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THE MAGAZINE OF UC RIVERSIDE 

10 Ways to 

Find Happiness 

UCR Research Leads You to Joy 

Page 8 

The UCR School of Public Policy: 

Research to Serve the Inland 

Community and the World 

Page 24 

Play the Game of Happiness Online at 

MAGAZINE.UCR.EDU 

UCR Spring 2013 | 1 

NOW AVAILABLE ON THE IPAD! 

SPRING 2013 VOL.8 NO. 2

INTERIM CHANCELLOR 

Jane Close Conoley 

VICE CHANCELLOR, ADVANCEMENT 

Peter Hayashida 

PUBLISHER 

James Grant 

EDITOR 

Lilledeshan Bose 

WRITERS 

Vickie Chang 

Ted Kissell 

Litty Mathew 

Sean Nealon 

Phil Pitchford 

SENIOR DESIGNER 

Brad Rowe 

PRODUCTION MANAGER 

Luis Sanz 

CONTRIBUTORS 

Alyssa Cotter 

Konrad Nagy 

Susan Straight 

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT 

Bethanie Le 

ILLUSTRATIONS 

Colin Hayes 

Alex Eben Meyer 

Mike Tofanelli 

PHOTOGRAPHERS 

Lonnie Duka 

Carlos Puma 

Peter Phun 

Carrie Rosema 

DISTRIBUTION 

Virginia Odien 

UCR Magazine is published by the Office of Strategic Communications, University 

of California, Riverside, and it is distributed free to the University community. 

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nia, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521, telephone (951) 827-6397. Unless otherwise 

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the University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0155. 

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the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age or handicap. 

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Contact Kris Lovekin at kris.lovekin@ucr.edu

DEPARTMENTS FEATURES COVER STORY 

THE MAGAZINE OF UC RIVERSIDE SPRING 2013 VOLUME 8 NUMBER 2 

18 

Water Works 

Professor Sharon Walker talks 

about why her endowed chair 

is hugely important for 

her research 

03 | R View 

A message from Interim 

Chancellor Jane Close 

Conoley 

04 | R Space 

Catch a glimpse of the 

latest news at UC Riverside 

#UCRgrad13 

20 

La Reina 

An excerpt from Susan 

Straight’s latest novel, 

“Between Heaven and Here” 

27 | How I See It 

Incoming freshmen tweet 

and hashtag their joy upon 

getting accepted into UCR 

28 | Page Turners 

Celebrate the Class of 2013! 

1 A B C D 

2 A B C D 

3 A B C D 

A B C D 

22 

From Mind to Market 

Yadong Yin’s research on 

nanoparticles has put 

color in a whole new light 

30 | Alumni 

Connection 

31 | Class Acts 

Nurse practitioner Darlene 

Tyler (‘82) and theater 

founder Wayne Scott (‘81) 

tell how UCR helped them 

find their unexpected 

career paths 

Use hashtag #UCRgrad13 for your favorite UCR photos 

and memories on Instagram and Twitter. 

Feeling nostalgic? Relive graduation on commencement2013.ucr.edu! 

C D 

08 

10 Ways to 

Happiness 

UCR research reveals steps 

that can guide you along the 

path to joy 

24 

The School of Public 

Policy 

UCR hopes to work with the 

Inland community to solve 

local and national problems 

36 | C Scape 

Don Carey (‘70), football 

official for the National 

Football League 

Play the Game of Happiness online: 


UCR Spring 2013 | 1

EVENTS 

2 | UCR Spring 2013 

www.artsblock.ucr.edu 

“Monuments of Void: Wolf Von 

Dem Bussche’s Photographs of 

the Twin Towers” 

6.1-7.6 


“Geographies of Detention” 

6.1-9.7 


“Around the World in Forty 

Pictures” 

6.1-7.27 

www.music.ucr.edu 

Concert of Mexican Music and 

Dance 

6.6 

www.music.ucr.edu 

Music of Indonesia: UCR 

Gamelan Ensemble 

6.7 

www.commencement.ucr.edu 

Commencement 2013 

6.14-6.17 

www.extension.ucr.edu 

Video Game Design and Content 

Creation — Information Session 

6.15 

www.chancellorsdinner.ucr.edu 

Chancellor’s Dinner 

10.19 

HAPPENINGS 

This exhibit looks at the recontextualization of the World Trade 

Center towers alongside the issues of memorialization and the 

meanings associated with sites and images post-9/11. 

Through the photos, we, as the viewers, see the towers in a 

different aesthetic light that forcefully defamiliarizes us with the 

subject. 

Presented on two floors of the California Museum of Photography, 

“Geographies of Detention: From Guantánamo to the Golden 

Gulag” combines historical and contemporary photography, film 

and first-person audio interviews to examine how the naval base 

has been “closed” and reopened for more than a century leading 

up to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. These new perspectives on 

Guantánamo’s history as a “legal black hole” provoke discussions 

about the limits of democracy and the meaning of mass 

incarceration in a global present and future. 

Celebrating the CMP’s 40th anniversary, “Around the World in 

Forty Pictures” takes as inspiration the classic novel “Around the 

World in 80 Days” by Jules Verne, first published in 1873. The 

exhibition culls 40 pictures from the Keystone-Mast Collection 

(part of the CMP permanent collection) to retrace the steps of 

Verne’s colorful characters as they circumnavigate the globe. 

The UCR Studio for Mexican Music and Dance features student 

vocals and instrumentation in Mexican ranchera-style music, with 

UCR’s Mariachi Mexicatl performing live with the UCR Ballet 

Folklorico. The ballet company will perform choreography from 

the Mexican regions of Michoacán and Nayarit. 

Experience a variety of Indonesian gamelan music from profound 

to lighthearted and serious to sentimental. A gamelan is an 

ensemble of instruments that includes a set of tuned bronze 

gongs suspended from a carved serpentine dragon, metal-keyed 

instruments, xylophones and drums. The UCR Gamelan Ensemble 

performs traditional and contemporary Indonesian music. 

UCR will hold seven commencement ceremonies June 14 through 

17 on the Pierce Hall lawn, near the bell tower. More than 3,000 

students are expected to make their way across the stage during 

the four days of the 59th annual event. 

Learn about UCR Extension’s Specialized Professional Program in 

Video Game Design and Content Creation Summer Academy. For 

serious participants, the full program offers approximately 100 

hours of professional-level instruction. Parking is free 

for attendees. 

Save the date! The fifth annual Chancellor’s Dinner will be held 

on Oct. 19 at the Highlander Union Building. Enjoy the company 

of UCR friends, alumni, students and community members as 

we come together in support of our best and brightest scholars, 

artists, leaders and volunteers. 

For more on UCR events, visit www.ucr.edu/happenings

Congratulations to the Class of 2013 – 

the newest additions to our alumni family! 

A Positive 

Outlook for a 

Growing Campus 

The best gift any university can give to its alumni is to 

grow in excellence and prestige. Our graduates should 

be proud of their alma mater. As our alumni read 

through this edition of UCR Magazine, I think they will 

find themselves even prouder of UC Riverside than they 

were on graduation day. 

UCR has come a long way in a very short time. 

Faculty research has gained significant recognition, as 

evidenced from the large number of awards won by 

faculty, increasing grant support, prestigious publications 

and media attention. Student applications are way up 

(almost 43,000 for fall 2013) while student qualifications 

are also improving. UCR has been ranked highly by 

national magazines as a best value and as a place where 

students contribute to community service. 

We are a university with a mission to be excellent, 

diverse, engaged and accessible. Our incoming freshman 

class is likely to be as diverse as in years past and to 

reflect greater readiness for success as university students. 

The relationship we have with Riverside and Inland-area 

communities is a model for the entire UC system. We are 

making a difference in the lives of citizens in our region 

and in our world. 

A clear sign of this engagement is the fall 2013 

opening of the UCR School of Medicine. The school is 

conceived from a completely different paradigm than 

that of other medical schools. We will prepare 

physicians who are committed to this region, to 

prevention and wellness, and to the finest in cutting-edge 

medicine. This is so exciting. 

Another sign of our commitment to engagement is the 

opening of our new School of Public Policy. (Read about 

it on page 24.) This will bring together faculty from 

across campus and partners from across the world to 

study health, population, environmental, immigration 

and social mobility issues. We accept the challenge of 

translating our research into meaningful public policy. 

Accessibility is another matter altogether. Tuition has 

risen substantially since many of our readers have 

graduated. Although we do not anticipate another rise 

in tuition for a year or so, the state’s disinvestment in its 

educational commitments is pushing the burden of 

university tuition and fees onto students and families. 

The University of California remains affordable for 

low- and middle-income families, but we recognize that 

it’s a strain to take on any new debt in this tenuous 

economy. Don’t forget to keep telling your legislators the 

story of UCR and its ability to change lives and energize 

the economy. 

We remain optimistic, however, that our energetic 

focus on private philanthropy for student scholarships 

will assist many students to earn a degree with low levels 

of debt. Our award-winning psychologists have 

illustrated the power of optimism; it can be dynamic and 

useful, especially when paired with positive motivation 

and hard work. 

Jane Close Conoley 

Interim Chancellor 


R VIEW

R SPACE 

President Yudof to Step Down 

Mark G. Yudof is stepping down as 

president of the University of California 

system; his five-year tenure will end 

on Aug. 31. “The moment comes with 

a mixture of emotions,” he said in a 

statement. “UC remains the premier 

public university system in the world, 

and I was both honored and humbled to 

serve as its president.” 

Yudof cited taxing health issues as the 

reason for his decision, and he plans to 

return to the Berkeley campus to teach 

law. “I will leave it to others to judge 


what difference my leadership made, if 

any, but I will say that I entered each day 

with a laser focus on preserving this great 

public treasure, not just in the present 

day, but for generations of Californians to 

come. And in the end, what matters most 

is what still remains: a vibrant public 

university system, the envy of the world, 

providing California with the beacon of 

hope and steady infusion of new thinking 

that are necessary for any society to 

flourish.” 

Milestones in 2013 

Application Pool 

More than 30,000 potential freshmen 

were part of a record-breaking 42,178 

applications received by UCR during 

the application period for the 2013-14 

academic year. 

UCR exceeded the 40,000 mark in 

total applications and the 30,000 mark 

in freshman applications for the first time 

in school history. The pool of 42,178 was 

composed of 33,809 freshmen, a 13.2 

percent increase from 2012, and 8,369 

transfers, an 8.3 percent increase from 

2012. 

“The numbers show that UCR 

continues to grow as a campus of choice,” 

said Emily Engelschall, director of undergraduate 

admissions.

Study Finds Link Between ‘Critical Mass’ 

and Respectful Racial Climate 

Universities that maintain higher 

levels of “critical mass” have African- 

American and Latino students who are 

more likely to feel respected on campus. 

This is according to a study by William 

Kidder, assistant provost at UCR. The 

study, “Misshaping the River: Proposition 

209 and Lessons for the Fisher 

Case,” analyzed surveys from nearly 

10,000 African-American and Latino 

undergraduates. 

Published in the Journal of College 

and University Law, a peer-reviewed 

journal at the University of Notre Dame 

Law School, the study found that on 

campuses with more African-Americans 

in the student body, including UT Austin 

and UCR, between 72 percent and 

87 percent of African-Americans felt 

students of their race were respected on 

campus. 

By contrast, on campuses with fewer 

African-Americans in the student body, 

including UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC 

San Diego, between 32 percent and 

71 percent of African-Americans felt 

respected on campus. Latino undergraduates 

were also more likely to feel 

respected on campuses where there were 

higher levels of diversity. 

The racial interactions on campus 

can be influential in academic success, 

according to Sylvia Hurtado, a professor 

at UCLA and director of the Higher 

Education Research Institute. “Lower 

racial diversity not only results in 

increased reports of campus incidents 

but members of underrepresented groups 

and majority students show lower 

scores on college outcomes as a result of 

negative cross-race encounters,” she said. 

Former Riverside 

Mayor Heads UCR 

Research Center 

Ronald O. Loveridge, the former 

Riverside mayor who has played an active 

leadership role in local, regional and state 

government for more 

than 30 years, was named 

director of the Center for 

Sustainable Suburban Development 

at UCR in January. 

“The center will support, 

and connect, the best of 

academic research with 

important policy choices 

for a sustainable future for 

this region and Southern 

California,” Loveridge said. 

