Professor Chris Reynolds couldn’t have been more pleased Nov. 9 when he presented the American Musicological Society’s annual Music in American Culture Award to one of his colleagues, Beth E. Levy.

“When her name was announced, people broke into a spontaneous cheer,” said Reynolds, the society’s president. “It was terrific!”

The award recognizes Levy for her book Frontier Figures: American Music and the Mythology of the American West, published by the University of California Press in 2012. The associate professor of musicology received the award at the society’s annual meeting, held this year in Pittsburgh.

“The Music in American Culture Award honors each year a book of exceptional merit that both illuminates some important aspect of the music of the United States and places that music in a rich cultural context,” Reynolds said.

“Beth’s does that with grace and elegance.”

The University of Michigan’s Charles Hiroshi Garrett, in reviewing the book for the Journal of the American Musicological Society, wrote: “Levy’s precise prose reveals a storyteller’s commitment to narrative, a musician’s ear for detail — the book is laden with dozens of evocative musical examples — and a scholar’s mastery of archival research.”

Last October, Frontier Figures won the UC Press Exceptional First Book Award, given at the 22nd annual PEN Center USA Literary Awards Festival at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Levy, who served as interim director of the UC Davis Humanities Institute in 2011-12, is the recipient of a UC Presidential Research Fellowship in the Humanities, as well as fellowships from the American Musicological Society, the Mellon Foundation and Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History.

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Samuel Luoma, research ecologist with the John Muir Institute of the Environment, is the recipient of this year's Founders Award from the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

The award is presented annually to an individual whose career and influence have been used to promote research, education, communication and training in the environmental sciences. The winner must also provide solutions for global environmental problems across multiple sectors, disciplines and nations.

Luoma’s colleagues describe him as one of the top five ecotoxicologists and translational scientists of the past four decades. His research has helped strengthen the scientific foundation for monitoring and regulating contaminants, and his work monitoring San Francisco Bay has held tremendous ecologicial value, providing a practical assessment of contaminant trends in the bay.

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The law school’s Immigration Law Clinic and a faculty member at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing were among the recipients of awards from Davis’ Vanguard Court Watch during its third annual dinner and awards ceremony Nov. 9.

Vanguard Court Watch honored Jann Murray-Garcia, assistant adjunct professor in the School of Nursing, as activist of the year “for her great work in social justice and racial equity in Davis and the surrounding community.”

The Vanguard board selected the law clinic for a Justice Award in the category of law schools and universities.

The clinic provides valuable service in defending the rights opf immigrants, according to Vanguard Court Watch. “Also, the fact that the work the Immigration Law Clinic provides is at the forefront of the work that is being done in the area of immigration law across the country.”

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A book co-authored by Patricia Schetter, a project coordinator at the Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, has been named the recipient of a Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award for 2013.

In Schetter’s first children’s book, Percy Learns to Fly, the title character is a penguin who grows up with a family of seagulls and can’t quite get the hang of flying, even though he has wings and a beak and is clearly as bird.

Schetter said the book stemmed from her desire to share a story about children’s discovering differences in one another, and recognizing that being different isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Percy Learns to Fly and one other book earned Gelett Burgess honors in the category of “motivation and inspiration.”

Schetter said she drew her own inspiration from her experience as the mother of a son with learning disabilities, and from working with children with neurodevelopmental disabilities.

She has a Master of Arts degree and certification as a behavioral analyst, and has been working at the Center for Excellence for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (housed at the MIND Institute) for five years.

Schetter has two other books to her credit: Homeschooling the Child with Autism: Answers to the Top Questions Parents and Professionals Ask (co-author with Kandis Lighthall), and Learning the R.O.P.E.S. for Improved Executive Function.

In Percy Learns to Fly, Percy starts to feel very frustrated about not being able to fly, until one day he is accidentally launched into the water and discovers that he really can fly — given the right environment.

“Differences can be viewed as a gift rather than a challenge,” Schetter said. “We often focus on people’s deficits — what they aren’t able to do or aren’t good at — rather than figuring out what they can contribute, focusing on their strengths and developing their talents.”

Schetter and her Percy Learns to Fly collaborators, Lighthall (educational content) and Mary A. Livingston (illustrations), are due to receive the Burgess award on Nov. 23 during a ceremony at the Rowell Family Empowerment Center in Redding (Shasta County).

The awards are given by the Gelett Burgess Center for Creative Expression, Portland, Ore., named after the late artist, art critic, poet, author and humorist (whose works include “The Purple Cow” poem and the Goops series of children’s books).

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Dateline UC Davis welcomes news of faculty and staff awards, for publication in Laurels. Send information to dateline@ucdavis.edu.

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