to teaching, Schildgen has published 10 books in the last 11 years and has authored three dozen scholarly articles.

Among her many works is a book titled Power and Prejudice: Reception of the Gospel of Mark, for which she won a Best Academic Book Choice award in 1999.

Schildgen has also contributed toward building the campus’ University Writing Program and has been an advocate for the development of writing skills.

When Vanderhoef presented her with the teaching award, Schildgen said she felt flabbergasted, awed and mostly gratitude for the recognition.

The first thing that’s going through my head is that I don’t deserve this, Schildgen said. I believe it’s not a one person project, but a team of people all working together to educate.

With the money she has been recently awarded, Schildgen said she will not be spending it on a new car or a trip to Disneyland. Instead, she may be giving a portion of it to Comparative Literature traveling grants.

THUY TRAN can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.com XXX

UC Davis is offering a two-day short course on the growing of olives and production of olive oil from Apr. 18 to 19. The course, held in Lodi, will feature professional olive growers, tree-fruit research specialists, and international olive experts. Attendees do not need a background in olive oil production to attend.

The course is specifically designed for beginners, said Paul Vossen, organizer of the event and Farm Advisor for the Sonoma and Marin Counties Fruits and Vegetables Marketing.

The course covers olive-related topics like orchard establishment, olive production in Spain, harvesting equipment and dealing with pests like the olive fruit fly.

We’ll get in depth in specifics for people who are already growers, Vossen said.

The short course is co-sponsored by the UCD Fruit and Nut Research and Information Center, the UC Cooperative Extension in Sonoma County and the UCD Olive Center.

Attendees can register online at fruitsandnuts.ucdavis.edu. Vossen said he expects 80 to 100 people to attend.

During the Friday courses, the group will visit Corto Olive, an olive orchard in Lodi, for field talks and demonstrations.

Brady Witlow, the president of the olive mill at Corto Olive, will give a tour of the mill and explain the equipment that turns olives into olive oil.

I will explain our reasons for entering the California olive oil business, Witlow said.

An olive mill is where the olives are crushed and the oil is extracted. Witlow said attendees of the course will be able to see the large operation at the mill as well as a smaller mill.

We’re going to give insight and tips on why we picked the equipment we did, and we’ll talk about the hurdles and pitfalls of the business, Witlow said.

Witlow said the group will also visit the olive orchard.

The international speakers at the event are Angelo Godina, an olive expert from the University of Bari, Italy, and Joan Tous, an expert from Spain. Tous will speak about the different methods of harvesting olives.

Registration for the course is $550 and includes two books, breakfast, lunches, the dinner banquet, buses, and travel expenses for the foreign experts. The course is located at Hutchins St. Square Conference Center in Lodi.

Dan Flynn, executive director of the UCD Olive Center, said that this short course has been offered before, but not annually.

Depending on the response, I think it could emerge as an annual event, Flynn said.

Flynn said that there is a growing interest in the olive oil business in California.

Newcomers are welcome, Flynn said.

The university itself is a newcomer to the olive oil industry. UC Davis has long been a part of olive research, but the university recently became involved in olive oil production. Since 2005, the UCD Department of Operations and Maintenance has harvested olives from the 1,500 olive trees on campus. The olives are harvested in the late fall and milled in Palermo. The extra-virgin olive oil is sold at the UCD Bookstore.

MADELINE McCURRY SCHMIDT can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.comXXX

Though newly appointed University of California President Mark Yudof has yet to officially assume his position, he has received praise from students and faculty alike.

Yudof, 63, was the president of the University of Minnesota before becoming the chancellor of the University of Texas system in 2002. He will replace departing UC President Robert Dynes this summer at a date yet to be determined.

The UC announced Yudof’s appointment Mar. 27, seven months after Dynes announced his intent to step down after facing political pressure amid an executive compensation scandal. The university identified approximately 250 candidates to replace Dynes before narrowing the list down to fewer than 10, said UC spokesman Brad Hayward.

UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef had lunch with Yudof last weekend and said they discussed UC Davis and many of the exciting things that are on the horizon for us.

I’ve known Mark Yudof since his years at the University of Minnesota. He is very thoughtful, his decisions always well-reasoned, said Vanderhoef in a prepared statement to The California Aggie. He comes from a system office at the University of Texas that has similarities and dissimilarities with the University of California, both of which will inform his work here.

Ben Allen, the 2007-2008 voting UC student regent, said in a telephone interview he was optimistic Yudof would listen to student concerns.

I was really impressed by the commitment he showed to engaging with students. He apparently meets with a group of students on a regular basis at the University of Texas system. I hope he’ll continue that tradition as President of UC, said Allen, who is also a UC Berkeley law student.

According to a Mar. 27 press release, Yudof earned a bachelor’s degree and an LL.B. degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He became an assistant professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin in 1971 and became dean of the School of Law from 1984 to 1994, executive vice president and provost from 1994 to 1997, before departing for University of Minnesota. While serving as president, Yudof will hold a faculty appointment in the School of Law at UC Berkeley.

Yudof will receive a base salary of $591,084, plus a pension and car allowance that will bring the value of the package up to $828,000, excluding other health and management benefits. Dynes currently receives a base salary of $405,000 plus a car allowance of $8,916.

Allen said only time will tell if Yudof’s performance merits such a high price.

I do have mixed feelings about such a high salary, but I know that UC needs to have the best possible person for the job, he said.

Yudof’s appointment comes after several years of turbulence in the UC Office of the President. A 2006 investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle concluded that several UC executives received exorbitant compensation packages without approval from the regents and without public disclosure.

According to a May 2007 report based on both internal and external audits, Dynes violated UC policies 22 different times since 2003. Though the UC Regents pardoned Dynes and attributed blame to his advisors, Dynes received the brunt of the fallout.

Meanwhile, the University of California hired a consulting firm to restructure the UC Office of the President to improve efficiency and cut costs. Yudof will continue the restructuring effort, Hayward said.

Allen, the UC student regent, said Yudof’s appointment will turn over a new leaf for the UC.

You have to look at this in a new way, said Allen, who noted that unlike recent UC Presidents, Yudof is from outside the state. I certainly do hope that under Yudof’s leadership, there will be an improved relationship between the Regents and the UC Office of the President.

Though he will earn a top salary, Yudof has his work cut out for him in the form of a multibillion budget pitfall – a problem that’s keeping UC executives up at night, Allen said.

[The budget deficit] is a big concern, he said. The state’s financial situation is dire. We’re deeply concerned about making sure that the university stays affordable while maintaining its commitment to excellence and access.

UC Davis Academic Senate chair Linda Bisson said Yudof has a very strong record of leadership but will be faced with intense scrutiny and pressure to perform.

Unfortunately, given the problems with how the central administration has been operating, he will likely not have any sort of grace period and certainly not the luxury of inaction, she said in an e-mail interview.

But Yudof can meet such demands, Vanderhoef said.

Mark Yudof cares about people – students, staff and faculty, and the many people the university serves, he said. He will be a strong and effective leader for UC.

PATRICK McCARTNEY can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.com.XXX

Altering an Exam

Student Judicial Affairs recently resolved a case involving a junior who altered an exam and submitted it for a re-grade. The student created a new version of the exam based on the original and made substantial modifications to the answers. Because of the striking differences between the two versions of the exam, the professor was thoroughly convinced that the student had altered his test. The student soon admitted to academic misconduct and agreed to 20 hours of community service along with the sanction of Deferred Separation until graduation. Deferred Separation means that a student can continue to attend school unless he or she engages in academic misconduct again.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty

A first-year student was referred to SJA for suspected plagiarism on an essay. After reading the paper, the professor noted that the student used language well above the level typical of a first-year undergraduate and referenced texts that were not discussed in class. Although the student maintained that the essay was her own work, the professor remained skeptical. Upon reviewing other assignments that the student wrote and further discussing the issue with her, both the professor and the SJA officer agreed that the student did not plagiarize the paper. Subsequently, charges against the student were dropped completely.