Loveridge has been an 

associate professor of political science 

at UCR since 1965. With his retirement 

as mayor of Riverside, he will focus his 

attention at UCR on research related to the 

growth of suburbs, public policy, urban 

planning, transportation, air quality and the 

intersection of cities and natural lands. 


R SPACE 


UCR Has New 

University Librarian 

Steven Mandeville-Gamble, the 

former associate university librarian of 

Washington University in Washington, 

D.C., joined UCR in March as the 

campus’s ninth university librarian. He 

replaced Ruth Jackson, who recently 

retired. 

Early on, Mandeville-Gamble 

impressed staff and faculty with his 

leadership skills and friendly, outgoing 

personality. But Mandeville-Gamble 

made an even better impression at his 

welcome reception, held on March 22 

at the Raymond L. Orbach Science 

Library. He presented the UCR Special 

Collections with a first American 

edition copy of Charles Darwin’s 

“The Expression of the Emotions in 

Man and Animals” from his personal 

collection. 

Published in 1873, the rare book is 

a classic — and a very generous gift — 

said Melissa Conway, head of special 

collections at the Rivera Library. 

Executive Vice Chancellor and 

Provost Dallas Rabenstein said 

Mandeville-Gamble distinguished 

himself with his vision, enthusiasm, 

depth of knowledge and 

commitment to 

creating a 21st 

century library. He 

added, “It became 

very clear that 

Steven was the one 

who could provide 

leadership for the 

library moving into 

the future.” 

Japanese University Expands Presence at UCR 

Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, 

Riverside’s sister city since 1957, 

expanded its relationship as one of 

UCR’s strongest international partners 

by opening the Tohoku University Center 

at UCR Extension in February. The 

center is funded by a $10 million grant 

that Tohoku received from the Japanese 

government to develop global skills for 

its students by expanding international 

educational opportunities, said Bronwyn 

Jenkins-Deas, associate dean of UC 

Riverside Extension and director of 

international education programs. 

Tohoku University plans to send 

160 students to UCR each year. The 

first 44 students came to UCR at the 

beginning of February and enrolled in 

three programs: environmental sciences, 

where students will do service-learning 

projects with Riverside community and 

government groups; economics, where 

they will spend five weeks learning 

English and a week visiting Japanese- 

American companies in Los Angeles; 

and engineering to introduce students to 

alternate energies, which are important 

for Japan to consider as it faces issues 

with nuclear power. 

The grant money also allows 20 UCR 

students to take part in a 10-day studyabroad 

experience at Tohoku each year; 

30 Tohoku employees to go to UCR 

Extension to learn how to set up international 

education programs and provide 

support services to students; and a 

part-time student exchange coordinator 

to be hired to facilitate the relationship 

between Tohoku and UCR.

UCR Nanotechnologists 

Help Launch New 

National Center Devoted 

to Microelectronics 

Roland Kawakami, a professor of 

physics and astronomy; Ludwig Bartels, 

a professor of chemistry; and Cengiz 

Ozkan, a professor of mechanical 

engineering, are members of a new 

national research center—the Center 

for Spintronic Materials, Interfaces 

and Novel Architectures (C-SPIN) 

— focused on developing the next 

generation of microelectronics. All three 

are part of the Materials Science and 

Engineering Graduate Program at UCR. 

C-SPIN is aimed at developing 

technologies for spin-based computing 

and memory systems. Unlike today’s 

computers with their electrical charges 

moving across wires, 

the spin-based 

computing 

systems will 

process and 

store information 

through 

spin, a fundamental 

property 

of electrons. Spinbased 

computing 

can combine memory and logic at 

the device and circuit level, and if it is 

based on the hybridization of magnetic 

materials and semiconductors, it has the 

potential to create computers that are 

smaller, faster and more energy-efficient. 

Led by the University of Minnesota, 

C-SPIN is being supported by a 

five-year, $28 million grant awarded by 

the Semiconductor Research Corp. and 

the Defense Advanced Research Projects 

Agency. Out of that grant, about $3 

million is allocated to UCR. 

A New Leader for 

UCR Alumni Relations 

Following a 

yearlong, nationwide 

search, UC Riverside 

found the new 

head of its Office 

of Alumni and 

Constituent Relations 

about 40 miles west, 

in the city of Irvine. 

Jorge E. Ancona has been appointed as 

the new assistant vice chancellor for Alumni 

and Constituent Relations and executive 

director of the UC Riverside Alumni 

Association. He has served as assistant 

vice chancellor for alumni relations, and 

executive director of the UCI Alumni 

Association since 2002. 

At UCR, Ancona will lead a staff of 

12 full-time employees and oversee the 

management of hundreds of volunteers and 

advocates. He will also be responsible for 

stewardship of the Alumni Association’s 

endowment funds, and for further 

developing fundraising for the alumni 

association and alumni relations programs. 

Highlights of his career at Irvine include 

establishing the UCI Student Alumni 

Association; growing the association’s 

scholarship endowments from $1.5 

million to $4 million; and increasing the 

association’s assets from $3.4 million 

to $8 million. Under hi s leadership, 

the association earned 18 Council for 

Advancement and Support of Education 

(CASE) district awards for outstanding 

alumni events and communications as 

well as national honors from CASE for its 

alumni appreciation program in 2004. 

Ancona succeeds Kyle Hoffman, who 

held the position for 23 years before leaving 

in May 2012 to become vice chancellor for 

Development and Alumni Relations at UC 

Merced. 

Numbers Show 

Achievement at UCR 

1 

10 

35 

8 

1 

6 

New wasp species named 

after UCR. Serguei V. 

Triapitsyn, principal 

museum scientist at the 

Entomology Research 

Museum on campus, 

discovered several 

tiny female fairyflies in 

Russia and named them 

Gonatocerus ucri. 

UCR’s natural sciences 

and engineering spot in the 

annual Leiden ranking of 

the top 500 major universities 

in the world. 

UCR’s overall ranking in 

the sciences worldwide, 

also from the Leiden 

ranking. 

The number of times Ian 

Whitelaw, music director 

of the UCR pipe bands, 

has placed at the Western 

United States Pipe Band 

Association. 

The number of UCR 

faculty members who are 

part of the prestigious 

American Philosophical 

Society. Plant geneticist 

Susan Wessler was given 

the honor in April. 

The number of UCR 

faculty who are members 

of the National Academy 

of Sciences. Xuemei 

Chen, a professor of 

plant cell and molecular 

biology, was elected into 

the academy in April. 


FEATURE 


FINDING 

HAPPINESS 

There’s a science to attaining joy, 

and researchers at UC Riverside say 

it could be as easy as 1 to 10. 

Whether you believe in destiny, divine intervention or just 

pure luck, obtaining and maintaining a blissful life may seem 

like a total shot in the dark. However, in recent years science 

has increasingly demonstrated that happiness can be controlled. 

Happiness, after all, isn’t merely an emotion. Happy people 

often enjoy good health, good social relationships, even good 

salaries. At UCR, the research, understanding and cultivation of 

happiness is serious stuff. (The College of Humanities, Arts, and 

Social Sciences has even made happiness its theme, holding 

yearlong conversations on the topic of bliss.) The findings are 

so beneficial that governments and places of employment are 

listening carefully – and so should you. 

Play the Game of Happiness online and 

watch the “Happiness at UCR” video at 

BY VICKIE CHANG 


Illustrations by 

Alex Eben Meyer

1 

What you believe about happiness may be getting 

you down. 

Some people believe finding happiness is 

contingent on certain events happening first — say, 

landing a dream job or getting married. 

But according to Sonja 

Lyubomirsky, a professor of 

psychology and the director of the 

UCR Positive Psychology Laboratory, 

this thought process actually gets in 

the way of finding happiness. 

“When we have a baby, when we 

get married, when we get a new job, 

when we earn more money, of course, 

that makes us really happy initially, but 

then we adapt to those experiences. 

And our happiness eventually returns 

to its original baseline.” 

Lyubomirsky, who defines 

happiness as “the experience of 

joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined 

with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, 

and worthwhile,” is one of the world’s leading 

researchers on happiness. The author of “The 

Myths of 

Happiness: What 

Should Make 

You Happy, but 

Doesn’t, What 

Shouldn’t Make 

You Happy, but 

Does,” she has 

Dispel the Myths of Happiness 

“When we get 

married, when 

we get a new job, 

that makes us 

happy initially, 

but we adapt to 

those 

experiences.” 

dubbed these the myths of happiness. A person 

might think something is wrong if their dreams 

come true and they aren’t as happy as they thought 

they would be. They may then think that changing a 

relationship or a job would solve the problem. “Those 

things really do make people happy, but 

they don’t make people happy for as 

long or as intensely as they think they 

will,” Lyubomirsky says. 

Living with a less restricted notion 

of happiness may end up for the 

better — and can help you properly 

determine the (really) good from the 

(really) bad. 

The other myth has to do 

with resilience. Lyubomirsky’s 

research reveals that people often 

underestimate their own ability to 

recover from disastrous events. 

“We often think that, ‘Oh my 

God, my life will be over if I get a divorce, if I don’t 

find a life partner, if I don’t have as much money as 

I want, if I don’t accomplish what I want to with my 

life,’” Lyubomirsky says. 

That’s not actually the case. 

Lyubomirsky says, “Research 

shows that when people 

experience adversities — 

even when they fall ill, even 

when they get divorced — 

they recover and rebound 

incredibly well.” 



2 

Careful: Those lowered expectations 

you label as realistic can be more harmful 

than you think. 

People who achieve ambitious goals 

attain a larger level of satisfaction 

compared with those who set and achieve 

more conservative goals, according to a 

study by Assistant Marketing Professor 

Cecile K. Cho and 

co-author Gita 

Venkataramani Johar, a 

professor at Columbia 

University. In other 

words, aiming high leads 

to a larger quantity of 

happiness. 

“Our finding shows 

that people who set low 

goals and achieve them 

end up feeling like they fell 

short, because people often 

compare their performance 

to what could have been,” 

Cho says. 

For example, a student 

who aims for a B in a 

highly challenging class 

Think Big 

“People often 

compare their 

performance to 

what could have 

been.” 

and achieves it is unlikely to be content 

with the grade and will wonder whether 

she could have done better, Cho says. 

It’s difficult to predict how happy your 

performance will make you, so it’s better 

to set high goals and strive for them 

regardless of whether you achieve them. 

The happiness from higher achievement 

in turn can trigger 

motivation to 

raise work 

performance and 

even enhance 

one’s personal 

life. 

So think big 

– your happiness 

may be at stake.

3 

Humility isn’t the most sought-after 

of virtues. But in addition to making 

someone much more likable, it may 

just have a direct relationship with 

happiness. 

“People don’t often talk about 

the emotional benefits 

of humility,” says 

UC Riverside 

psychology 

graduate 

student 

Elliott Kruse, 

“but it’s 

possible that 

it may be 

one way to 

become more 

content.” 

Kruse, along with 

fellow grad student 

Joe Chancellor, is 

studying the effects 

of humility and how 

people attain that 

quality. 

Eat That Not-so-Negative 

Slice of Humble Pie 

“Humility 

may be 

one way 

to become 

more 

content.” 

“We felt that some of the popular 

views of humility didn’t fit well with 

our own experiences interacting with 

the humble people in our lives,” 

Kruse says. “Many folks assume 

that the humble are overly modest, 

perhaps boring and even 

weak, or that the experience 

of humility is somehow 

negative.” 

From that perspective, 

Kruse says you’d think that 

humility might make people 

unhappy, because they’re not 

expected to like themselves. 

But Kruse and Chancellor 

have discovered the opposite: 

Feeling humble is related to 

feeling secure—and experiencing fewer 

negative emotions in general. 

“Humility may lead to happiness 

[by] making it easier for people 

to experience gratitude,” Kruse 

explains. “Which may in turn increase 

satisfaction with life.” 



4 5 

Want to hear something really 

uplifting? 

Being intentionally positive – that is, 

performing acts of kindness, employing 

optimism, counting your blessings – 

may lead you not only to happiness, 

but out of clinical depression as well. 

Psychology Professor Lyubomirsky 

says there’s a connection between doing 

intentionally positive 

actions and depression. 

“Research shows 

that people can become 

happier by engaging in 

positive activities,” she 

says. “We have found, for 

example, that people who 

are prompted to express 

gratitude on a regular 

basis, or who are instructed to do kind 

acts on a regular basis, become happier.” 

