March 6, 2009

LAURELS: Awards, honors reflect diversity of talent on campus

This column offers a sampling of honors recently awarded to UC Davis faculty, staff and units:

Jessie Ann Owens, professor of music and dean of the UC Davis Division of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies, has been elected an honorary member of the American Musicological Society. Owens is the 58th member to be elected to the prestigious society in its 74-year history

In announcing her election, the society heralded Owens as “a leading scholar of Renaissance music” who has made outstanding contributions to musicology, the scholarly study of music. Owens’ interests also include music historiography; the 16th century madrigal; the history of theory; the analysis of early music; and compositional process in early music. Her current research investigates tonal language by examining English music of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Kindra Montgomery, an associate director of training in the UC Davis School of Education, and Ryan Royster, a UC Davis alumnus, both received “30 Under 30” awards from the Observer Media Group in Sacramento on Feb. 28. Of Montgomery, the organizers noted, “For more than a decade, she has worked with community-based organizations to support young leaders ...” Royster, an Aggie baseball player drafted by the Cleveland Indians in 2007 but who chose to stay at UC Davis to continue working toward his degree, is writing a book, Identity Crisis, in which he discusses the contemporary black experience in America.

Assistant Professor Mary Cadenasso in plant sciences has landed a $575,000 award from the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program. The program is one of the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards, given in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research.

Cadenasso’s project, which will support research in Sacramento, is titled “Spatial heterogeneity and ecosystem function in an urban landscape: an integrated research, teaching, and community engagement program.” As a CAREER award recipient, she is now in the running to become a nominee for a Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers.

Tom Lanini, Specialist in Cooperative Extension, was given the Award of Excellence by the California Weed Society at its annual meeting this month. Lanini works on vegetable crop weed control and is also an authority on organic weed control methods.

Three plant sciences students were also honored at the annual meeting. Grad students Jeremiah Mann and Shosha Capps tied for first place in the California Weed Society Student Poster Competition. Undergraduate Matt Linder took third place in poster competition. Mann, who works with specialist Joe DiTomaso, is in the second year of his Ph.D. program, studying the invasive potential of biofuel feedstocks. His findings will be important to determining the potential risk of invasion associated with the wide-scale cultivation of this and other biofuel feedstocks. Capps is a master’s student in International Agricultural Development who works with Lanini testing organic herbicides in grapes, tomatoes and lettuce. Linder has been working with Lanini for a year, after working two years with Cooperative Extension Specialist Husein Ajwa in Salinas. Last spring, Linder also won a $500 scholarship from the California Weed Science Society.

Professor emeritus Timothy O’Brien of the School of Veterinary Medicine was recently honored for significantly impacting the development and training of equine veterinarians. The distinguished educator award was presented to O’Brien by the American Association of Equine Practitioners, during the organization’s annual meeting in San Diego. O’Brien, a veterinary radiologist, specialized in characterizing bone and joint problems of horses and spent much of his career at UC Davis. He has trained approximately 120 large-animal and equine surgery residents.