Dismissal

A senior, one quarter away from graduation, was dismissed from the University for both academic and social misconduct. The transfer student had been referred to SJA six times, five of which took place since January of this year. The student had engaged in misconduct that entailed theft from the bookstore, copying another student’s homework assignment and turning it in as her own, providing false information on a scantron, and copying during an exam on three separate occasions. The SJA officer initially thought to place the student on suspension and delay her graduation, but as the third referral was pending, the student had received two more referrals (one for cheating on an exam, the other for copying homework), which prompted the judicial officer to believe that dismissal would be the most appropriate sanction.

The Campus Judicial Report is compiled by student members of the Campus Judicial Board. Additional information about SJA and the Campus Judicial Board may be found at sja.ucdavis.edu.XXX

080402_ca_farmsubsidies.C

Headline: Farm subsidies don’t cause obesity, researchers say

Layercake: UC Davis report goes against common criticism

By MIKE DORSEY

Aggie News Writer

A team of UC Davis researchers has found that there is no evidence to support any correlation between farm subsidies and obesity in the United States. Their findings appear in the December 2007 issue Agricultural and Resource Economics Update published by the University of California’s Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.

A government subsidy is paid to farmers and agricultural businesses with the intention of supplementing their income and maintaining a necessary supply of goods. The extra money ensures that farmers are able to meet quota and guarantees a price floor, a designated minimum that can be charged on a product.

But the system of U.S. Farm subsidies has many critics – some of whom believe that they are a key contributor to America’s obesity epidemic.

Steve Vosti, an author of the article and associate director of the center for Natural Resource Policy Analysis said they were inspired to get into this by reading critics’ false claims.

One of the reasons we got into this was because we were constantly reading things by Michael Pollan and others, including last year’s campus book project, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in which people said things like the reason we’re fat is because food is cheap, particularly some highly subsidized grains, he said.

Julian Alston, an agricultural economics professor at UC Davis, another author of the article, said in a press release that this is simply not true.

…A variety of arguments and evidence can be presented to show that the programs are ineffective, wasteful or unfair. Eliminating farm subsidies could solve some of these problems – but would not even make a dent in America’s obesity problem, he said.

Alston, Vosti and members of the UC Davis department of agricultural and resource economics investigated the claim in coordination with the UC Davis department of nutrition and the Iowa State University department of economics.

The team of researchers found that farm subsidies have had only very modest, mixed effects on the total availability and prices of farm commodities, and therefore cannot be called an instigator of the obesity problem.

You could remove the subsidies tomorrow if you wanted to, and the effects on the price floor would be zero, Vosti said.

According to the report in the Agricultural and Resource Economics Update, there are three reasons why subsidies cannot affect obesity.

For one, farm subsidies must have made needed ingredients of even relatively fattening foods significantly more widespread and cheaper.

Daniel Sumner, the third author of the article, said that if there is any change, it is minimal at best, and may change over time.

The effect is very small, and could go either way. The balance of adding government subsidies versus more fattening foods being produced is very small, and the net effect is somewhere around zero, and could favor either side, he said.

Second, lower prices caused by farm subsidies should result in significantly lower costs within the food industry – and then those cost savings by the agricultural businesses must have been given to consumers in the form of lower prices and fattening foods.

Finally, food consumption patterns must have changed to respond to these changes in policy. The team of researchers found that the magnitude of these impacts is zero, or very small.

Sumner said that food, an inelastic good, and its consumer’s eating habits will rarely be affected by slight changes in farm subsidies or ingredient price, especially in the United States.

In a poor nation in Africa, for example, there may be an effect on how much people eat relative to the cost of foods, but that is not so in the United States. Consumers here will consume basically the same amount regardless of small changes in the market, he said.

The group also proved that subsidies increase consumer prices and discourage consumption of sugar, one of the products to blame for America’s weight.