Depression affects about 100 

million people worldwide — and 

more than 16 million adults in the 

United States alone. In approximately 

Be Positive 

On Purpose 

Being good 

to others, 

is actually 

good for 

you. 

70 percent of reported cases in the 

United States, the person suffering 

from depression either fails to pursue 

recommended treatment or declines 

any treatment. 

Intentionally positive acts are a 

novel option for those who do not 

respond to antidepressants or refuse 

to take them. They are inexpensive, 

less time-consuming, carry 

little to no stigma and have no 

side effects. “Studies suggest 

that people with mental health 

conditions can supplement 

their treatment by engaging in a 

variety of happiness-increasing 

strategies. There are probably 

hundreds of such strategies they 

can do,” Lyubomirsky says. 

For example, acting prosocially 

– helping others — has been 

found to lift negative moods 

and bolster self-esteem. 

“Who lives long, healthy and happy 

lives … and why?” 

This was the driving question 

behind the study called The Longevity 

Project (www.howardsfriedman. 

com/longevityproject). The project, 

which began in 1921, followed 1,500 

Americans their entire lives — from 

childhood to death. 

“It turns out that always being 

cheery and fun-loving was not 

healthy,” says Howard S. Friedman, 

distinguished professor of psychology 

at UCR. “The thrivers were those 

people who were conscientious 

— they were prudent, planful and 

persevering.” 

That meant they were less likely to 

abuse drugs, smoke or drink to excess. 

They were more likely to do things like 

wear seat belts or even follow doctor’s 

orders. Being conscientious, Friedman 

found, also meant having healthier 

experiences and relationships, from the 

workplace to the home. 

“These were the people who 

had stable marriages, got a better 

education, succeeded in their careers 

and gave back to their communities. 

They became mature, flourishing

Live Conscientiously 

(to Live Longer) 

adults, not self-centered happiness 

seekers! We also found that good 

social relationships are a major 

contributor on the road to health and 

fulfillment.” 

Friedman also found that 

conscientious people got involved in 

worthwhile activities and stuck with 

them – but a certain intricate balance 

was required: “It was not the partiers 

“It turns out that 

always being 

cheery and funloving 

was not 

healthy.” 

and retirees, nor those who chilled out 

and played golf, who stayed healthy 

and lived long,” he says. 

“In fact,” adds Friedman, “I just 

went to visit one of the participants, 

who is now 101 years old. He still 

works part time – and he volunteers 

by raising money for a medical 

foundation.” 

6 

If you’re feeling blue after a 

traumatizing workweek, treating 

yourself to a new purchase – a bag, 

a pair of heels – may make you feel 

better. Ye Li, assistant professor of 

management at the School of Business 

Administration, has found that 

sadness makes people want to spend 

money immediately. And while 

the idea of buying stuff to lift your 

spirits — commonly 

known as retail therapy 

— seems relatively 

harmless, the concept 

is very real. (It doesn’t 

just happen in bad 

episodes of “Sex and 

the City”!) “When 

people feel sad, they 

want to restore their 

devalued feelings 

about themselves by going out and 

acquiring new things – and to do so 

as soon as possible,” Li says. 

In the study Li co-authored, researchers 

found that people who are 

sad are willing to relinquish greater 

future monetary gains to receive 

instant financial gratification. Those 

in distress have less patience to spare 

Feeling Blue? 

Hold on to Your Wallet 

“Sad people are 

especially 

attracted to 

instant 

gratification.” 

and, thus, are more likely to opt for 

immediate incentives. Unfortunately, 

that could come with considerable 

financial loss. “Sad people are especially 

attracted to instant gratification. 

... Our research suggests that 

people should be aware of these 

effects and avoid making major 

financial decisions and purchases 

when sad,” says Li. 

Sadness affects you 

in more ways than you 

know. When you’re 

sad, it’s best to take 

a step back from any 

vital decision-making. 

So that shiny new 

iPhone you’ve been 

eyeing? Don’t buy it if 

you’ve had a bad day. 

In the long run, avoiding 

buyer’s regret will make 

you happier. 



7 Sleep More 

What can help you look 

younger, lose weight, reduce stress, 

enhance your sex life, and — best of 

all — is free? Napping. 

According to research performed 

by Sara C. Mednick, author 

of “Take a Nap! Change Your 

Life” and assistant professor of 

psychology at 

UCR, naps can 

improve your 

everyday life. They 

help you think 

better and more 

clearly, and have 

no side effects. 

“The research 

that we’ve been 

doing has been 

looking at memory 

consolidation 

and creativity,” 

Mednick says. “We know that 

sleep is important for memory 

consolidation and has other 

cognitive benefits. The 

question is whether a short 

60- to 90-minute nap has 

all the same ingredients as 

a full night of sleep. ... 

“A short 60- to 

90-minute nap 

has all the 

same 

ingredients as 

a full night of 

sleep.” 

What we’ve been showing is that, in 

fact, it can.” 

Mednick’s research has found 

that naps improve cognitive 

performance even better than 

caffeine, so next time you’re in need 

of a boost, don’t reach for that 

second mug of bad coffee – take a 

little snooze. 

After all, Mednick 

points out, there are 

many advantages 

to taking a breather 

once in a while. 

The culture in the 

American workplace 

is to persevere and 

work on, she says, but 

that doesn’t improve 

productivity. 

“You do better after 

working for an amount 

of time and then taking a 

break – even if it’s just taking 

a walk or switching tasks.” 

Taking breaks, Mednick says, 

is “incredibly restorative 

and allows you to come up 

with new ideas.”

8 Be a Parent 

Despite the cell phone bills, 

the late nights and endless saving 

for college, parents aren’t an 

unhappy bunch. This is what 

UCR Department of Psychology 

doctoral candidate and member 

of the Positive Psychology Lab 

Katie Nelson and her colleagues 

have found in their 

research. 

“Most parents 

I talked to said 

that becoming a 

parent was one 

of the best things 

they had done with 

their lives,” Nelson 

says. “I wanted to 

“Parents 

reported 

greater 

positive 

emotions ... 

when they 

were 

spending time 

with their 

children.” 

understand why [previous] 

scientific studies didn’t match 

personal accounts of parenthood.” 

In investigating the emotional 

experiences of both nonparents 

and parents, Nelson and her 

colleagues found that parents 

reported higher global happiness, 

life satisfaction and 

thoughts about 

meaning in life. 

“Parents reported 

greater positive 

emotions and meaning 

in life when they were 

spending time with 

their children than 

during their other 

daily activities,” 

Nelson said. 

Nelson has also 

looked at what kinds 

of parents are happier: 

“We found that 

parents’ happiness 

depended on a few 

key factors: marital 

status, age and gender.” 

For parents, the level of 

happiness depends on many 

additional factors, which may 

change over the life course. For 

example, parenting very young 

children or adolescents appears 

to be a trying time, but parenting 

adult children may have well-being 

benefits. 



9 10 

Money can’t buy happiness. 

Or, at least, that’s what the research 

says. Spectrem Group, a consulting 

firm that covers affluent and retirement 

markets, recently released a survey that 

found that only 20 percent of affluent 

investors say money can buy happiness. 

Almost half of those surveyed disagreed 

with the statement. 

Why, then, do so 

many people believe that 

acquiring wealth would 

also mean acquiring 

happiness? 

That’s a question 

UCR alumnus and 

San Francisco State 

University Assistant 

Professor of Psychology 

Ryan Howell set out to 

answer. 

“It struck me as 

odd,” Howell says. “Either money has 

to have a positive effect on quality of 

life or we should really try to figure out 

why people think it does. ... Everyone 

will tell you that they think if they have 

more money they will be happier.” 

So Howell — co-founder of 

beyondthepurchase.org, a site that 

educates people on how their spending 

habits impact happiness — focused his 

research on asking people how they 

Invest in Experiences, 

Not Worldly Possessions 

“Life 

experiences are 

unique to us ... 

we don’t really 

compare them 

to other people’s 

memories. “ 

spend their money to be happier. 

He found that people with cash 

on hand opt to purchase one of two 

things: an object or a thing to do. 

In Howell’s research, he found that 

experiential purchases – such as dining 

out or tickets to the theater – resulted 

in an increased sense of well-being 

because they fulfill the human desire 

for social connectedness 

and vitality. 

As objects deteriorate 

over time (say, a car 

or an iPad 1, iPad 2 or 

iPad 3), so does your 

happiness level. Keeping 

up with the Joneses may 

become an issue as well: 

“Comparison 

happens. If you get a new 

pair of shoes, part of your 

decision on how nice your 

shoes are is based on how nice other 

people’s shoes are,” Howell says. 

The same kinds of comparisons don’t 

occur with nonmaterial life experiences, 

he says. “Life experiences are unique to 

us ... we don’t really compare them to 

other people’s memories. There’s really 

no way to do that.” 

10 

Consider this: Facebook has 1 billion 

users. 

YouTube garners more than 4 

billion views every day. 

Twitter boasts more than 140 million 

users. Instagram has more than 80 

million registered users – and 4 billion 

photos. Tumblr plays host to around 

60 million blogs. Pinterest, despite 

launching just three years ago, has 20 

million users. 

“Social media has 

the potential to 

meet people’s 

fundamental 

needs.” 

These impressive figures have 

prompted UCR professors of 

marketing and co-directors of the 

Sloan Center for Internet Retailing 

Donna Hoffman and Tom Novak to 

examine how feelings of closeness and 

connectedness may arise from different 

types of social media. In short, how 

does social media impact happiness? 

“It’s clear that social media is not

Get Connected 

on Social Media 

only an activity that appeals to the 

troubled and lonely,” Hoffman says, 

“but also has the potential to meet 

people’s fundamental needs in some 

positive and important ways.” 

A not-so-surprising finding is 

that when people use social media to 

interact with others, they’re likely to 

feel more related to others, she says. 

However, Hoffman and Novak 

have also found that when people use 

more content-focused social media 

(for learning new things or spreading 

information), that behavior also has 

the potential to trigger a feeling of 

connectedness. 

The next question, though, is 

whether both these paths lead equally 

to positive outcomes like happiness 

and satisfaction. According 

to Hoffman and Novak’s 

research, the answer is 

yes. This suggests that 

the reasons people use 

social media have 

a large impact on 

whether these uses 

will lead to positive 

outcomes. 

Questioning Happiness: 

Why Proving Joy Scientifically 

Is So Important 

Happiness is a common goal among people around the world 

— defying social strata, age, geography, gender, ethnicity and 

nationality. 

“But happiness is not just a simple, hedonistic pleasure,” 

Sonja Lyubomirsky says. “People who are happy have been found 

to be more productive; they make more money, they have better 

relationships, they’re healthier, they’re more charitable, they’re 

better leaders, and they’re more creative.” 

Happiness is not just about feeling good. Multiple benefits 

accrue if you are happier.” 

That’s why investigating and analyzing happiness has be- 

come an important field of research — not just for psychologists, 

but for economists and policymakers as well. The way personal 

happiness is manifested in daily lives is slowly becoming a ba- 

rometer by which countries measure their achievements. Before 

the science of happiness was taken seriously, countries usually 

measured their success in monetary terms, such as the gross 

domestic product (GDP). Now, governments know that the well- 

being and betterment of their inhabitants are as fundamental as 

their monetary health. This is why a United Nations committee 

has recently proposed that governments begin measuring the 

happiness index levels in their countries. 

Bhutan, France and Britain have long kept track (it turns out 

that France is pretty miserable). The United States government is 

now considering doing the same. 

But how do you calculate something so seemingly subjective? 

“Happiness is subjective, of course. No one else can tell you 

if you’re happy. Only you know if you’re happy,” Lyubomirsky says. 

“But researchers measure a lot of things in life that are sub- 

jective — a lot of things that we can’t see,” Lyubomirsky says. 

“For instance, physicists study quarks even though no one has 

ever seen one. Medical scientists study features of the body that 

they have to infer. Just because something is subjective doesn’t 

mean we shouldn’t study it.” 


