Thinking Green
UCR has been boosting its sustainability efforts by taking several steps to recycle and reduce waste, putting it well ahead of the game in meeting a UC mandate to divert 100 percent of its waste from landfills by 2020.

Besides expanding its recycling efforts to include just about anything that can be reprocessed, salvaged or reused, the campus recently signed a contract with Athens Services, which has supplied the campus with containers that will hold food waste that workers in each of UCR’s dining areas have separated out for composting. Athens Services collects and transports that waste to the company’s composting facility in Victorville and then, at no additional charge, returns some of that food waste to campus in the form of nutrient-rich compost, which is used for landscaping and agricultural purposes. Dining services has developed other ways to cut down on waste, including getting rid of food trays to encourage students to take only what they can consume, using UCR-grown or locally supplied food items, and donating excess food to a local food bank.

The campus also recently launched a community garden partnership with the student group Sustainable UCR and the local Salvation Army. Much of the food grown in the garden will be donated to the Salvation Army to feed those in need.

UCR has long been known for its research in the areas of alternative fuel, solar cells, alternative-fuel vehicles, and monitoring air and water quality. UCR also has several courses and research centers designed to train future environmental leaders.

First at the Finish Line
Already the greatest female runner in UCR athletics history, junior Brenda Martinez has trod over uncharted terrain. This spring the Rancho Cucamonga native became the Highlanders’ first female All-American as she finished second in the women’s 1,500 meters NCAA Track and Field Championship at the University of Arkansa and in seventh place in the indoor mile at the NCAA Championship.

Martinez arrived on the UCR campus in the fall of 2005 and months later became the first Highlander athlete to finish in the top 10 at the Big West Cross Country Championship. In 2007 she bettered that performance, finishing in fourth place, and earning a spot at the NCAA Championship.

Her track and field results are even more spectacular. After injuries kept her from competing for most of the 2006 season, she returned in 2007, picking up her first conference title in the 1,500 meter. For her efforts, she was named Big West Freshman of the Year — another Highlanders first.

In 2008, she became UCR’s first multiple track and field champion by taking the 800 and 1,500 meter. Her times in both of those events, as well as the 5000m, were good enough to qualify her for the NCAA Regional. Martinez finished in third place in the 1500m at the regional, qualifying her for the NCAAs — yet another first for a Highlanders track athlete.

She wasn’t done, however, as her time in the 800m earlier in the season earned her a place among the best runners in the country at the U.S. Olympic Trials.

Martinez, who has a major in sociology and a minor in law, will continue to compete in indoor and outdoor track at UCR next year.

UC Riverside Provides Scholarships to ‘Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’ Family
The Almquist family of Phelan, Calif., received more than a new house during the making of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” The family’s four children received a pathway to a college education.

Before the makeover, the family lived in an aging and unheated double-wide trailer that sat on land next to fenced enclosures filled with dozens of rescued animals, including nine tigers, three tortoises, three parrots, 10 alligators, four Mexican beaded lizards, two Siberian lynx and one Egyptian cobra. The Almquists operate Forever Wild Exotic Animal Sanctuary in Phelan.

The family, which consists of parents Joel and Chemaine and children Patricia, Kiah, Arianna and Noah, went on a vacation to Costa Rica and returned to a new 3,500-square-foot home and a new state-of-the-art wildlife sanctuary and visitors center.

In addition, Victor Valley College guaranteed the first two years of college, and UC Riverside guaranteed the second two years for the Almquist children, who are now ages 16, 9, 6 and 2. The offer from UC Riverside is the equivalent of about $10,000 in fees for each child.

Women’s Volleyball Coach Hired
UC Riverside has hired Ron Larsen, formerly the assistant coach for the 2008 gold medal-winning U.S. Men’s Olympic volleyball team, as UCR’s next head women’s volleyball coach.

