FWC's 5th General Meeting 

SPRING Luncheon, May 21st 2024

It has been a special event including several program items. The featured speaker Darnell Hunt, now Interim UCLA Chancellor, could not attend the Program. Instead, Ayesha Dixon of the UCLA's Emeriti/Retirees Relations Center Association had divided her time between our Spring Luncheon and ERRC Arts and Crafts Exhibit.

              Joy Frank, photo below, was honored as FWC's 2024 Outstanding Member:

Joy Frank, Professor Emerita at the General Meeting May 21st 2024
Photo credit: Zorana

         FWC's Past Presidents were honored for their dedicated work and leadership

A subset of FWC's Past Presidents was honored for their leadership:
Sandy, Glorya, Marjorie, Mary Ann, Rochelle, Zorana, Helene, Marianne
Photo credit: Amelita 

ERRC's Arts Exhibit at the May 21st 2024 event, UCLA's Faculty Club
Dr. Neil Parker, one among the exhibitors, speaks about his work
Photo credit: Zorana

FWC's 4TH GENERAL MEETING with featured speaker 

                      DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR NEIL K. GARG

Professor Neil K. Garg discussed his teaching and research career at our Fourth General Meeting on April 16th 2024. He is the inaugural holder of the Kenneth N. Trueblood Endowed Chair in Chemistry and Biochemistry. He also served as Faculty-in-Residence in the UCLA undergraduate community for nine years. He is a co-founder of his start-up company ElectraTect, designed to develop technology for the drug testing industry, specifically targeting fairness in detecting consumption of THC.

More details about Professor Garg's academic achievements, his service to the UCLA community, and his background, are all published on the title page of FWC's newsletter UPDATE, April-June 2024 issue. 

From left: Marianne Afifi, Past President (FWC)
Ayesha Dixon, VP Programs, and Professor Garg
Photo credits: Karen McClain

The 4th General Meeting was our business meeting. The following officers were elected for 2024-25

Anne-Marie Spataru President

  Renee Fortier President Elect

      Helene DesRuisseaux VP Programs

         Rochelle Caballero  VP Sections

            Katie Lee Corresponding Secretary

                Dorota Dabrowska  Recording Secretary

                   Jane Permaul  Treasurer

                      Velma Montoya  Historian/Archivist 

                                                                Congratulations to All

WISHING YOU ALL A HAPPY NEW YEAR, GOOD HEALTH, HAPPINESS, and FUN

As of this morning in the Daily Bruin, February 16, 2024, under ARTS, we read great news about one of our FWC "scholars," a recipient of the 2014 FWC Scholarship, India Carney https://dailybruin.com/2024/02/15/qa-alumnus-india-carney-talks-passion-for-arts-education-upcoming-event-at-the-nimoy

          I took a photo of India 10 years ago when she was a recipient of the FWC Scholarship:

India Carney in 2014 at the FWC Scholarship Dinner
photo credit: Zorana Ercegovac

India Carney is celebrating Young Artists at NIMOY. She is the singer, songwriter and producer's two-night "Riding the Rollercoaster: An Artist's Life in Los Angeles."

Many among our FWC scholarship recipients have had successful and productive careers. 

Again, we start off the New Year with our annual Scholarship Dinner (February 6, 2024) and with another group of UCLA students who are awarded the Scholarship (see the group photo below).

Dr. Victoria L. Sork holds two distinguished professorships: in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and the other in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

More details about Professor Sork are given on the title page of FWC's UPDATE, Jan-Mar 2024.

We will honor eleven FWC Scholars. I will update this BLOG, so visit us soon to see the group photo and more. UPDATE (Jan-Mar 2024, pages 2-3) gives short bios of each of the eleven Scholars.

In preparation for the Dr. Sork presentation, you can learn more about the UCLA BOTANICAL GARDEN, a 7.5 acre public garden on the UCLA campus, right here. Learn how to design your own sustainable garden, learn about their "open air" classrooms, research, and vast collections. During the Covid isolation era, I used to spend hours in the garden watching the plants, trees, blooms, fish and turtles in the stream flowing through the garden.

Here is a group photo of FWC SCHOLARS 2024. 

From left: Our featured speaker Prof. Victoria L. Sorkin, 10 awardees 
and Marianne Afifi, Scholarship Committee Co-chair
Scholars: Vanessa, Naomi, Paula, Deja, Ginger Rose, Alyssa, Emerald, Lanxin, Edgar
Dr. Kele Kirschenbaum, Scholarship Committee Co-chair

The event was well attended inspite of a heavy rainfall. We enjoyed seeing old friends with their guests and meeting the FWC 2024 scholars. 