Go With the Flow 

SHARON WALKER’S RESEARCH ON 

OPTIMIZING EFFECTIVE WATER TREATMENT 

AND DISTRIBUTION HAS LED HER THROUGH 

A SERIES OF SERENDIPITOUS EVENTS 

18 | UCR Spring 2013

BY SEAN NEALON 

Sharon Walker, an associate professor of 

chemical and environmental engineering in the 

Bourns College of Engineering, is a native of 

Los Angeles who moved east to earn her 

master’s and Ph.D. at Yale University. She 

returned to California in 2005 when UCR 

offered her the John Babbage Chair in 

Environmental Engineering. 

What has the John Babbage Chair 

allowed you to do? 

A number of things, but perhaps two are the 

most significant. 

It has allowed me to pay a couple Ph.D. 

students when they were doing projects that 

wouldn’t have been funded anywhere else. It’s 

great when a student comes to you and you can 

say, ‘Great idea, let’s do it.’ That’s the intellectual 

freedom that the Babbage Chair has given me. 

It also provides travel money. If I have travel 

money on a grant, I want to send my student. I 

want them to have the exposure. So I use my 

Babbage Chair money to cover expenses for 

travel. While traveling, I make a point of getting 

the UCR name out. I try to recruit graduate 

students and I have had some really successful 

research collaborations develop from the 

relationships I have made. 

How did you end up at UC Riverside? 

After earning my Ph.D. at Yale, I was set to 

do a post-doc in Germany when I decided — 

because I am from California — [to] throw my 

name in the hat for a few positions that were 

open in California. I had absolutely no 

expectation of getting an interview. And 

wouldn’t you know, Riverside called me up and 

invited me to interview. 

For a video on Sharon Walker’s research go to 

I came out here nervous as all get-out. But it 

was such a wonderful day. I remember meeting 

people and thinking what an amazing group of 

faculty in the department. I was really blown 

away. I remember getting back to the Mission 

Inn after a very exhausting, rigorous day and 

thinking, ‘Gosh, I hope I get the job.’ I was 

really shocked. I don’t think I realized how 

much I wanted it until after I had been here and 

met everybody. I was flabbergasted when they 

called and said they wanted to offer me a position. 

Can you talk about the program you 

developed that brings Riverside 

Community College District students to 

your lab? 

I work with 

Heather Smith at 

Riverside City 

College. Each year 

we select two 

students. They spend 

an intensive summer 

internship in my lab. 

We put them up in the dorms. They participate 

in wonderful professional development 

programming. And they just get absolutely 

immersed in collegiate life. I’ll tell you, there is 

nothing like that to turn a young student 

around and say, ‘Wow, I want to go to a 

four-year college, I want to go on in science.’ 

After that intensive summer, we continue to pay 

them as a research intern during the academic 

year. So, instead of being a barista at Starbucks, 

they keep going in science. 

To date, 100 percent of the students have 

gone on to a four-year institution. Two are in 

Ph.D. programs and the other is in a nursing 

program. 


In 2009-10, you spent the academic 

year in Israel on a Fulbright 

scholarship studying how the country 

uses and reuses water. Why did you 

apply for the Fulbright? 

My husband and I were looking for a bit of 

adventure. I was putting in my tenure file. 

Someone gave me the brilliant advice when 

your tenure file is in, get out of Dodge – because 

nothing is more stressful than sitting around 

waiting to be reviewed. We thought, ‘We don’t 

have kids yet, this is the time to go.’ And, funny 

enough, I got pregnant. So, we knew we were 

going to be having a baby while we were away. 

Because my daughter was born in Israel, we 

wanted to give her an Israeli name. So her name 

is Ma’ayan, which means a spring of water, 

which is fitting for my research area. 

Talk about your current research. 

The biggest thing I’m working on now is the 

fate of nanomaterials that are getting into our 

environment. Nanomaterials are being used in 

everything from cosmetics to food to paints to 

tennis rackets. Gym socks don’t smell because 

there are silver nanoparticles in there. They are 

what make our cell phones small and light. 

They are part of our new lifestyle. 

The problem is that these materials get 

released into the water as they are produced 

and used. I’m looking at how traditional 

engineering approaches can remove 

nanomaterials and, if they don’t, how to change 

the design of treatment plants to make sure our 

water is safe. 


La Reina 

Seventeen-year-old Victor loved his beautiful, troubled mother, who wasn’t like any of the other mothers 

AN EXCERPT FROM SUSAN STRAIGHT’S LATEST NOVEL, “BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HERE.” 


His mother knew 

trees. Showed him how to 

find bees in the pepper 

tree trunks, spiders in the 

eucalyptus bark shedding 

long flat sheaves. 

In fourth grade, they 

studied California 

Indians, and Victor found 

a perfect piece of bark for 

his project. She took him 

to the riverbed, where the 

paddle-shaped cactus 

grew everywhere, and on 

the smooth green skin 

were cottony white 

insects. Their blood was 

magenta, a color he’d 

never seen, even among 

her eyeshadows and nail 

polish. She showed him 

how to paint the bark 

with designs in bug 

blood. 

She used to keep the 

bark picture in her trunk. 

The lock had been busted 

over and over, when 

people broke into it, but 

they threw the bark aside 

looking for money or 

rock or jewelry. Then 

someone got pissed when 

he couldn’t find anything, 

and he broke the bark in 

half and threw it on the 

floor. 

So she glued it 

together, and wrapped 

magenta ribbon from 

Rite Aid around each 

end, and hung it on the 

wall. No one would care 

about it then. And he saw 

her staring at it 

sometimes, when she lay 

on the couch. At each 

apartment, she hung it on 

the wall near the door. 

The bug was 

cochineal. An SAT word.

Back on the first 

Saturday in May, he was 

registered to take the SAT. 

His high school history 

teacher, Marcus Thompson, 

had paid for it—and he’d 

left ten dollars for Victor to 

buy the number two pencils 

and some coffee for that 

morning. 

“Make sure you eat,” 

Marcus said, awkwardly. 

Victor said, “We got 

plenty of food.” 

He remembered being 

really hungry when he was 

three. She didn’t come home. 

He sat on the balcony. 

Maybe Jessamine Gardens. 

He couldn’t remember 

anything except his stomach 

was eating his backbone. He 

could feel something 

creeping up there. Vertebrae. 

He couldn’t breathe and so 

he sat outside, and his uncle 

Reynaldo found him 

because they were looking 

for his mother. 

in school. But he knew she loved him, too, because she always bought him ramen and orange juice. 

Kindergarten? When he 

coughed really hard and 

finally she came home and 

put him in the shower with 

her and they sat in there all 

night, the moisture beading 

up on her hair like pearls 

and then collapsing into 

nothing. The water going 

inside his lungs and 

somehow cleaning out the 

burn. 

But now she had it 

down. He was seventeen. So 

she left ramen, orange juice 

(and she bought Tropicana, 

not that Sunny Delight shit), 

and pistachios in the 

kitchen. The staples. And 

most nights, she brought 

home the scheduled items 

from El Ojo de Agua. He 

said to her, “Shrimp burrito 

from the Eye?” 

The Eye of Water. Jesus 

Espinoza, this guy in AP 

History, said that was from 

a town in Michoacan, where 

his father was born. Some 

shrine. 

The shrimp burrito had 

beans, rice, cabbage, 

tomatoes, sauce, and fried 

shrimp. $3.99. It was the 

size of a small log. A dusty 

white log. And Victor ate 

one every Tuesday. 

Wednesday was fish tacos. 

Thursday was tamales. 

Friday was Chess, and 

Saturday she was gone until 

dawn. Sunday she slept. He 

ate whatever his grandfather 

brought from Sarrat — 

gumbo or beans and rice or 

ham. Always oranges. 

She had her part as 

down as she could, and 

Victor had his part down 

cold. Perfect 4.0. Registered 

for the May 6, 2000 SAT. 

Last one of the year. 

Everybody else would be 

juniors, but he could finish 

college apps late and Marcus 

would help him. 

It must have pissed those 

other moms, when their kids 

mentioned him. This black 

dude with weird hair and 

he’s really light so he’s like, 

not even really black, and 

his mom is, like, a crack 

ho—that’s just what 

everybody says, okay, she 

is—and he gets like, 97 or 

98 on everything. Like, 

never lower. For reals. 

He had the secondhighest 

grade in the class in 

AP European History, the 

second-highest in AP US 

History, and the thirdhighest 

in AP Art History. 

Susan Straight talks about real places in the city of Riverside 

that served as inspiration for her novel. Read the interview at 

* * * 

Brown-haired girl 

Logan had green eyes like 

olives, one of those girls 

who wore her hair in a 

ponytail and it was thick 

and long so you could see 

the reason they called it 

that. She asked him all 

casual as often as she 

could without seeming 

insecure, “So what’d you 

get on the test?” 

“What I always get.” 

Victor loved saying that. 

He didn’t even have to 

give her the percentage. It 

was always 97 or 98. Mrs. 

Mumbles had to take off 

two or three points for 

everyone—even if she had 

to make up some shit 

about one word being 

awkward or you forgot a 

comma or a space in 

MLA format. 

But he loved Mrs. 

Mumbles. Mumford. 

Mrs. Mumbles didn’t 

buy into all the hype, and 

the old families and 

fundraisers and the right 

mom or wrong mom at 

Back to School Night. She 

never looked any of them 

in the face. She stared at 

some spot in the room 

and mumbled about 

funeral art of India and 

Impressionists and 

Cubism. She didn’t give a 

shit that Victor’s mother, 

who came to Open House 

because he’d told her it 

was the last time she 

could ever do that, sat in 

the back like the most 

beautiful zombie statue in 

the history of the world. 

She was luminous. In 

winter, the nights shitty 


and cold, her skin got 

dulled like the gold-leaf 

frame of a painting if soot 

and years laid a patina of 

darkness or haze. Then 

she would sleep for two 

days, and when the sun 

came out, they’d go out to 

the orange groves. Eat 

gumbo and oranges, see 

the grandparents, and 

she’d take a long shower 

and put almond oil in her 

hair. 

She’d be gilt again. 

And the other moms at 

Open House hated the 

way she gazed bemusedly 

at their fleece vests and 

mom jeans for two 

seconds before dismissing 

them and staring at the 

paintings on the 

classroom walls. 

The SAT plan was to 

get number-three scores. 

Logan had taken it twice, 

Amitav three times. Logan 

got a 1500, perfect score, 

and Amitav 1490, in 

October. Victor didn’t 

have the money in 

October, and in 

November she got 

pneumonia after a cold 

windstorm when she 

stood in the alley too long. 

His aunt Famine helped 

him one weekend with 

vocabulary words. He 

chanted to himself all day 

and most of the night. 

Luciferous. 

Loquacious. Lucid. 

Lucent. 

Susan Straight is a 

distinguished professor of 

creative writing at UCR. 

“Between Heaven and 

Here” is her eighth novel. 


FROM MIND TO 

MARKET: COLOR 

TECHNOLOGY 

1 


Yin created his colloidal nanocrystal clusters in 2006. He wanted the 

100- to 200-nanometer diameter particles, which he describes as 

“spherical, with a rough surface,” to be able to bond to certain proteins. 

Once the particles had been created through a chemical reaction in 

liquid, Yin had what looked like rusty water. Hardly surprising: The 

particle essentially is rust, just very small, and in a very specific shape. 

2 

Thinking small — as in nanoparticle 

small — has led Yadong Yin into 

developing COLR Technology for a 

world of unlimited possibilities 

Almost immediately after his paper was published in 2007, “We got a 

lot of phone calls and emails,” Yin says. “Everyone had different 

ideas.” One of the earliest notions: Creating anti-fraud banknotes by 

embedding the particles into the bills so they could change color in a 

magnetic field. Other ideas flowed from numerous sources, from toy 

companies to car manufacturers, all of whom were interested in 

offering completely customizable colors for their products. 

To find out more about Yadong Yin’s research go to 

BY TED B. KISSELL 

But when his assistant put it on the magnetic stirrer, he called Yin over, 

saying, “We have something kind of strange here,” Yin recalls. The liquid 

had begun to change color into beautiful, iridescent hues. Yin quickly 

realized that the color of the particles varied based on the strength of the 

magnetic field: Weaker fields made red, and then on up the visible-light 

spectrum to violet, as the field got stronger. “It’s basically an optical 

effect—it follows everything you know about optics,” he says. 