Larsen comes to the Highlanders after four years as the top assistant coach for the U.S.A. Men’s National Volleyball Team. The international sporting world was introduced to Larsen most recently when he took over for Head Coach Hugh McCutcheon at the 2008 Olympic Games after McCutcheon’s father-in-law was killed and his mother-in-law seriously injured by an attacker while sightseeing in Beijing, China.

Formerly the head coach of the UC San Diego men’s volleyball team, Larsen was hired as an assistant coach for the U.S.A. men in 2005. Prior to joining the U.S. National Team, Larsen had head coaching stops at UC San Diego (men’s team, 1999-2005) and Rutgers University, Newark (men’s and women’s teams, 1993-99), and was an assistant coach at UC Davis (women’s team, 1989-93).

Clinton Global Initiative University Honors Student’s Nonprofit Group
A Riverside-based nonprofit organization, the Child Leader Project (CLP), which was founded by a UCR student, was selected to be highlighted on-stage at the second meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative University in Austin, Texas, Feb. 13-15.

Founded by UC Riverside senior Samantha Wilson in 2008, the CLP was selected by CGIU organizers as an “exemplary approach to addressing a specific global challenge.”

Wilson, the CLP executive director, graduated from UCR this month with a degree in global studies. She will return to UCR in the fall as a contract employee in the Office of Undergraduate Education, where she will coordinate the undergraduate research-community engagement initiative. This initiative will create a number of opportunities for UCR students to participate in faculty-mentored undergraduate research, scholarship and creative activity in communities and regions surrounding the campus.

The Clinton Global Initiative was developed as a call to action to tackle global problems with collaborative and innovative solutions. Former President Bill Clinton initiated CGI in 2005, expanding the project to university students in 2008. Wilson participated in CGIU during its inaugural year for her proposal to work with marginalized youth in India.

The Child Leader Project began last year with Wilson’s commitment to create a student-run leadership, higher education and scholarship program in a rural, lower-caste school run by a microfinance institution in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The program has 20 students and will expand this summer to include youths from a child labor rehabilitation organization and an education program for slum and street children.

Indian youths who graduate from CLP’s program receive college scholarships and a subsidized education with CLP’s partner colleges and universities in Tamil Nadu.

Accreditation Ensures Protecting Human Research Participants
UC Riverside has received full accreditation for its Human Research

Protection Program, a campuswide program that promotes high-quality ethical research and assists researchers in complying with federal, state and university policies regarding experimentation involving human subjects.

UCR gained the accreditation from the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs Inc. (AAHRPP), a nonprofit organization that advances accreditation as a means of ensuring excellent, ethically sound research.

Accreditation ensures that research participants will be protected from researchers who might harm them in the course of a study.

“That UCR is fully accredited by AAHRPP will indicate to all current and any future faculty who use human participants in their research that the campus is serious about its commitment to fostering the highest ethical standards for such research,” said Charles Louis, vice chancellor for research.

Louis added that the accreditation would benefit UCR’s School of Medicine by having a fully accredited human subjects protection program already in place, rather than having to begin from scratch an application process for accreditation.

AAHRPP’s standards exceed federal regulations by requiring organizations to address conflict of interest, provide community outreach and education and apply the same stringent protections to all research involving human participants.

Lichen Named after President Obama
Kerry Knudsen, lichen curator in the UCR Herbarium, has discovered a new species of lichen — a plant like growth that looks like moss or a dry leaf — and named it after President Obama.

“I discovered the new species in 2007 while doing a survey for lichen diversity on Santa Rosa Island in California,” said Knudsen, who became interested in lichens when he grew bored after he retired from construction work in 2000. “I named it Caloplaca obamae to show my appreciation for the president’s support of science and science education.

“I made the final collections of C. obamae during the suspenseful final weeks of President Obama’s campaign for the United States presidency, and this paper was written during the international jubilation over his election,” he said. “Indeed, the final draft was completed on the very day of President Obama’s inauguration.”

