Spotlight
Emeriti and Retirees of Disctinction
Fall 2009
Louise Taylor – Distinguished Emerita
In 1998, Louise Taylor retired as Director of
Planning and Analysis and
as Special Assistant to the
Vice Chancellor. She and
her husband looked forward
to relaxed country living;
however, within 10 days, she
was back working to help establish a new Department of
Bioengineering. Louise was compelled both by Dean Paul
Gray’s vision and, after 34 years in the Chancellor’s office,
by the opportunity to interact with the Engineering
faculty and to engage in administrative tasks at the
departmental level. To the delight of Louise’s patient
husband, the goal was met in two years, one year ahead
of schedule.
But then the phone rang again. Rod Park, Executive
Vice Chancellor for the new Merced campus, wanted
Louise to create a 5-year budget for the new Merced
campus. This was an offer she couldn’t refuse because
it provided a chance to apply time-honored funding
principles to an entire campus, including the schedule for
developing particular programs, services, and facilities.
The budget she prepared was approved in successive
reviews culminating with the California Legislature, and
then UCOP asked Louise to expand it by developing
a 10-year budget plan. After a year and a half on this
project, Louise told her husband that she would retire.
He smiled skeptically.
Two weeks later, Louise was back at UCOP auditing
research proposals for the California Institutes for
Science and Innovation (CAL-ISI). Intended to last just
3 months, this project lasted for 18 and contributed
to the establishment of four multi-campus institutes
that partner with government and the private sector
to help California maintain its leading role in science
and technology. Berkeley is home to the Center for
Information Technology Research in the Interest of
Society (CITRUS) and partners with UC San Francisco
and UC Santa Cruz in the Institute for Bioengineering,
Biotechnology, and Quantitative Biomedical Research
(QB3).
Louise also has been extremely active as a volunteer
at Berkeley and systemwide. At retirement, she became
one of the first Berkeley staff personnel to be granted the “Emerita” title, and soon thereafter Professor Sheldon
Messinger invited her to become involved in the UC
Berkeley Emeriti Association (UCBEA). In 2002, she
was elected President of UCBEA, appointed as its
representative to the Retirement Center’s Policy Board,
and served as UCBEA’s representative to the Council of
UC Emeriti Associations (CUCEA). She was CUCEA’s
Vice Chair in 2004-05 and its President the following
year. In 2005, she was elected Chair of the Retirement
Center’s Policy Board, and she provided crucial leadership
in this position for four years during the illness and
subsequent retirement of the Center’s original Director,
administrative review, budget shortfalls, the move of the
Center to its current location, and recruitment of a new
Director.
Louise explains this dedication in terms of her
love of new challenges that help her grow, her desire
to help the campus and the University, and the joy of
meeting new people and continuing old friendships. In
addition, because her experience enables her to see the
University in broad perspective, she is committed to
informing emeriti and retirees about new developments,
policy issues, the wide range of opportunities for staying
connected with UC, and the many benefits of doing so.
However, country living still calls, and so Louise’s role
on the Center’s Policy Board in the coming year will be
that of Immediate Past Chair. This summer, she and her
happy husband have been developing their acreage high
in the Sierra and planning lots of family events.
Carol D’Onofrio
Summer 2009
Howard K. Schachman - Distinguished emeritus
In retirement, many Berkeley emeriti continue to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus and add to the distinction of the University. An outstanding example of such is Professor in the Graduate School, Howard K. Schachman, the recipient of the Berkeley Emeriti Association's Emeritus of the Year for 2008.
Professor Schachman is truly unusual among emeriti in that he has capped a very distinguished career as a laboratory scientist, where he won many honors and awards, with dedication to issues of public policy affecting science where his maturity and expeience count heavily. This started when he was appointed Special Advisor in 1994 to the Director of the National Institute of Health who sent him as an NIH Ombudsman to visit American research institutions to insure the integrity of research. His findings were alarming and did not go unnoticed.
In 2001, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) awarded Schachman the Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award, and in the same year the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (AAAS) established the Howard K. Schachman Public Service Award. By way of remediation, the NIH Director mandated that all graduate students and post-doctoral fellows supported by NIH Training Grants or Fellowships take a course on the responsible conduct of research. The course at Berkeley, MCB293B, was created and is still taught by Professor Schachman.
Professor Schachman, in the above mentioned course, draws attention to the dramatic changes in the conduct of biomedical research in academia with the radically altered position of universities toward patenting, particularly since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 that permitted unversitites to make money from discoveries based on publicly financed research. Questions are discussed about whether the change from publishing to patenting stimulates or inhibits research, and how the rise of commercial financing of research raises issues of academic freedom. Last November, Professor Schachman generously contributred a lecturetitled "Openness in Academia is Essential" to the Learning in Retirement course on ne forms of research support.
This brief review cannot cover the many honors of Professor Schachman's earlier career, but focuses instead on his later career, in what would norally be regarded as pst-retirement years. Professor Schachman is an outstanding example of how the experience and maturity of aging faculty enrich the Univesrity and the nation's academic community.
Larry Waldron
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