3 

MAGAZINE.UCR.EDU

When Yadong Yin, an associate professor of chemistry at UCR, 

developed a new kind of nanoparticle from iron oxide, he was 

aiming for some kind of medical application. He was not trying 

to invent a new kind of futuristic nail polish. And yet that’s one 

possible application now being explored for what has been 

dubbed COLR Technology, through which the material changes 

color as it is exposed to a magnetic field. Yin, a compact 

4 

But what if someone wanted to pick a color and stick with 

it in a “dry” application like a tunable paint? Not long after 

the initial discovery, Yin figured out that by zapping the 

solution with UV light, a particular color could be set 

permanently — which would be ideal for things like car 

paint color. 

In his dealings with large companies, Yin notes, he generally ends up talking to 

technical people about the process. Idea Zoo was able to present his invention not 

to the techies, but to the decision-makers at large firms. Idea Zoo’s efforts led, in 

2012, to a partnership with chemical giant BASF to help bring Yin’s nanoparticles, 

now trademarked as COLR Technology, to the marketplace. Yin says that the 

process is now at the “scaling up” stage as BASF and Idea Zoo do some “serious 

R&D” into the most viable and sellable forms of COLR. Could be toys, could be 

cars, could be shoes—and yes, the nail polish concept is still in the works. 

5 

Illustrations by Colin Hayes 

39-year-old with a gift for explaining scientific concepts in 

plain language, earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 

his native China before getting his doctorate from the University 

of Washington. Ranked by Thomson Reuters as second in the 

world among materials science researchers and a top 100 

chemist of the decade, it wasn’t long after Yin’s arrival at UCR 

in 2006 that he made his serendipitous discovery. 

All of these discussions were interesting, but none of them led to a firm deal 

to develop the particles for the market. Then, in early 2010, Yin heard from 

Idea Zoo, a firm based in Silicon Valley. They had their own, very sci-fi idea: 

programmable nail polish, where you could change nail polish in a second 

like in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Total Recall.” (“I have that movie!” Yin 

offers with a chuckle.) While Idea Zoo didn’t have much experience with 

chemistry, Yin was impressed with how seriously they took his idea and its 

potential applications, so he soon signed a licensing agreement with them. 

6UCR 

Spring 2013 | 23

24 | UCR Spring 2013

SERVING THROUGH 

KNOWLEDGE 

The newly launched UCR School of Public Policy 

will bridge the university and the Inland 

community by generating research-based 

solutions to local and global problems 

From traffic on Highway 91 to air pollution 

in Mira Loma and poverty in Coachella, the 

Inland Empire is wrestling with many of the 

same problems that face emerging countries 

around the world. 

The new UC Riverside School of Public 

Policy aims to train the policy professionals 

who can help identify potential solutions to 

such problems. Their work could help 

governments across the globe with problems 

like water quality and access to health care, 

while also providing much-needed guidance to 

decision-makers closer to home. 

BY PHIL PITCHFORD 

“We need people who can determine which 

public policies are going to be the most 

cost-effective because many of these issues are 

quite complex,” said Anil Deolalikar, an 

economics professor and the school’s founding 

dean. “A lot of the policies we have in place 

now are a knee-jerk reaction to some situation 

that has occurred. We need people who are able 

to distill that knowledge, determine what the 

options are and what the likely (intended and 

unintended) outcomes are.” 

The School of Public Policy, currently 

scheduled to admit its first students in fall 2014, 


“Public policy as a discipline 

pertains to almost 

everything we do on this 

campus, which is why this is 

such an exciting program for 

so many people at UCR.” 

Anil Deolalikar, an 

economics professor and 

the school’s founding dean 

will be designed to produce just such problemsolvers 

for jobs in local, state and federal 

governments and in nonprofit organizations. 

Depending on pending curricular approvals, the 

school will begin accepting students in early 

2014 and eventually will have 30 doctoral and 

120 master’s degree candidates. 

“The professionals that we are going to be 

producing here will be trained to take positions 

across the United States as soon as they leave 

school and contribute at a very high level,” said 

Joseph Childers, English professor and dean of 

the Graduate Division. “It also creates another 


way for us to underscore the importance of 

what we do on campus to the community that 

has been so supportive of us.” 

Graduate students will be able to pursue a 

Master of Public Policy (M.P.P.) and an 

M.D./M.P.P. in conjunction with the UCR 

School of Medicine. A Ph.D. and a Ph.D. minor 

in public policy are planned. A 15-month 

Executive M.P.P. program will be available for 

experienced professionals already working in 

related fields. Nondegree certificate programs 

will enable existing public employment 

professionals to pursue career enhancement. 

Four areas of specialization are planned: 

environmental and sustainable development 

policy, population and health policy, higher 

education policy, and immigration policy. In the 

same way the new School of Medicine aims to 

improve health outcomes in the Inland area, the 

School of Public Policy is being designed to play 

an active role in the region. 

“The public policy school will serve as a 

bridge between the university and the public,” 

said Ken Baerenklau, an associate professor of 

environmental science and an associate 

environmental economist. “They will have a 

better understanding of what we do, and we 

will have a better understanding of what they 

want.” 

Students who pursue an advanced degree in 

public policy will carry on the UCR tradition of 

treating the surrounding area as a “living 

laboratory” that generates research-based 

solutions to problems here and abroad. 

“It’s not just learning from the rest of the 

world, but also teaching the rest of the world,” 

said Deolalikar, who is known internationally 

for his work on poverty, malnutrition and 

illiteracy. “Public policy as a discipline pertains 

to almost everything we do on this campus, 

which is why this is such an exciting program 

for so many people.” 

The school is expected to strengthen the 

overall mission of UCR by bringing together 

academics from many disciplines across 

campus, including some that rarely interact 

with one another. 

“Right now, there is kind of a disconnect 

between the science side of campus and the 

social sciences and the humanities,” said Kevin 

M. Esterling, an associate professor of political 

science and associate dean of the Graduate 

Division. “Science has a lot of practical 

applications, but it takes an interdisciplinary 

approach to determine what those applications 

might be. This school will bring people together 

and foster interaction between the colleges.” 

Ron Loveridge, an associate professor of 

political science who recently completed a 

33-year career as Riverside mayor and 

councilman, said the Inland counties will need 

sound policy planning more than ever since 

they are expected to be two of the largest 

counties in the state by 2060, trailing only Los 

Angeles County. 

“So much of what [our] faculty does is 

research for each other,” Loveridge said. “It’s 

important to get that research into the policy 

arena, and a School of Public Policy will 

do that.” 

“Science has a lot of 

practical applications, but 

it takes an interdisciplinary 

approach to determine 

what those applications 

might be. This school will 

bring people together and 

foster interaction between 

the colleges.” 

Kevin M. Esterling, an 

associate professor of political 

science and associate dean of 

the Graduate Division

Remember 

HAPPINESS IS … 

That Time I Got Into UC Riverside! 

Kenny Kostiv @SickWhiteMamba 

Got accepted into UC Riverside! 

Yee that’s wassup! #goingtocollege 

Jess Oh @JessItaliaOh 

My ID and UC Riverside 

acceptance letter came [in] the 

mail. (: It made my night. 

Alex Velasquez @Suuuupalex 

Got accepted to UC Riverside!!!!! 

Sw@q Sw@q Sw@q Sw@q 

Aaron Rodriguez @Slushy_KiddXD 

When you get accepted to UC 

Riverside >>>>>> #AmazingFeeling 

Eakta Sharma @esharma_ 

AHHHHH I got accepted to 

UC Riverside! Hollllaaaaaaa 

Autumn Crisantes @CrisantesAutumn 

First UC acceptance letter to UC Riverside 

#firstUCacceptance#college #yay #finally 

#hardworkpaysoff 

Calvin Kwan @calvinhkwan 

Got into my first choice, 

UC Riverside @ 

UCRAdmissions 

Michael Mashigian @mashigian 

Got accepted to UC Riverside 

with a scholarship!! 

Sam Garrison@sam_garrison04 

Got accepted into UC Riverside!!! 

Pretty pumped that one of my 

top 3 universities accepted me! 

Berhan Eskinder @BerDaddy 

Accepted to UC Riverside :) 

Thank you God. 

Marina Quinonez @MarinaQ17 

how happy you 

were the moment you got 

your UCR acceptance letter? 

We found tweets from 

potential Highlanders this 

fall, and they seem pretty 

stoked to be going to UCR. 

Joshua Gomez-Zavala @mrjogo2j 

OMG UC Riverside!!! I am so 

beyond happy right now. Thank 

you to everyone who has helped 

me reach this! 

David Thomas @dsthomas94 

I got into UC Riverside. 

Yip-a-dee-doo-dah-hey-wah-way. 

Claudia Jimenez @cloud_y_ahh 

So I got a special email today. I’ve been 

accepted to UC Riverside; I need March 

to get here quick. 

I was just minding my own business 

when I received an acceptance letter from 

UC Riverside. I’m so proud of myself. 

Maluh Costa @Niallbeminex 

Tom Amir @tomsabovearth 

Just got accepted into 

UC Riverside cuz I 

worked for it 

I got accepted into UC Riverside, 

who wants to party with me? 


PAGE TURNERS 

UCR Goes 

Around the 

World in Page 

Turners: From 

the Kibbutzim 

of Israel to 

Metaphors in 

the Chinese 

Language to 

the Music of El 

Salvador 

These books are available for 

purchase at the UCR Campus Store 

and online at www.ucrcampusstore. 

ucr.edu They have been discounted 

up to 30 percent. 


The Renewal of the Kibbutz: From 

Reform to Transformation 

By Raymond Russell, Robert 

Hanneman and Shlomo Getz 

Rutgers University Press 

May 2013, 192 pages 

In Israel, a kibbutz is a 

communally owned agricultural 

settlement, governed under 

collectivist principles by its 

members. Starting in the late 

1980s, many kibbutzim — whose 

members work, reside, eat together 

and share income — underwent 

varying degrees of reform. Members 

could work outside of the organization, 

but wages went to the 

collective. Apartments could be 

expanded, but housing remained 

kibbutz-owned. In 1995, change 

accelerated. Kibbutzim began to 

pay salaries based on the market 

value of a member’s work. As a 

result of such changes, the 

“renewed” kibbutz emerged. By 

2010, 75 percent of Israel’s 248 

nonreligious kibbutzim fit into this 

new category. 

This book explores the waves 

of reforms since 1990. Looking 

through the lens of organizational 

theories that predict how open or 

closed a group will be to change, 

the authors find that less successful 

kibbutzim were most receptive to 

reform, and reforms then spread 

through imitation from the 

economically weaker kibbutzim to 

the strong. 

Raymond Russell and Robert 

Hanneman are professors of 

sociology at UCR. 

Term Limits and Their Conse- 

quences: The Aftermath of Legis- 

lative Reform 

By Stanley Caress (’78) and Todd 

Kunioka 

State University of New York Press 

September 2012, 205 pages 

Legislative term limits remain 

a controversial feature of the 

American political landscape. This 

book provides a clear, comprehensive 

and nonpartisan look at all 

aspects of this contentious subject. 

Stanley M. Caress and Todd T. 

Kunioka trace the emergence of the 

grassroots movement that 

supported term limits and explain 

why the idea of term limits became 

popular with voters. Utilizing a 

blend of quantitative data and 

interviews, Caress and Kunioka 

thoughtfully discuss the impact of 

term limits, focusing in particular 

on the nation’s largest state, 

California. They scrutinize voting 

data to determine if term limits 

have altered election outcomes or 

the electoral chances of women and 

minority candidates and reveal how 

restricting a legislator’s time in 

office has changed political careers 

and ambitions. 

Stanley Caress is professor of 

political science at the 

University of West Georgia. 

The Myths of Happiness: What 

Should Make You Happy, but 

Doesn’t, What Shouldn’t Make You 

Happy, but Does 

By Sonja Lyubomirsky 

Penguin Press 

January 2013, 320 pages 

In “The Myths of Happiness,” 

Sonja Lyubomirsky isolates the 

major turning points of adult life, 

looking to both successes 

(marriage, children, wealth) and 

challenges (divorce, financial ruin, 

illness) to reveal that our misconceptions 

about the impact of such 

events are perhaps the greatest 

threats to our long-term well-being. 

Lyubomirsky argues that we 

have been given false promises — 

myths that assure us that lifelong 

happiness will be attained once we 

hit the culturally confirmed markers 

of adult success. Because we 

expect the best (or the worst) from 

life’s turning points, we shortsightedly 

place too much weight on 

our initial emotional responses. 