MIKE DORSEY can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.comXXX

Cesar Chavez Commemoration Week, hosted by the La Raza Law Students Association at UC Davis School of Law, continues today through Saturday. Events are free and open to the public, with lunch provided daily by El Mariachi.

Kathleen Rojas, the week’s co-chairperson, said she is excited about the outreach involved with the week.

It’s important to make sure we’re reaching the community and furthering our goal of diversifying the legal profession, she said.

Today from noon to 1 p.m., there will be a presentation by Cesar Chavez’s longtime personal aide, Marc Grossman, in Wilkins Moor Courtroom in King Hall. Grossman became a boycott organizer for the United Farm Workers while attending UC Irvine, before going on to become a legal investigator for the United Farm Workers’ general counsel. He served as press secretary and administrative assistant to Chavez during his presidency of the UFW, from 1975-1981.

He’s the boycott organizer for the [United Farm Workers], so he’ll be here to talk about the farm worker situation and issues coming up today, said Rojas, who believes Grossman’s more than 30 years of perspective will be insightful.

Sam Barrera, a junior community and regional development major, said she definitely plans to attend an event, citing her family ties.

My grandpa actually worked with Cesar Chavez, so I’m really excited, and I hope I can get out to one of the events, she said.

Thursday morning from 8 a.m. to noon in the student lounge in King Hall will be From Homeroom to the Courtroom, as more than 30 students from Cesar Chavez High School will participate in Shadow Day. The event is sponsored in part by the school of law admission council as part of National Minority Law School Recruitment month.

The high schoolers will get a feel for law school through a Q&A with law students, attending a law school class, and witnessing a mini-mock trial.

For many of these students, it will be the first time they’ve set foot in a law school and met law students, so it should be a real introduction for them. They’ll also hopefully figure out if they want to pursue a legal education, how they’d go about doing that, said Rojas.

She added that Homeroom to the Courtroom is probably the most important event, because we’re reaching a community of students who normally wouldn’t have access to the legal field at all, or would have a very small window of opportunity.

The afternoon will begin in Wilkins Moot Courtroom, as the La Raza Law Students Association and King Hall Democrats co-host a discussion led by Phil Angelides from noon to 1 p.m. Angelides will emphasize the importance of remaining civically active – participating at the local, state and federal policy decision-making levels. Angelides has a long political resume that includes serving as the Chair of the California Democratic Party, the California co-chair for the Kerry-Edwards 2004 campaign, and was California’s State Treasurer from 1999-2007.

The day concludes with a cultural celebration in the student lounge of King Hall, beginning at 5 p.m. The evening consists of music, courtesy of DJ Chris Ditico ’08, dinner, and an inspiring 20 minute film presentation on The War Against Poverty, honoring former American Democratic politician Sargent Shriver. The night is then capped off with a discussion titled The Justice We Could Have, by Professor of Law Emeritus Cruz Reynoso, and then punctuated with the breaking of a piñata.

Rojas suggested that if someone could only make one event, it should be the Thursday evening celebration.

It’s a formal discussion and a celebration in one, and it should be especially interesting to hear former California Supreme Court Justice Reynoso speak, she said.

The final event of Cesar Chavez Week takes place 9 a.m. Saturday morning at Woodland High School, as students are invited to help legal permanent residents become U.S. citizens by volunteering at the Naturalization Workshop.

Kevin Johnson, Associate Dean of the UC Davis School of Law, said this is the best event of the week for the law students, as they’re able to use the law they’ve learned in classes to positively effect people’s lives.

There are lots of people at workshops who want to complete the final stage of becoming a citizen but need help, and law students are able to provide real assistance to real people with real needs, and feel good about the positive impact they can make as a potential future lawyer, he said.

He also said this makes a difference to every single individual.

A U.S. citizen has rights that permanent residents don’t – to vote, be on a jury, and not be deported. Also if they’re a citizen, there is less of an inquiry into their immigration status and whether they’re here lawfully. Whether that’s supposed to happen or not, it usually does, and being a citizen makes it easier to get a job, Johnson said.

MIKE DORSEY can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.com.XXX