The UC Davis Quarter Abroad program in Florence, Italy, recently received a best practices award in international education from NASPA-Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.

The NASPA acronym comes from one of the organization’s older names, the National Association for Student Personnel Administrators.

The award recognizes Quarter Abroad’s Italian Language and Culture Program and its partner, CEA Global Education, in the category of student philanthropy, for a program called CEA C’È (pronounced “cheh-ah chay”), under which UC Davis students perform volunteer service in the community.

In English, CEA C’È — half acronym and half Italian expression (“c’è” means “there is”) — is equivalent to “CEA is there,” which, according to CEA, “expresses perfectly the goals of this initiative — to be there, to support and assist local associations and those in need.”

Margherita Heyer-Caput, professor of Italian, who established UC Davis Quarter Abroad’s Florence program in 2011, collaborated with CEA, the UC Davis Internship and Career Center, and the Florentine community to upgrade the CEA C’È to an international internship for academic credits officially recognized through the Internship and Career Center.

The NASPA award, Heyer-Caput said, acknowledges the UC Davis Education Abroad Center’s collaborative efforts across continents and institutions. “The student philanthropy award underlines the deepest value of education abroad as a unique experience that helps our students become citizens of the world through service learning,” she said.

Student internships through CEA C’È include teaching English to schoolchildren, assisting patients at the Florence Mercy Hospital and collaborating with a neighborhood community center on an oral history project.

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The National Association of Test Directors recently recognized education professor Jamal Abedi for outstanding achievement. He received the award in San Francisco during the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Abedi is an expert in kindergarten-through-12th-grade testing, studying ways to make assessments more accessible to all students, including English language learners and students with disabilities.

Zollie Stevenson, director of Student Achievement and School Accountability in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education, nominated Abedi for the award.

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Professor Jerrold Tannenbaum recently received the 2013 Biomedical Research Leadership Award given by the California Society for Biomedical Research and the California Biomedical Research Association.

Tannenbaum is an expert in animal law, ethics and welfare, with appointments in the School of Veterinary Medicine (a member of the regular faculty) and the School of Law (adjunct faculty).

The California Society for Biomedical Research and the California Biomedical Research Association, each with membership from California, Nevada and the greater West, advocate for the advancement of human and animal health through biomedical research.

They cited Tannenbaum for his work in the area of animal law; his contributions to the literature in the field; and his efforts to raise awareness of how legal and judicial changes affect biomedical research.

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Nearly 50 years ago, swimmer Marilyn Ramenofsky set four world records and won an Olympic medal in the pool. Today, Professor Ramenofsky is one of the newest members of the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony took place April 21 at the hall in Commack, N.Y.

Ramenofsky is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, and co-teaches a seminar course on the history of the Olympics.

She won the silver medal in the 400-meter freestyle at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. That same year she set the world mark in the same event three times, including the U.S. nationals and Olympic trials. She was named to the 1962, ’63 and ’64 Amateur Athletic Union All-America swim teams.

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Frank Samaniego, distinguished professor of statistics, recently spent time at the University of South Carolina as the 2013 Palmetto Lecturer in Statistics.

The Palmetto lecturer is a high-profile, distinguished researcher chosen by the faculty of the university’s Department of Statistics to visit for up to a week and give two lectures, with one of them aimed at a more general audience.

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Geology professor and department chair Howard Spero, who studies changes in past climate and ocean circulation, recently received a Humboldt research award from the German government.

The presentation took place in a March 15 ceremony in Bamberg, Germany. Over the years, Humboldt awards have now gone to 26 members of the UC Davis faculty, including Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi. 

Spero will put his award of 60,000 Euros (about $78,000) toward his sabbatical work in Germany in the next academic year.

In his research he looks at chemical traces in the fossil shells of tiny marine organisms called foraminifera, or forams. When they die, forams settle to the ocean bottom and accumulate in layers of sediment, creating a record of past ocean conditions.

Spero has carried out lab experiments with modern foraminifera to see how their properties relate to conditions of salinity, temperature and acidity. Then, using the fossil record, he and his team have reconstructed past ocean and climate conditions.

During his sabbatical, Spero plans to work with colleagues at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven on developing new geochemical tools to extract novel information from these sediment cores. The ultimate aim is to link studies of climate change in the past with predictions of climate change in a future with higher levels of carbon dioxide.

Video: Spero talks with Dutch television about his work.

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Honeybee expert Eric Mussen, a Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology, has been named the recipient of the 2013 Alexander Hodson Graduate Alumni Award from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Entomology. The award presentation is scheduled for May 30.

Mussen earned his master’s and doctoral degrees at Minnesota. He joined the UC Davis faculty in 1976.

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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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