“The Myths of Happiness” 

empowers readers to look beyond 

their first response, sharing 

scientific evidence that often it is 

our mindset — not our circumstances 

— that matters. 

A corrective course on 

happiness and a call to regard life’s 

twists and turns with a more open 

mind, “The Myths of Happiness” 

shares practical lessons with 

life-changing potential. 

Sonja Lyubomirsky is a professor 

of psychology at UCR.

An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, 

Metaphor, Politics 

By Perry Link 

Harvard University Press 

January 2013, 376 pages 

During the Cultural 

Revolution, Mao exhorted the 

Chinese people to “smash the four 

olds”: old customs, old culture, old 

habits and old ideas. Yet when the 

Red Guards in Tiananmen Square 

chanted, “We want to see Chairman 

Mao,” they unknowingly used a 

classical rhythm that dates back to 

the Han period and is the very 

embodiment of the four olds. “An 

Anatomy of Chinese” reveals how 

rhythms, conceptual metaphors 

and political language convey 

time-honored meanings of which 

Chinese speakers themselves may 

not be consciously aware and 

contribute to the ongoing debate 

over whether language shapes 

thought, or vice versa. 

Inquiry into the workings of 

Chinese reveals convergences and 

divergences with English, most 

strikingly in the area of conceptual 

metaphor. Particularly provocative 

is Link’s consideration of how 

Indo-European languages, with 

their preference for abstract nouns, 

generate philosophical puzzles that 

Chinese, with its preference for 

verbs, avoids. The mind-body 

problem that has plagued Western 

culture may be fundamentally less 

problematic for speakers of 

Chinese. 

Perry Link is a distinguished 

professor of comparative 

literature and foreign languages 

at UCR. 

Senegal Taxi (Camino del Sol) 

By Juan Felipe Herrera 

University of Arizona Press 

March 2013, 128 pages 

“I wish I could find the words 

to tell you the story of our village 

after you were killed.” So begins 

“Senegal Taxi,” the new work by 

one of contemporary poetry’s most 

vibrant voices, Juan Felipe Herrera. 

Known for his activism and writings 

that bring attention to oppression 

and injustice, Herrera turns to 

stories of genocide and hope in 

Sudan. “Senegal Taxi” offers the 

voices of three children escaping 

the horrors of war in Africa. 

“Senegal Taxi” weaves 

together verse, dialogue and visual 

art created by Herrera specifically 

for the book. Phantom-like 

televisions, mud drawings, witness 

testimonies, insects and weaponry 

are all storytellers that join the 

siblings for a theatrical crescendo. 

Each poem is told from a different 

point of view, which Herrera calls 

“mud drawings,” referring to the 

evocative symbols of hope the 

children create as they hide in a 

cave on their way to Senegal, where 

they plan to catch a boat to the 

United States. 

Juan Felipe Herrera is a 

professor of creative writing at 

UCR. He is currently the 

California poet laureate. 

Join UCR alumni 

in your area for 

a fun evening 

of casual 

conversation and 

refreshments, 

and welcome 

the new Class of 

2013 alumni! 

M E E T 

M I N G L E 

NETWORK 

CONNECT 

Hosted by the UCR 

Alumni Association, 

members in 

attendance will 

receive a gift and 

a chance to win 

two tickets to the 

Hollywood Bowl 

or Del Mar Races 

alumni events. 

Save the date for the event in your area! 

Los Angeles . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/11 

Riverside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/17 

Orange County . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/24 

San Francisco . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/30 

The event is free for all alumni to attend. 

Registration required. Sign up at 

alumni.ucr.edu/meetgreet or call 951-827-2586. 


ALUMNI CONNECTION 

Alumni Association Awards 

The Student Alumni Association was 

recently honored with a Gold Award 

from the Council for Advancement and 

Support of Education for its Career 

Conference Series. 

Co-sponsored by the Alumni 

Association, the Conference Series 

brings alumni in the fields of business, 

medicine and law back to campus to 

speak to students about their potential 

careers. 

To volunteer to participate in the 

Conference Series or to get involved in 

any other student outreach programs, 

please visit the alumni website (www. 

alumni.ucr.edu) and click on “Get 

Involved.” 

Travel the Globe and Expand Your Horizons 

The UCR Alumni Association 

travel program offers a mix of 

exploration, education and 

adventure in partnership with 

reputable, prescreened tour 

operators. 

• Villages and Vineyards of Italy: 

Take part in educational 

programs and fun excursions, 

Sept. 10 to 20 

• Spain: Immerse yourself in the 

local culture and lifestyles of 

northern Spain, Oct. 6 to 15 


Visit the Alumni Association 

website (www.alumni.ucr.edu) to 

view pricing and details of these 

two upcoming trips. 

Tour participants, whether 

UCR alumni or not, must be 

members of the UCR Alumni 

Association. Each member may 

bring one travel companion as a 

guest. 

gh 

CALENDAR 

JULY 27 

L.A. Chapter Annual Hollywood 

Bowl Event: “Chicago: The 

Musical” 

Alumni and friends are invited to join the 

L.A. chapter at its annual Hollywood Bowl 

outing. Come early for a preconcert picnic and 

meet fellow Highlanders. This year’s program 

is “Chicago: The Musical” — a brilliantly sexy 

tale of fame, fortune and all that jazz, set 

amid the razzle-dazzle of the 1920s. This 

winner of six Tony Awards will come to 

decadent life with a sensational all-star cast in 

a one-of-a-kind Bowl production. Tickets are 

$44 for Alumni Association members and 

guests, $49 for nonmembers. Order tickets 

online at www.alumni.ucr.edu/hollywoodbowl. 

AUGUST 4 

Sixth Annual Alumni Day at the 

Races – Del Mar, Calif. 

Join alumni and friends in a private sky 

room where one can watch and wager on 

exciting thoroughbred horse racing. Tickets are 

$40 for UCRAA members, and $45 for 

nonmembers. Space is limited; this event has 

sold out every year. Order tickets online at 

www.alumni.ucr.edu/delmar. 

OCTOBER 19 

Fifth Annual Chancellor’s Dinner 

The UCR community comes together at 

the Chancellor’s Dinner to support our best 

and brightest, but it’s also a time to honor our 

notable alumni. The 2012 UCR Medallion 

will be presented to Randy and Manuela (’66) 

Sosa. Virginia Phillips (’79), Ronald Stovitz 

(’64) and Ernesto (Ernie) Rios (’07 MBA) will 

also be honored as the recipients of the 27th 

Annual Alumni Awards of Distinction. For more 

information, go to www.chancellorsdinner.ucr.edu. 

How to contact the UCR 

Alumni Association: 

Website: alumni.ucr.edu 

E-mail: ucralum@ucr.edu 

Phone: (951) UCR-ALUM or 

(800) 426-ALUM (2586)

50s 

’57 Hal Durian was a UCR charter 

student, one of the first 125 

students who enrolled in February 

1954. After he graduated, Hal 

taught history and government for 

41 years at Chaffey High School in 

Ontario. From 2005 to 2012 he 

worked for The Press-Enterprise, 

writing weekly columns on history. 

Recently, he wrote “True Stories of 

Riverside and the Inland Empire,” 

a book that highlights the 

remarkable stories of Inland 

Southern California’s forebearers. 

60s 

’64 Gloria Macias is a 

newly elected member 

of the San Bernardino 

Community College 

District Board of 

Trustees. Prior to that, 

she was president of Crafton Hills 

College from July 2000 until her 

retirement on July 2, 2012. She 

was also the vice president of 

instruction at Crafton Hills College 

for six years and dean of humanities 

at San Bernardino Valley 

College for three years. Gloria has 

more than 20 years of teaching 

experience. 

’64 Stephen Fry retired as UCLA’s 

music librarian with emeritus 

status in 2002 after a 30-year 

career at UC. While retired, he 

wrote a book on the English 

country dances published in The 

Gentleman’s Magazine (London) 

from 1737 to 1757, complete 

with music and dance instructions. 

He was also a contributor for “The 

Grove Dictionary of American 

Music” (second edition), for which 

he wrote the article “Musical 

TAKE FIVE 

gh 

Wayne 

Scott 

B.A. POLITICAL SCIENCE AND 

RELIGIOUS STUDIES ‘81 

Wayne is the founder 

and president of 

LifeHouse Theater, a 

nonprofit community 

theater in Redlands that 

puts on original plays 

and musicals for more 

than 30,000 guests 

each year. 

gh 

Philately,” which includes a 

complete list of music-related 

postage stamps issued by the U.S. 

Postal Service from 1898 to the 

present. He is married to fellow 

alumna, Frances Fry ’63 (’69 M.A.). 

’66 Michael Kraft is the co-editor 

and contributing author of “The 

Oxford Handbook of U.S. 

Environmental Policy,” released in 

Names printed in blue indicate members of the UCR Alumni Association. 

To update your membership, visit www.alumni.ucr.edu 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

What’s your favorite memory of UCR? 

I was very fortunate to have classes with Ron Loveridge, 

who later became the mayor of Riverside. His leadership 

in the class and his caring attitude meant a lot to me. 

Even [though] everyone knew he was brilliant, he remained 

extremely down to earth and relatable. He would even go 

out of his way to write detailed comments on papers that 

we submitted and I really appreciated that individualized 

relationship. 

Can you name a defining moment in your life? 

While working at the state Capitol one summer near UC 

Davis, I watched a revival of the movie “Mary Poppins.” I 

saw this unique mixture of acting, music and animation, 

all combined to tell a story with a potent message, and I 

thought, “I want to do something along those lines.” While I 

was grateful for my job at the Capitol, there was something 

missing. I realized that I needed to release the creative 

side dwelling within me. I want to use the arts to influence 

people positively. While good government is extremely 

important, I feel that the real battle in life is influencing the 

hearts and minds of men and women. 

What’s the best part about your job? 

Maybe it’s the teacher in me, but my greatest joy is seeing 

young people discover their hidden talents, something 

valuable that they didn’t know they could do, and then 

taking that newly attained skill and parlaying it into making 

their dreams come true. 

What are some of the awards that LifeHouse Theater has won? 

We’re a part of the Inland Theatre League and we’ve 

received countless wonderful awards from them in almost 

all areas of theater, especially in writing and music 

composition, but also in costuming, scenic design and 

acting. We’ve been really blessed with tremendous 

talent here. 

What are you most proud of? 

I am blessed to be working with people that I’ve seen 

transform because of [LifeHouse Theater]. These people, 

who were about to – frankly – take their lives and were 

going down a path that they may have not have returned 

from, discovered that they are valuable and that there is 

something they can do. They have been able to make a 

complete turnaround and that’s what I’m most proud of, that 

I could be used in a small way to help someone else. 

Watch an interview with Wayne Scott — and other notable alumni — at MAGAZINE.UCR.EDU 

October 2012. The book is a 

collection of state-of-the-art 

reviews of key topics in U.S. 

environmental policy and politics 

by more than 40 of the nation’s 

leading scholars in the field. It is 

intended to summarize scholarship 

over the past four decades 

and set research goals for new 

work in the field. 

70s 

’72 Juan Ulloa, a Superior Court 

judge in Imperial County, is the 

recipient of the 2012 Aranda 

Access to Justice Award. The 

award, named for the founding chair 

of the Judicial Council’s Access and 


CLASS ACTS

CLASS ACTS 

“Without scholarships, I would 

not be in college — end of story.” 

- emancipated foster youth Kassy Peterson, 

explaining the impact of scholarship support. 

Scholarships Change Lives 

Less than 3 percent of 

emancipated foster youth 

graduate from college. Donor 

support helped Kassy beat the odds. 

After graduation in June, Kassy’s 

joining Teach America, where 

she’ll share the value of her 

education with inner city youth. 


Change lives! Make 

a gift today to the 

UCR Foundation 

using the envelope 

included in this 

issue, or online at 

www.ucr.edu/giving. 

Use code 13AFMAG03. 

Make a difference. 

Make a gift. 

