La Jolla News Nuggets: Village merchants board, UCSD chemist, UCSD reaches $3 billion, more
New members join Village Merchants Association board
The La Jolla Village Merchants Association swore in three new board members and elected two more at its June 8 meeting at the La Jolla/Riford Library.
Hallie Swenson from Will & Fotsch Architects, community volunteer Bill Podway and Havaianas flip-flop shop owner Brandon Lindley, who were voted in at the May meeting, took the LJVMA board member oath and then their seats among the other trustees.
Lindley later was voted in as the group’s marketing committee chairman.
The board then filled two midyear vacancies. Three people self-nominated for the seats: Vahid Moradi of CW Jewelers, Chad Taggart of Lobster West and Tamar Goldman-Sachs of the Cormorant Hotel.
Lobster West opened just recently in La Jolla, but Taggart said he has operated other locations of the establishment for nine years and has “drawn a connection to [those] communities, and that’s what I really hope to bring to the La Jolla forum as well.”
Goldman-Sachs, director of digital marketing strategy for the Cormorant and its restaurant, Bird’s Eye, said that as the Cormorant also is newly opened, she would like to join LJVMA “to get to know the community. … We’re interested in doing everything we can to enhance La Jolla.”
Moradi did not attend the meeting or provide a candidate statement.
Motions to add Taggart and Goldman-Sachs to the LJVMA board were approved unanimously.
Taggart and Goldman-Sachs will be sworn in at the July 13 meeting and will be eligible to run for their seats in October for a regular two-year term.
UCSD chemist named to American Philosophical Society
UC San Diego atmospheric chemist Kim Prather has been elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society, a group that Benjamin Franklin and other luminaries founded in 1743 to promote the study of science and the humanities.
Over the years, its members have included Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Louis Pasteur and Thomas Edison.
Prather said her election came “out of the blue” and is “truly humbling.”
The selection comes two years after Prather was elected to the elite National Academy of Sciences, founded during the Lincoln administration to advise the country on science and technology.
Over the past decade, Prather has been awarded more than $40 million in grants to study Earth’s changing climate. She focuses heavily on examining how spray from breaking waves affects the formation and behavior of clouds, which in turn control the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface. — The San Diego Union-Tribune
UCSD reaches $3 billion in fundraising campaign
UC San Diego this month became the youngest university in the country to reach a multibillion-dollar campaign goal.
In a 10-year fundraising campaign that closes June 30, it surpassed its original $2 billion fundraising goal by $1 billion, raising a total of $3 billion. More than 163,000 individuals, foundations and corporations supported UC San Diego with gifts and grants of all sizes during the campaign.
“When we launched the Campaign for UC San Diego a decade ago, we knew we had a solid, comprehensive strategic plan and a unique array of world-class talent working on leading-edge research that would garner billion-dollar investment,” said Chancellor Pradeep Khosla. “As the campaign gained momentum, new opportunities opened, creating a chain reaction of enthusiasm that has powered a remarkable transformation for our students, our patients, our community and our world.”
A key priority of the campaign is supporting undergraduate and graduate students. The campus has raised $375 million for student support and established more than 300 new scholarship funds, including 157 that are endowed and will remain in perpetuity. In addition, more than 180 new funds were established for graduate fellowships, which includes 64 endowed fellowships.
UCSD founding faculty member dies at 93
Leonard Newmark, one of the last surviving founding faculty members of UC San Diego, died May 2 from COVID-19 after years of challenges with Parkinson’s and dementia. He was 93.
A child prodigy, Newmark was born in rural Indiana to immigrant parents and went to the University of Chicago at age 15 and graduated at 18. He studied linguistics as a graduate student at Indiana University and joined the faculty at Ohio State University in 1954.
His passions included playing chess and word games.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in his memory to provide international education fellowships for UCSD graduate students. Donations may be mailed to UC San Diego Gift Processing, 9500 Gilman Drive, No. 0940, La Jolla, CA 92093. Checks should be payable to UC San Diego Foundation, noting Professor Leonard Newmark, Fund 7176, in the memo line. Donations also are accepted online at giveto.ucsd.edu.
La Jolla-based philanthropy chapter graduates 15 girls
Fifteen girls in the La Jolla-based National Charity League Seaside chapter have graduated from high school and are leaving the philanthropic organization after six years.
The girls have completed more than 1,800 service and philanthropy hours since joining in seventh grade, following NCL’s 96-year-old model of fostering a stronger mother-daughter connection through community service.
The girls also have served in executive leadership roles in the Seaside NCL chapter.
The Seaside class of 2022 undertook projects with San Diego organizations including I Love a Clean San Diego, Project Linus, Miracle Babies and Father Joe’s Villages.
Kiwanis Club of La Jolla receives funds from New York Life
The Kiwanis Club of La Jolla received an $846 check from New York Life at its June 10 meeting.
The funds are from New York Life’s Volunteers for Good Foundation and represent the hours New York Life employees volunteered at the Kiwanis Club of La Jolla Half Marathon in April.
Sally Ride statue going to New York museum
The Cradle of Aviation Museum in New York soon will be home to a commemorative sculpture honoring late astronaut and La Jolla resident Sally Ride.
The 7-foot-tall gold and bronze sculpture, titled “The First American Woman in Space,” depicts Ride in her space shuttle flight suit, according to the museum.
The unveiling is scheduled for Friday, June 17.
In 1983, Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the shuttle Challenger. Two years after her retirement from NASA in 1987, Ride joined the faculty at UC San Diego in La Jolla as a professor of physics and became director of the California Space Institute. She later established Sally Ride Science under UCSD Extension with her life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, and colleagues Karen Flammer, Terry McEntee and Alann Lopes.
Earlier this month, a portion of state Highway 101 in the west San Fernando Valley was dedicated in her name.
— Compiled by La Jolla Light staff ◆
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