Of the 22 new faculty members joining the College of Letters and Science in 2009-10, some are already full professors holding endowed chairs or working at prestigious research institutes, but the majority are assistant professors on the tenure track who are just beginning their academic careers. These young academics come to UCSB from top universities around the world with the same goals: to be successful teachers and mentors, to continue their research, and to contribute to their professions and the UCSB community through service. The three new faculty members profiled below, one each from the Divisions of Humanities and Fine Arts, Sciences, and Social Sciences, all share an international background that brings an extra dimension to their work. They also share a sense of excitement about the possibilities working at UCSB.
(Santa Barbara, Sept. 18, 2009) As the Deans overseeing the College of Letters and Science, we write to welcome you back to campus and to look ahead to the 2009-10 academic year, which will have both challenges and opportunities. You are no doubt aware that it has been a tumultuous summer for the University of California. In June, the Governor and the State Legislature reduced the University of California budget by 20%. Our campus’ share of this reduction amounts to between $40 million and $45 million. This follows a reduction of $16 million in the UCSB permanent budget in 2008-09, which followed more than five years of budget reductions. The 20% reduction is unprecedented in its magnitude and in the brief amount of time in which it must be absorbed. University of California President Mark Yudof declared a fiscal emergency and imposed a mandatory furlough on faculty and staff, resulting in pay cuts of 4% to 10%. Student fees have been increased. The funds generated by the pay reductions and fee increases make up less than half of the expected funding shortfall. Although the campus has tried to rely on attrition and a voluntary separation program to avoid staff layoffs, additional layoffs have become necessary.
Expanding its already extensive course offerings in Middle Eastern and South Asian languages, the UCSB Department of Religious Studies will add classes in fall 2009 in Pashto (first year), Turkish and Persian (first and second years) to its roster.
Combined with existing courses in Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, and Punjabi, these new languages will “cover the entire region from Morocco to Kashmir,” according to Dwight Reynolds, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the UCSB Center for Middle East Studies. The language courses, based in the Department of Religious Studies, also attract students majoring in global or Middle East studies, history, political science and even ethnomusicology.
The courses in Pashto (spoken widely in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan), Persian (the official language of Iran which is also spoken in Afghanistan and Central Asia), and Turkish will be taught by native speakers visiting UCSB under the auspices of the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Program (FLTA).
The FLTA program, sponsored by the Fulbright Commission, the Institute for International Education, and the U.S. State Department, awards scholarships to young English teachers from overseas to refine their teaching skills, increase their English proficiency, and expand their knowledge of U.S. society. “We are thrilled to be a host institution for the FLTA program, “ Reynolds says. “It is an amazing opportunity for our students to meet these teachers, who are not only native speakers but have also just arrived from their countries and can share their experiences.”
The UCSB campus is a beautiful place. With its scenic backdrop of the Pacific Ocean and Santa Ynez mountains, it is tempting for photographers to focus on the the stunning views, Storke Tower, the lagoon, or students riding their bikes. More difficult to convey is the quality of the student academic experience at this major research university. How do you illustrate what and how students are learning, and translate it into compelling images? Enter award-winning photographer Richard Ross and the students of Intermediate Photography (Art 120).
Ross, a member of the College of Letters and Science faculty since 1979, has been a Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Scholar, and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. A working professional photographer, he has published photos in the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Discover, Time, Newsweek, and Vogue, among others. An exhibit of the photographs in Ross’s latest book, Architecture of Authority, depicting spaces that exert power over individuals, opens in April 2009 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C..
Richard Ross is also a passionate teacher. When asked if one or more of his students might want to take photos for the new College website, he made the project a class assignment. A Day in the Life at UCSB became a way for his students to learn about working from a shot list, obtaining model releases, and perhaps looking at their fellow students and campus in a new way. The resulting images, some of which can be seen on these pages, are beautiful photos through which we see students in music rooms and art studios, in science labs and on field trips to the Channel Islands, studying in the library and Student Resource Building, at political events and making a film. Through the lenses of these student photographers, we see life on campus as only the students know it, and we see what a rich, varied (and beautiful) place the College is.
The photographers who took part in the project are: Will Ashe, Kim Bui, Elcin Joyner, Jon Kalan, Kelly Lane, Katy McCarthy, Matthew Miller, Brooke O’Hara, Monica Quinlan, and Jasmine Safaeian.
Graduate student's find sheds light on UC Santa Barbara's California archaeology program
The news reports - appearing in outlets across the country - spoke of an exciting discovery on Santa Cruz Island, off Santa Barbara: the possibility that a 4-foot-long bone was the perfectly preserved tusk of a prehistoric mammoth. The bone, along with other remains, had been found by Kristina Gill, a fourth-year graduate student at UC Santa Barbara specializing in California archaeology, who stumbled over them, literally, while doing field work on the island.
Gill, who is studying prehistoric plant use by the Chumash Indians, is not a palenotologist and was not looking for prehistoric bones. She was trying to find the route the Chumash might have used for coastal access from the steep slope where she is excavating the remains of several ancient dwellings. “I was looking up, trying to see a path, and I took a step and was standing on the bone. There were bones everywhere.” She says she should have known from the area's geology - she was standing on sandstone - that this was a marine deposit, but the size and shape of the bone immediately made her think it was a mammoth tusk.
Other researchers on the island, seeing Gill's photos, were equally excited. Whatever she had found, they knew it was significant enough to call in Larry Agenbroad, the country's top mammoth specialist and director of The Mammoth Site in South Dakota, and Dr. Charles (Chuck) Rennie, a marine biologist and cetacean (whale) specialist. When this group visited the site a few weeks later, they knew immediately that Gill had found the jawbone of a baleen whale that was between 9.5 and 25 million years old. Although not the hoped-for mammoth tusk, the find was nonetheless significant, because of the age and excellent condition of the bone, which has since been transported to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
About the College 
Expanding its already extensive course offerings in Middle Eastern and South Asian languages, the UCSB Department of Religious Studies will add classes in fall 2009 in Pashto (first year), Turkish and Persian (first and second years) to its roster..jpg "Richard Ross (left) with students. Photo by Kelly Lane.")
The UCSB campus is a beautiful place. With its scenic backdrop of the Pacific Ocean and Santa Ynez mountains, it is tempting for photographers to focus on the the stunning views, Storke Tower, the lagoon, or students riding their bikes. More difficult to convey is the quality of the student academic experience at this major research university. How do you illustrate what and how students are learning, and translate it into compelling images? Enter award-winning 
The news reports - appearing in outlets across the country - spoke of an exciting discovery on Santa Cruz Island, off Santa Barbara: the possibility that a 4-foot-long bone was the perfectly preserved tusk of a prehistoric mammoth. The bone, along with other remains, had been found by Kristina Gill, a fourth-year graduate student at UC Santa Barbara specializing in California archaeology, who stumbled over them, literally, while doing field work on the island.