BATON ROUGE – Six LSU faculty members, who are leaders in their respective fields, have been selected to receive the Rainmaker Award from the LSU Office of Research & Economic Development, or ORED. Rainmakers are faculty members who balance their teaching and research responsibilities while extending the impact of their work to the world beyond academia.
“I extend my congratulations to this year’s LSU Rainmakers. On behalf of your colleagues at LSU, we recognize and appreciate you and your exceptional work, especially in light of the challenges of these times. Your resilience, creativity and excellence inspire us all,” said LSU Vice President of Research & Economic Development Samuel Bentley.
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The Rossmoor Spring Garden Tour and Outdoor Marketplace returns Sunday, May 16. Hours for the event are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Masks and social distancing will be required.
The self-guided tour will showcase landscaping, pools, outdoor kitchens and other design elements in five private yards in Rossmoor, an unincorporated enclave between Seal Beach and Los Alamitos. The event is sponsored by the Rossmoor Woman’s Club.
A marketplace will offer plants and outdoor decor, other wares and refreshments.
Tickets may be purchased in advance for $15 from any Rossmoor Woman’s Club member. Tickets will also be sold the day of the tour at the Outdoor Marketplace set up in the parking lot behind Farmers & Merchants Bank in the Shops at Rossmoor, 12535 Seal Beach Blvd., Seal Beach.
The National Academy of Sciences elected three members of Penn State s faculty to its membership, one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. Nina Jablonski, Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology; Jainendra K. Jain, Evan Pugh University Professor and Erwin W. Mueller Professor of Physics; and Peter Mészáros, Eberly Chair Professor, emeritus, of Astronomy and Astrophysics, have been recognized for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Isabel Montañez, the winner of the 2021 UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement, is an expert in ancient climate change. She’s pictured in front of equisetum plants on campus, which she calls “living fossils” because their ancestors evolved more than 300 million years ago. (Karin Higgins/UC Davis)
Although she grew up speaking Spanish and French, like many children who immigrated to the United States, Distinguished Professor Isabel Montañez struggled with English in high school and college. One university professor told her she would never graduate, Montañez recalled.
Those difficult experiences inform her interactions with undergraduates at UC Davis. For Montañez, that means respecting every student as an individual and taking time to recognize and support their goals. “She made me feel like a priority even while she was teaching classes, reviewing scientific papers and traveling around the world for research projects,” said former student
Orange Coast College photography professor Richard Kraft has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for film/video. Kraft is the only full-time community college professor to be awarded the prestigious fellowship in 2021, which offers financial support to artists and scholars from a wide range of backgrounds and fields of study.
Orange Coast College Professor of Photography Richard Kraft. Courtesy photo.
Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded annually through the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, to support “exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions,” according to the foundation’s website. Fellows are chosen through a rigorous peer-review process.