Our own FWC member and past President Margaret Churchill with
her husband and grandson, visiting them from Sweden.
Naomi Hammonds, a 4th year student majoring in psychobiology, joined them

The event offered the unique opportunity for the student scholars
majoring in different areas to network

Lanxin is in the School of Public Health; Alyssa is the School of Engineering and Applied Science;

Edgar and Naomi are pursuing a degree in psychobiology, and Ginger Rose is a prolific harpist.

Wei Chen, our featured artist, performing on GuZheng
ti be held on April 17th at 12 noon

Music Section in Cultural Contexts, chaired by Zorana Ercegovac, is one among the first in-person 

SING-A-LONG sessions, performed in November 2023 at the home of Jarka and Tom Wilcox. 

We have invited members from other FWC sections to join in, including play-readers, hikers, and guests.

AT-A-GLANCE: Mark your calendars

Wednesday, February 21st at 12:30 PM via zoom -- there will be a special presentation on a theme of 

SOUND <-> IMAGE <-> POETRY

with guests reading selected poems by William Blake, and much more. 

STAY TUNED.

Welcome to our new Season: great speakers, sections, the second century of the Faculty Women's Club

Our last General Meeting in 2021 was held virtually on November 16, 2021. The topic titled PHILANTHROPY AS CIVIC ENGAGEMENT: Empowering the Next Generation of Philanthropists, was discussed by three panelists: Jennifer Lindholm, Charles W. Evans, and Angela Sanchez (see the photograph of the zoom General Meeting, below). We learned how the 2021 class researched a pool of 42 organizations, selected three finalists, and cooperated with their management to prepare and present grant funding proposals for specific projects. The students evaluated the proposals and voted to allocate the available funding of $80,000 among the three non-profits.

The attending audience participated in lively discussions with the panelists who shared their experiences with Honors Collegium course. 

For details about each of the presenters, see front page of the FWC UPDATE Nov/Dec 2021 issue.

Attendees and presenters at the November 2021 virtual General Meeting

Our first General Meeting speaker is Mary D. Nichols, professor-in-residence at UCLA's School of Law and this year's FWC Woman of Distinction. This zoom meeting will be on October 19th at 1:30 PM. 

If you missed the virtual meeting in October 2021, you can watch the meeting here 

Mary D. Nichols is our featured speaker at the 1st General Meeting Webinar

While many UCLA venues are open, most of our FWC meetings are conducted via zoom. Examples are our board meetings, many sections, and other programming and events.

September 14, 2021 Executive Board Meeting
Top left: Afifi, Ercegovac, Caballero, Frank
DesRuisseaux (president), Lippe, Nagy, Sherritt
Spolsky, Homsher, King, Franenberg; last line: Spartaru, Montoya

Faculty Club has been our preferred place for executive board meetings and other programs. However, the Club is undergoing major renovations, and we cannot wait to be back and celebrate all our events there. 

Faculty Club meeting was held on August 19th 

Seventy-six Years of UCLA FWC PROGRAMS

Our Past President Phyllis Amboss (2009-2010) compiled Programs with corresponding speaker names. The list is arranged chronologically starting with the 1934-1935 school year. This will be uploaded here.

Zorana Ercegovac, Historian/Archivist 2010-2012 (nominated for President 2012-2013) has organized these Programs by topics. This too will be uploaded in Spring of 2012. The Introduction follows.

Introduction Note

Past President Phyllis Amboss prepared a document titled Seventy Five Years of Faculty Women’s Club Programs. This document, dated June 8, 2011, is available in paper and on disc. It is organized chronologically by date with corresponding speaker’s name and topic of presentation. The chronological arrangement allows one to search programs by date only and not by TOPIC. If you were interested in topics that were of interest to FWC over time, you would have to sequentially go through the 14-page document. This is what I did in this first cut analysis.

I wanted to answer the question, what is been presented at FWC Programs, 1934 to present? This represents the evolution of general themes, levels of interests and activities of FWC membership.

I pulled the TOPICS in the left column and listed them alphabetically both as general topics and related subtopics; all these appeared in actual programs. In addition, I created another column for specific NOTES. The field Notes has been created by tallying the number of times a given topic, for example music, has been presented as well as other characteristics associated with it.

The purpose of this analysis is to:

• Inform the FWC about programming efforts, 1934-present
• Facilitate our Board Membership in planning future program
• Describe frequency, range and variety of topics, possible gaps, and correlations with historical and current events (e.g., political, foreign relations, economic, social, health, women’s issues)
• Identify possible trends in the presented programs

This is work in progress, voluntary, and seeking your input and feedback.