Spring 2019
MAGAZINE
Together We Zot!
A Natural Oasis for Learning Co-reserve director and UCI senior lecturer Peter Bowler teaches his Field Freshwater Ecology students using the experimental ponds of the San Joaquin Marsh Reserve in spring quarter. The class identified flora and fauna (noting four species of emergent plants along with myriad birds and Pacific tree frogs); tested the water for nitrates, phosphates and salinity; and examined aquatic invertebrates captured in a net.
Fall 2019 2017 Spring
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Steve SteveChang Zylius / UCI
Contents
Spring 2019 Vol. 4, No. 2
Together We Zot!
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14 UCI Athletics Reveling In Its Shine: Historic March
Madness win puts spotlight on a rich sports program that prides itself on making champions both on and off the court
Parallel Passions: These stellar student-athletes see connections between their sport and career pursuits
D E P A R T M E N T S FLAS H B ACK
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PRISM
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SPOT L IGHT
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S PEC T RUM
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About This Issue: In this edition of UCI Magazine, we celebrate the recent March Madness win and highlight the campus’s robust athletics program.
Our cover story, “UCI Athletics Reveling In Its Shine” (page 14), chronicles the department’s achievements in creating champions on and off the court, while “Parallel Passions” (page 23) introduces four of these exemplary student-athletes. “The Ultimate Anteater Parents” (page 28) shares the story of two superfans who are the namesakes behind UCI’s Santora Elite Training Center. In “A Prescription for Exercise” (page 30), we go beyond the athlete to focus on UCI scientists conducting pioneering research on how physical activity can prevent cognitive decline and help us all lead healthier lives. Finally, “An Eye for Sports” (page 36) showcases the work of one alum who, with his camera, captured a historic moment that landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated, helping inspire a whole generation of girls to pursue sports themselves. All of these pieces make clear that in Anteater Nation, Together We Zot!
On the Cover: Players celebrate moments before fans rush the court in jubilation as the Anteaters win the Big West Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament at the Honda Center in Anaheim to advance to the NCAA Tourney for just the second time in history. Photo by Nick Storm / UCI Athletics 2
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The Ultimate Anteater Parents: Kathleen and Mark Santora, UCI Foundation trustees and namesakes of the campus’s SET Center
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30 A Prescription for Exercise: UCI research into the mechanisms behind the physical and cognitive benefits of activity could enable healthcare providers to personalize interventions
P E R S PE CT I V E
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R E FLECTIONS
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A NT OURAGE
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An Eye for Sports: A portrait of alumnus and illustrious photographer Robert Beck and some of his favorite shots
PA RT ING ZOT !
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Letter From Peter Hello, fellow Anteaters!
UCI Magazine Vol. 4, No. 2 Produced by the University of California, Irvine Office of Strategic Communications & Public Affairs Chancellor Howard Gillman
Gearing up for commencement here in the Bren, there’s electricity in the air as we close out my 54th year of perpetual “studies.” I was there in November when men’s soccer advanced in dramatic fashion in the NCAA Tournament with a thrilling victory at home! I was there in February to help UCI alum Ben Orloff ’09 take the field as the new head coach for UCI baseball, which got off to the second-best start in program history! I was there in March when women’s basketball won their 20th game of the season, for only the second time in program history, on our home court in the Big West Tournament! I was there this season to cheer as four Anteaters notched school records in track and field events! I was there in April as women’s water polo defeated Long Beach State on their deck to win a conference championship and help propel us to a Black & Blue Rivalry Series victory! I was there all season as men’s basketball set a new program record with 31 wins and captured the nation’s attention with their first-ever win in the NCAA Tournament! And, of course, I was there when I won the Big West Men’s Basketball Tournament mascot championship and the San Jose NCAA Men’s Basketball Regional mascot championship in an epic dance battle against the Oregon Duck – with all of ’Eater Nation cheering me on. ;) Were you there? With 28 national championships, 58 Olympians, 4,000-plus scholar-athletes, and more than 1,000 hours of community service and appearances each year, this is an athletics program you can be proud of. We do it the right way. We do it the Anteater way. Zot! Zot! Zot! I invite you to join the parade (look it up … it’s what you call a group of anteaters). Get back onto campus for an event like homecoming, cheer teams on when they visit your area or just wear your UCI gear proudly in your community! I can’t wait for next year to start and to see you again. Together We Zot! Peter T. Anteater