Fairness Advisory Committee, 

Benjamin Aranda III, honors a 

trial judge or an appellate justice 

whose activities demonstrate a 

long-term commitment to 

improving access to justice. He 

was recognized for establishing a 

collaborative relationship with 

court and consulate officials from 

Mexico to better serve the legal 

needs of his community, and for 

being a leader in court reform 

efforts and working to improve 

access to justice for all Imperial 

County residents. Through the 

Imperial County Blue Ribbon 

Commission, Juan used international 

collaboration to improve 

the services to binational families 

in the juvenile and family court 

systems. They worked with the 

state government of Baja 

California, the family court and 

court-appointed counsel, the 

university and the Mexican 

government to remove jurisdictional 

and informational barriers 

and resolve cases. Juan has also 

participated in the Judicial 

Council’s California Tribal Court/ 

State Court Forum working group 

with Claudette White, chief judge 

of the Quechan tribal court, to 

establish protocols for coordinating, 

transferring and monitoring 

cases that involve Quechan 

families in Imperial County. The 

Judicial Council, the State Bar, 

and the California Judges 

Association co-sponsor the award 

in association with the California 

Commission on Access to Justice. 

’74 Michael Bartee, coach at 

Riverside North High School, 

recently became one of only 26 

coaches in California to mark 600 

basketball game victories. 

Michael came back to coaching 

after retiring in 2011. He began 

his coaching career in 1973, first 

as a freshman coach and then as 

a junior varsity boys basketball 

coach, before accepting his first 

teaching position at Perris Valley 

Junior High School. 

’75 John Samson was the 

construction coordinator for this 

year’s Academy Award-winning 

Best Picture “Argo.” John has 

worked as a construction 

coordinator for movies such as 

“The Hangover” (I & II), “The 

Back-up Plan,” “Spider-Man 3,” 

“Just Married,” “Stuart Little” 

and “Iron Man 3.” … Yolanda 

Moses received the Frederick 

Douglass Medal from the Institute 

for African and African-American 

Studies at the University of 

Rochester. This medal is the 

highest award given by the 

university for work pertaining to 

matters of diversity. She 

dedicated three years to the 

exhibit, “RACE: Are We So 

Different?” seeking to understand 

the rationalizations that support 

racial discrimination in the 

United States and abroad. 

’79 Marshall Johnson, 

UCR Extension 

specialist, entomologist 

and lecturer, has 

received the 

Distinguished Scientist 

of the Year Award from the 

International Organization for 

Biological Control — Nearctic 

Regional Section. Only one 

individual is recognized annually 

for the award. Nominees must 

have spent most of their career in 

the Nearctic Region, which 

encompasses the United States 

and Canada, and have made 

significant contributions to the 

area of biological control. In his 

research he has explained the 

relationships between economically 

important pests and their 

natural enemies, and used this 

information to enhance biological 

control, thereby improving pest 

control and reducing reliance on 

insecticides. He has also been a 

leading contributor to understanding 

and mitigating negative 

effects of pesticides on pest 

control, including pesticide 

resistance, pest resurgence and 

secondary pest outbreaks. His 

many awards and honors include 

being named a fellow of both the 

Entomological Society of America 

and the American Association for 

the Advancement of Science. He 

is a recipient of the C.W. 

Woodworth Award from the 

Pacific Branch of the

Entomological Society of America 

and the Entomological Society of 

America Recognition Award for 

Contributions to Agriculture. 

80s 

’84 Darren Johnson 

serves as the chair of 

the Department of 

Orthopedic Surgery 

and Sports Medicine 

at the University of 

Kentucky and the head orthopedic 

surgeon for UK Athletics. He was 

named the 2012-13 Southeastern 

Conference Team Physician of the 

Year by the Southeastern 

Conference (SEC) member 

institution athletic training staff, 

as announced by the Southern 

Orthopedic Association (SOA). He 

will be honored at the 2013 SEC 

Men’s Basketball Tournament 

when the SOA has its annual 

meeting at the 2013 SEC Sports 

Medicine Committee Meeting in 

Opelika, Ala. 

’84 (M.A.) Kevin Enns-Rempel was 

recently appointed director of the 

Hiebert Library at Fresno Pacific 

University. After completing his 

degree at UCR in the program for 

historic resources management, 

Kevin has served as the Fresno 

Pacific University archivist for 

more than 25 years. 

’86 Froukje Schaafsma-Smith is an 

artist and arts educator with more 

than 20 years of experience. 

Recently, her work was on display 

at the Walter’s Mercedes-Benz 

showroom at the Riverside Auto 

Center. Her autobiographical art 

has been featured in one-person 

and group exhibitions and is in the 

public collections of UCR and 

UCLA. She received the Curatorial 

Award, Members’ Art Exhibition 

2012, Riverside Art Museum and 

The Fred Bird Memorial Award, 

Artist Council Exhibition 2011 

and Palm Springs Art Museum 

awards. 

TAKE FIVE 

gh 

Darlene 

Tyler 

B.A. MUSIC, ‘82 

Darlene is a nurse 

practitioner who works 

for the Riverside County 

Regional Medical 

Center. 

As the sole provider for the 

Riverside County Mobile Health 

Clinic, she covers 11 sites — 

from downtown Riverside to 

Mecca in the Coachella Valley 

to Temecula — providing basic 

health care and chronic disease 

treatment. “[Our clients] may 

be U.S. citizens or they may be 

undocumented; our care is given 

for free to people who don’t have 

access to health care in any other 

capacity,” she explains. 

gh 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

How did you end up working with the medically underserved in the 

Inland region? Was it something you always wanted to do? 

It was just a real fluke. In 2003 I got a part-time job as a nurse 

practitioner with the UCLA School of Nursing Health Center in 

downtown Los Angeles, where we provided health care to uninsured, 

homeless and indigent people. It was a really good learning 

experience for me; eight years later, due to reorganization, I left 

my position with UCLA and began looking for a similar position 

closer to home. I got an invitation from Riverside County. I put in an 

application and they called me and said, “We’d like to interview you 

for our Mobile Health Clinic.” So here I am, again, doing what I love, 

which is providing health care to people who don’t have any health 

care access. 

But you graduated with a bachelor’s in music. That’s quite a leap — from 

music into medical sciences! 

My first bachelor’s degree was in respiratory therapy before I was 

given the opportunity to study music at UCR. My third bachelor’s 

degree, from Cal State San Bernardino, was in nursing, and I have 

a master’s degree in nursing from Loma Linda University, a postmaster’s 

nurse practitioner credential from Azusa Pacific University, 

and my doctorate in nursing is from UCLA. I have gone to graduation 

too many times! 

What was it about higher education that attracted you so much? 

I started [my career] as a respiratory therapist and when I got 

my bachelor’s, I wanted to go back to school to do what I really 

loved doing — playing the cello. I knew I couldn’t make a living 

playing music, which is why I was a respiratory therapist. But I still 

wanted to study music. After I got my degree at UCR, I decided that 

medical school was a good avenue because I like science and I like 

technology. I was doing all my prerequisites for medicine when I was 

offered a spot at the [then] brand-new nursing program at Cal State 

San Bernardino. 

As soon as I got done, I was told that I was so good with working 

with the patients that I really needed to be a nurse practitioner so that 

I could use all of my science and technology courses. 

I went into the nurse practitioner program and that’s how I ended 

up at UCLA. In my first interview for the position, my boss asked, 

“Do you have a Ph.D.?” And his second question was, “Do you want 

one?” He said we needed more people who are nurse practitioners 

who have Ph.D.s., who are able to do research but also have a clinical 

background working with patients. … Yes, I have a lot of degrees, but 

they have built one skill on top of another. 

What kind of advice would you have for people who don’t know what to 

do with their lives right after graduating from university? 

I think it’s important for people to find out what they are passionate 

about. And when they find that out, to follow that passion as far as it 

will take them. 

What’s the best part of your job? 

Being a nurse practitioner allows me to do patient counseling and 

treat patients as human beings, holistically, with names and stories, 

with a past, present and a future. That’s the nursing aspect that I 

really like. And I get to impact that! 

The staff of the Mobile Health Clinic goes out daily with a 40foot 

mobile home, loaded up with our medicine and charts and 

equipment. Once we park at our site, we just open the door and the 

clinic is open. I can change people’s futures. Wherever we go, the 

whole community comes in and they can get treatment. In a typical 

day, we get into a van, we go some place, we do our thing and we 

come home. And every day is different because we’re at a different 

place every day. Riverside County is the fourth-largest county in 

California. And we cover all 7,000 square miles. 


CLASS ACTS

’89 K.T. Leung was elected to serve 

as secretary/treasurer in November 

2012 for the California Board of 

Accountancy. He currently serves 

as principal of the Leung 

Accountancy Corp. He previously 

served as manager of several 

investment groups, as principal of 

Leung and Wong Accountancy 

Group, and Leung and Associates. 

He also serves on the boards of 

various philanthropic and business 

organizations. 

90s 

’90 Renato Izquieta received the 

2012 Humanitarian of the Year 

Award for his contributions to the 

Homeless Outreach Court Program 

at the Orange County Superior 

Court. A longtime UC Irvine 

Extension instructor, Renato was 

recognized for his dedication to 

expanding the program, which now 

serves more than 1,300 people 

(up from 322 in the past two 

years). Every Wednesday, he 

assists the homeless and veterans 

with direct representation in the 

areas of family law, Supplemental 

Social Security income, public 

benefits, landlord/tenant, 

consumer, tax and other civil 

matters. At UC Irvine Extension, 

he teaches civil litigation, family 

law, torts and legal writing. 

’92 Rigoberto González is an 

associate professor of English at 

Rutgers University - Newark. He is 

the author of 13 books of poetry 

and prose and is the editor of 

“Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of 

Latina and Latino Writing.” He is 

the recipient of Guggenheim and 

NEA fellowships and a grant from 

the New York Foundation for the 

Arts, and winner of the American 

Book Award, The Poetry Center 

Book Award, and The Shelley 

Memorial Award of The Poetry 

Society of America. He is 


contributing editor for Poets & 

Writers Magazine and a member of 

the executive board of the National 

Book Critics Circle. 

’92 Francis B. Allen completed his 

doctorate in clinical psychology at 

Palo Alto University, Pacific 

Graduate School of Psychology, 

and is the director of the 

Transitional Program, a community 

mental health program, also based 

in Palo Alto. 

’99 Nathan Gonzales (’06 Ph.D.) is 

the archivist and head of special 

collections at the A.K. Smiley 

Public Library and curator of the 

Lincoln Memorial Shrine in 

Redlands. Prior to this he served 

as associate archivist at Smiley 

Library. He is also involved in the 

community, serving as president of 

the Redlands Area Historical 

Society, the University of Redlands 

Town & Gown and the Redlands 

Association of Mid-Management 

Employees. He is the founding 

chairman of Redlands Modern, a 

committee of the Redlands 

Conservancy. He is also the liaison 

to the Redlands Historical Museum 

Association and is on the boards of 

the Rotary Club of Redlands, 

Kimberly-Shirk Association and the 

Zamorano Club of Los Angeles. 

Nathan has co-authored three 

books with former Smiley Library 

director Larry Burgess: “Images of 

America: Redlands” in 2004, 

“Redlands in Transition” in 2008 

and “Faithfully and Liberally 

Sustained: Philanthropy in 

Redlands” in 2010. He also has 

written scholarly articles appearing 

in historical journals. 

00s 

’03 Dominick Povero was hired by 

the Redlands Police Department 

in 2005 and has worked various 

assignments, including patrol, 

investigations and the Multiple 

Enforcement Team. In 2011, he 

was named the Footprinters 

Association Police Officer of the 

Year. This year, Dominick was 

promoted to corporal. … Carol 

(Preston) Nickoson recently married 

Mike Nickoson. She has worked 

as a campus fraternity/sorority 

adviser for eight years at 

Wittenberg University in Ohio. She 

is also an international volunteer 

for Gamma Phi Beta, serving as 

sorority director of Panhellenic 

Development, and serves as the 

editor for Connections, a quarterly 

fraternal leadership publication of 

the Association of Fraternal 

Leadership & Values. 

’05 Sid Dixit recently began a new 

adventure at Nokia and welcomed 

a new baby boy. 

10s 

’10 Jasmine Hester stars in a new 

Web series called “Redwood.” 

The six-episode series premiered 

on Jan. 15, and filming for 

season two is already under way. 

Jasmine co-produced this series 

with creator Alisha Peats. She has 

held roles in other shows, such as 

“Touye Pwen,” “I Didn’t Know I 

Was Pregnant,” “Ghostwriter” and 

“The List.” She has also 

appeared in music videos and a 

Kentucky Fried Chicken 

commercial. 