Knudsen has been working in the UCR Herbarium, a field research resource of the department of botany and plant sciences, since 2004. He has no academic degrees and volunteers his time in the herbarium, where he has built a collection of more than 10,000 lichens. Colleagues have named three new species of lichens after him.

UC Riverside Alumnus Wins a Second Pulitzer for Editorial Cartooning
Steve Breen, a UC Riverside alumnus and editorial cartoonist for The San Diego Union-Tribune, has won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. It is the second time the cartoonist has been awarded journalism’s highest honor.

He graduated from UCR in 1992 with a degree in political science and just five years later won his first Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning. Breen — the only UCR alumnus to hold the honor — said it was his days at UC Riverside that put him on the path to professional cartooning.

Breen spent hours at the Tomás Rivera Library sifting through the works of cartooning greats like Tony Auth, Jeff MacNelly and Paul Conrad. But it’s The Highlander that Breen credits for his Pulitzer.

Academics and Community Service Provide Basis for Scholarship
A newly established Inland Empire Achievement Scholarship Program will offer $2,500 annually to two local high school students and two local community college students who have excelled academically and also taken part in some kind of service to their communities. They freshmen recipients are Calypso Bree Rees of Rancho Cucamonga; and Yasmin Nour Abdi of Riverside. The Riverside Community College transfer student recipients are Hallie Renee Young and Olivia Marie Lopez, both of Riverside.

Chancellor Timothy P. White said the idea for the scholarship stemmed from discussions with the Educational Leadership Federation (ELF) of Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, a partnership between UCR and education leaders in the surrounding area. He said he hopes that more such pipelines will be built for young people in the area.

Information about the scholarship program is available from Sheryl Hayes, director of financial aid at sheryl.hayes@ucr.edu or (951) 827-3878.

Rosenthal Honored Alongside Dench, Bono
Robert Rosenthal, a UC Riverside distinguished professor of psychology, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He will take his place among 210 fellow honorees who include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson Mandela, British actress Judith Dench, U2 lead singer and humanitarian Bono, U.S. actors Dustin Hoffman and James Earl Jones, California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; Mario Capecchi, co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology; and the president of the German Academy of Sciences, Volker ter Meulen.

Rosenthal spent 37 years as a professor at Harvard University before joining the UCR faculty in 1999.

His groundbreaking research into experimenter bias and self-fulfilling prophecy — known as the Rosenthal Effect — led to the development of double-blind studies in the social and biomedical sciences and ultimately challenged two generations of researchers to focus on how body language and tone of voice can influence the results of jury trials, student performance and patient outcomes.

Raikhel Gets Top Honor
UC Riverside’s Alexander Raikhel, a professor of entomology, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States.
Raikhel, elected along with 71 others, brings the number of current UCR faculty elected to NAS to three.

There are more than 2,000 active NAS members. Among the renowned members of NAS have been Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright and Alexander Graham Bell. More than 180 living NAS members have won Nobel Prizes. Raikhel and his fellow nominees will be inducted into the academy in April 2010 during its 147th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Raikhel is recognized internationally for his significant contributions to insect science and vector biology. His research at UCR focuses on genetic studies of blood-feeding arthropods, especially mosquitoes, which are responsible for transmitting diseases to animals and humans. His accomplishments include being among pioneers of genetic engineering of disease-resistant mosquitoes for the purpose of mosquito control.

Raikhel has deciphered in great molecular detail a chemical chain reaction and genes that prompt disease-spreading mosquitoes to produce and mature their eggs. Manipulation of this process may be key to controlling the mosquito populations responsible for the spread of disease.

His laboratory also uncovered how a female mosquito’s first blood meal triggers its reproductive system to produce eggs, a finding that could lead someday to new ways of controlling disease-spreading mosquito populations.

His research team recently identified a pathway by which the mosquito’s immune system recognizes some pathogens and protects the mosquito from disease.