Associate Chancellor, Strategic Communications & Public Affairs Ria Carlson Assistant Vice Chancellor, Public Affairs Sherry Main Managing Editor Marina Dundjerski Design Vince Rini Design Visuals Steve Chang and Steve Zylius Copy Editor Kymberly Doucette Editorial Advisory Committee Jennie Brewton, Stacey King (athletics), Will Nagel, Janna Parris (advancement), Mara Schteinschraber and Ryan Smith Contributing Writers Barry Faulkner, Greg Hardesty, Cathy Lawhon, Rosemary McClure, Roy Rivenburg and Shari Roan Contact Have a comment or suggestion? Address correspondence to: UCI Magazine UCI Office of Strategic Communications & Public Affairs 120 Theory, Ste. 100 Irvine, CA 92697-5615 949-824-6922 • ucimagazine@uci.edu communications.uci.edu/magazine UCI Magazine is a publication for faculty, staff, alumni, students, parents, community members and UCI supporters. Issues are published in winter, spring and fall. To change your address or receive the electronic version of UCI Magazine, email a request to campusupdates@uci.edu. UCI Magazine is printed with soy-based inks on a recycled paper stock certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Please recycle.
We Want to Hear From You When submitting a letter to the editor, please include your full name, UCI graduation year or affiliation (if applicable), mailing address, city of residence, phone number and email address. Submissions that do not include this information cannot be published. Contact information is for verification purposes only – not for publication or commercial use. Letters should be 150 words or less and may be edited. They become the property of UCI/the UC Board of Regents and may be republished in any format.
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To submit a letter via email, send to: ucimagazine@uci.edu Include “Letters to the Editor: UCI Magazine” in the subject line. To submit a letter via U.S. mail, send to: Letters to the Editor UCI Magazine UCI Office of Strategic Communications & Public Affairs 120 Theory, Ste. 100 Irvine, CA 92697-5615
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F L A S H B A C K
UCI Athletics
Title IX Trailblazers
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n 1972, Congress passed the Education Amendments, one of which was Title IX, prohibiting discrimination against girls and women in federally funded education and requiring that women and men be provided equitable opportunities to participate in sports. UCI female athletes have taken full advantage, capturing 31 conference titles and 10 conference tournament titles. Anteater women have been named All-America 73 times in nine different sports. Tennis players Jean Nachand ’81 and Lindsay Morse ’79 were UCI’s first female All-Americans in 1974, advancing to the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women championships. The cross-country team emerged as UCI’s first female dynasty, winning 12 Big West team titles and producing 14 individual champions. The Anteaters made four NCAA championship meets, including in 1990, when they finished fourth in the nation. Traci Goodrich ’94, Elisabeth “Buffy” Rabbit ’91 and Rayna Cervantes ’93 (shown above, from left) were members of that team, each earning All-America honors during their careers. Overseeing all this growth was Linda Dempsay, who in 1978 became the country’s first female Division I athletics director. Jill (Harrington) Bowlus ’88, who ran on two Big West Championship teams and was named Big West Women’s Cross Country Athlete of the Year in 1986, paid homage to those who laid the groundwork: “There were women who came before me who were the trailblazers. … I really had no idea things were so unequal for women athletes [before Title IX]. We all benefited from their struggle.”
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News
P R I S M
Meeting Their Match
Joyous Anteaters celebrate in front of the Medical Education Building after learning where their careers as doctors will begin. Nearly 30,000 graduating medical students nationwide – 109 at UCI – participated in annual Match Day ceremonies on March 15.
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“When you look at several decades, it is best to sit back in your chair before looking at the results, because it is a bit scary to see how fast it is changing.” Eric Rignot, Donald Bren Professor of Earth System Science, on research findings that Greenland’s ice sheet is melting six times faster than in the 1980s NBC News April 24, 2019
Students in Professor Derek Dunn-Rankin’s mechanical & aerospace engineering design class concentrate on their final exam: creating a functioning music box. Each of 36 teams builds a music module that with the drop of a metal ball will play a two-second measure emulating an instrument. When the modules are stacked together, they are intended to render a song in “an amazing display of system integration and individual team spirit.”