’11 John Huerta has received the 

2013 Levi L. Conant Prize from 

the American Mathematical 

Society (AMS) along with UCR 

Professor John Baez. They were 

awarded the prestigious prize for 

their article, “The Algebra of 

Grand Unified Theories,” which 

appeared in the Bulletin of the 

AMS in July 2010. He is 

currently a postdoctoral fellow at 

the Center for Mathematical 

Analysis, Geometry and 

Dynamical Systems at Instituto 

Superior Tecnico in 

Libson, Portugal. … 

Serena Abeyta is in her 

second year at 

Southwestern Law 

School in Los Angeles. 

Serena ranks in the top 30 

percent of her class, is a member 

of the Law Journal Honors 

Program and is the recipient of 

the Wildman Schumacher 

Scholarship. During her first 

semester, Serena earned the 

Witkin Award for receiving the 

highest grade in her Legal 

Analysis and Writing course. 

During her second semester, 

Serena placed as a quarterfinalist 

in the Intramural Trial Advocacy 

Competition. She works at the 

midsize firm Kimball, Tirey & St. 

John LLP in downtown Los 

Angeles. Serena was also recently 

engaged to be married. 

’12 D. Xavier Medina Vidal is an 

assistant professor of political 

science at Virginia Polytechnic 

Institute and State University. … 

Rey Martinez was commissioned 

to paint an Egyptian-themed 

mural for the College of 

Humanities, Arts and Social 

Sciences at UCR a few years ago. 

Recently, after graduating from 

UCR with a master’s in special 

education, his two loves of art 

and helping others with disabilities 

have come full circle: He will 

paint a mural for a school called 

Villa Esperanza, located in 

Pasadena, for children with 

autism. It is an interactive mural 

with a reusable surface, allowing 

students to write and paint their 

own dreams right into the mural. 

Are you celebrating a 

milestone event? Maybe you 

published your latest book, 

you got elected to office or 

you just turned 100. Tell us 

all about it, send a picture, 

and we’ll celebrate with you! 

Email us at news@ucr.edu 

and we’ll include it in the 

next UCR Magazine.

WE REMEMBER 

Faculty 

John B. “Jack” Vickery 

Distinguished professor 

emeritus, John B. “Jack” Vickery, 

87, died on Feb. 7. Vickery was a 

passionate and effective advocate 

for the UCR Writing Program. 

Colleagues respected him for 

combining tough-mindedness with 

fairness and integrity. Students 

praised his lucidity, his savvy and 

his interesting lectures. 

Vickery was born on Aug. 20, 

1925, in Toronto, Canada. He 

received a master’s from Colgate 

University in New York and a 

Ph.D. from the University of 

Wisconsin-Madison. He joined 

the UCR English department as an 

associate professor in 1966. 

He was known for his work on 

myth and 20th century literature. 

His published work includes 

“Robert Graves and the White 

Goddess” (University of Nebraska 

Press, 1972); “The Literary 

Impact of The Golden Bough” 

(Princeton, 1973); “Myths and 

Texts: Strategies of Incorporation 

and Displacement” (Louisiana 

University Press, 1983), as well 

as more than 50 book chapters, 

journal articles and reviews. 

In addition to being a faculty 

member of UCR’s English 

department, Vickery was associate 

executive vice chancellor 

from 1984 to 1988, and vice 

chancellor of faculty relations 

and academic support from 1988 

until his retirement in 1993. 

After retiring from UCR, he 

maintained an office in the English 

department and was a regular 

visitor to campus. 

His daughters, Anne E. Floto 

and Elaine C. Shankar, and a 

stepson, Daniel Carter, survive 

him. 

Lowell S. Jordan 

Lowell S. Jordan, professor 

emeritus of horticultural science 

and a plant physiologist in the 

Department of Botany and Plant 

Sciences, died on March 2. He 

was 82. 

Jordan’s research interests were 

in the areas of herbicide efficacy, 

herbicide physiology and the mode 

of action of herbicides. Among 

his achievements was explaining 

the way herbicides work. It was 

once thought that herbicides killed 

weeds by inhibiting their photosynthesis. 

Jordan showed that the 

chemicals impair the manufacture 

of proteins within plant cells. 

Jordan was named a fellow 

of the Weed Science Society 

of America and of the Western 

Society of Weed Sciences, and in 

1982 he received the Outstanding 

Teaching Award of the Weed 

Science Society of America. He 

was active in professional societies 

and on university committees. 

Born on April 23, 1930, in 

Vale, Ore., Jordan received his 

B.S. in agriculture from Oregon 

State College (now University) in 

1954 and his Ph.D. in agronomy 

and agricultural biology from 

the University of Minnesota in 

1957. He joined the Department 

of Horticulture at UCR in 1959 

as assistant plant physiologist. 

In 1967 he received professorial 

rank in addition to the Cooperative 

Extension title. He retired in 

1993. 

Jordan is survived by his wife, 

Catalina; daughters Diane Hankla 

of Santa Cruz and Sharon Luster of 

Riverside; sons Gary of Riverside 

and James of Murrieta; and 

stepdaughter Luralyn Montecillo- 

Cruz of North Carolina. 

Victor Shapiro 

Victor Shapiro, professor 

emeritus of mathematics, died on 

March 1. 

An expert on trigonometric 

series and differential equations, 

Shapiro was internationally 

recognized for several solutions to 

specific problems in mathematics. 

One reviewer wrote that he was 

“this country’s leading authority 

on Multiple Trigonometric Series.” 

He was the author of more than 80 

research articles, and continued to 

conduct research, write and teach 

after his retirement in 1994. 

Shapiro was born on Oct. 16, 

1924. He received a B.S. in 

1947, an M.S. in 1949 and a 

Ph.D., all in mathematics, from 

the University of Chicago. Before 

joining UCR in 1964 as a full 

professor, Shapiro spent five years 

on the faculty at Rutgers, four 

years at the University of Oregon 

and three years at the Institute 

for Advanced Study in Princeton. 

In 1978, he was selected by the 

Academic Senate to deliver the 

Faculty Research Lecture. 

He is survived by his wife, 

Florence; two daughters; and two 

sons. 

Robert H. McDonald 

Robert Herwick McDonald died 

from complications of old age in 

Berkeley on Jan. 16. He was 80. 

Born in Philadelphia on Jan. 

13, 1933, McDonald will be most 

remembered for his tenure as a 

museum professional. He worked 

at the Berkeley University Art 

Museum, the La Jolla Musem of 

Contemporary Art, the Art Museum 

of Santa Cruz County, the Laguna 

Art Museum and the de Saisset 

Museum at Santa Clara University. 

A UC Berkeley graduate, 

McDonald taught European history 

and Western civilization at UCR 

and UC Berkeley before leaving 

academia to become gallery 

director at Daniel Weinberg Gallery 

from 1974 through 1976. 

McDonald was passionate 

about contemporary art and 

championed the work of a number 

of West Coast artists in exhibition 

reviews. He authored numerous 

catalog essays, most notably for an 

exhibition he’d curated of Christo’s 

work at the La Jolla Musem and 

for a catalog of the Rene Di Rosa 

Art Collection. McDonald was also 

a proud advocate for gay rights. 

Staff 

Oscar Clarke 

Oscar Clarke, the first curator of 

UCR’s Herbarium, died on March 2 

of prostate and bladder cancer. He 

was 93. 

“He was the expert on local 

flora,” said Andy Sanders, who took 

over from Clarke in 1979 as the 

second curator and knew him for 

40 years. “He had a great breadth 

of natural history knowledge. Oscar 

put the Herbarium on the map as a 

public institution. He connected the 

place to the larger community.” 

Clarke was born in Colton, Calif., 

in 1919, and was the tree climber 

for noted ornithologist Wilson 

Hanna as a youth. He attended 

San Bernardino Valley College and 

joined the Citrus Experiment Station 

in 1941. He was drafted into the 

Army soon thereafter and served 

until the end of World War II, when 

he returned to the Experiment 

Station. Once UCR was founded, 

Clarke worked for the Department 

of Nematology until 1966, when he 

was named curator of the recently 

established Herbarium. He retired 

in 1979, but continued to volunteer 

at the Herbarium until shortly 

before his death. Also during his 

retirement, Clarke researched and 

was the main author of “The Flora of 

the Santa Ana River and Environs” 

(2007). 

Clarke is survived by his wife, 

Marsia; and children, Taffy, Ken and 

Diane. 


CLASS ACTS

C SCAPE 

Don Carey (‘70) 

The Football Official 

LITTY MATHEW 

There was a time when UCR had a 

football team, and National Football League 

(NFL) official Donald Matthew Carey was 

on it. “The coaches were Pete Katella and 

Gary Knecht, who, like all good coaches, 

were good teachers first,” says Carey. “I 

learned a lot about how the game is coached 

and played by observing them.” 

Carey caught football fever as a child 

growing up in San Diego, Calif. He 


Illustration by 

Mike Tofanelli 

remembers watching the 1958 NFL 

championship game between the Baltimore 

Colts and the New York Giants on TV. It 

was the first playoff game that went into 

sudden death during overtime — and 

Carey still refers to it as “the greatest game 

ever.” 

The love for the game led Carey into 

officiating. Encouraged by his brother, 

Michael, an NFL referee, Carey started in 

his hometown by joining the San Diego 

County Football Officials Association in 

the mid ‘70s and worked his way up to the 

Pacific Coast Athletic Association Big West 

Conference. In 1995, Carey officiated his 

first regular season NFL game between 

the San Diego Chargers and the 

Oakland Raiders. It was a coincidence 

that his first assignment was officiating 

his hometown team. 

“When I started, my dream was 

to be a high school varsity referee,” 

says Carey. Today, he has completed 

18 NFL seasons and has officiated 

12 games. Seventeen seasons were 

spent as a back judge, where he was 

responsible for calls 20 yards into 

the defensive backfield on the wide 

receiver’s side. In the 2009 season, he 

worked as a head referee, supervising 

the six other officials on the field with 

the final authority on all rulings. 

Being an NFL official is a 

part-time job, but it requires a 

constant, high level of focus 

and a depth of knowledge that 

only comes with time on the 

field. While the basic NFL 

requirement is 10 years of 

experience at the major 

college level, working in 

front of at least 50,000 

spectators, it requires 15 

to 20 years to achieve the 

proper experience. This was 

the challenge that replacement 

officials faced during the 

2012 referee strike while NFL 

officials negotiated pension and retirement 

benefits. “When referees reach the NFL, 

they’re faced with a new and complicated 

rule book and officiating philosophy,” says 

Carey. 

And like everyone, Carey has made 

mistakes. “On most occasions, I learn more 

from examining the causes of an incorrect 

call,” he says. “There’s a tendency in all 

walks of life to take success and accuracy 

“THERE’S A 

TENDENCY IN 

ALL WALKS OF 

LIFE TO TAKE 

SUCCESS AND 

ACCURACY FOR 

GRANTED. THIS 

IS NOT THE PATH 

TO IMPROVED 

PERFORMANCE.” 

for granted. This is not the path to improved 

performance.” 

Carey, who graduated from UCR with 

a degree in history, just retired from the 

United States Department of Defense after 

a 30-year career as a contracting officer 

and program integrator for advanced cruise 

missiles. He’s found an uncanny parallel 

between his two careers: “In my business 

career, I learned the value of unbiased 

analysis, preparation and execution. Those 

lessons have influenced my NFL career and 

the rest of my life,” says Carey.

Health Sustainability Policy Technology 

LIVING THE 

PROMISE 

Real World Solutions 

Clearing the air: Using the world’s largest indoor atmospheric research 

chamber, UCR engineer Akua Asa-Awuku studies air-polluting black carbon 

particles and the role they play in cloud formation and global warming. 

Explore more sustainability impacts 

promise.ucr.edu 

Sustainable Agriculture 

Invasive Species 

Green Energy 

Preserving Ecosystems 


Calling the 

U C R 

TARTAN 

ARMY! is moving to the fall, so save the date 

UCR Homecoming 

November 16, 2013 

UCR vs. Montana State 

Come home to your alma mater and enjoy a day of great food, good 

friends, fond memories and a chance to cheer on your Highlander 

Men’s Basketball Team as they kick off the 2013-14 season. 

Watch for more details at www.alumni.ucr.edu/homecoming

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