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Fall 2019 Applications Snapshot
117,000+ applications
32% increase over 5 years
“Experiencing gives you a ‘first’ person perspective. You see others while you act. Watching gives you a ‘third’ person perspective. You learn something about how others see you. I’d say this would ‘add’ to the memory … which in a sense is a kind of reshaping.” Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor of psychological science and criminology, law & society, on how viewing video playback immediately after an event can alter memory The New York Times April 25, 2019
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almost
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of UCI’s freshman applicants are underrepresented California residents – the UC’s largest number .................................................
#1 choice for first-generation freshmen applying to UC .................................................
almost
50%
of in-state freshmen applying to UCI
Brains and Brawn The NCAA recently released its latest Academic Progress Rates, and UCI’s 18 athletic programs excelled, scoring well above the minimum requirement of 930. All had four-year tallies of 950 or higher; 10 were above 980, and five were over 990. Women’s cross country led the way with a perfect APR of 1,000, resulting in a Public Recognition Award for the ninth year in a row. The honor goes to programs that score in the top 10 percent of their sport. Men’s golf (996), women’s volleyball (994), men’s tennis (992) and men’s water polo (991) rounded out the Anteater teams above 990.
are first-generation students
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New Kidney Stone Technology Is a Force for Good The Gemini system includes state-of-the-art imaging and stronger, precise shock waves. It’s housed in a customized surgical suite at UCI Medical Center, where stones can be removed via shock waves or ureteroscopy. Urologists, including Jaime Landman, Ralph Clayman, Ramy Yaacoub and Roshan Patel (left, from left), will evaluate the Gemini’s effectiveness over the next year. Ultimately, however, the team hopes to help more patients learn how to prevent stones, such as through dietary modifications and medications, says Dr. Clayman, Distinguished Professor of urology and Endowed Chair in Endourology. “At our stone center, depending on the person, we have protocols to prevent another stone from coming back,” he says. “We’d very much like to put ourselves out of business.”
Health
Kidney Stone Facts An older method of breaking up large kidney stones – shock wave treatment – has been updated with 21st-century technology that may make it more useful to patients, say UCI Health urologists. This spring, UCI unveiled the Gemini stone-busting machine – the first of its kind in the United States. Typically, such stones are removed via an endoscopic procedure – called a ureteroscopy – in which a thin tube is inserted into the urethra to apply a laser that pulverizes the stone. Lithotripsy, which originally involved sitting in a tub of water while being treated, came on the scene almost 40 years ago as a noninvasive alternative. The UCI Gemini represents the latest advances in noninvasive stone treatment.
About half a million people go to the ER each year for kidney stones.
..................................................... Kidney stone prevalence in the U.S. has jumped from 3.8% in the 1970s to 8.8% in the 2000s for adults.
8.8%
3.8%
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11%
7%
The lifetime risk of kidney stones is 11% in men and 7% in women. Source: National Kidney Foundation and NIH Urolithiasis Consensus Conference
Workplace Injuries and the Opioid Epidemic About 2.8 million Americans suffer nonfatal workplace injuries or illnesses each year, especially back and other softtissue injuries. Workers may think a long-term prescription for opioid pain pills will help them return to their jobs more quickly. However, a new study from UCI shows that approach can backfire. David Neumark, Distinguished Professor of economics, studied workers’ compensation claims and opioid prescribing patterns in 28 states. The study was funded by the Workers Compensation Research Institute and co-authored with WCRI’s Bogdan Savych and Dr. Randall Lea of Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in New Hampshire. It found that employees with prolonged opioid prescriptions had roughly triple the duration of temporary disability compared to
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workers with similar injuries who were not prescribed longerterm opioids for their pain. The findings are fodder for officials who set workers’ compensation policies and must deal with the difficult question of providing adequate pain relief while avoiding contributing to the nation’s opioid epidemic. “What this study says is that with longer-term use [of opioids], there really isn’t a benefit,” Neumark notes.
S P O T L I G H T
Rose Eichenbaum / Claire Trevor School of the Arts
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A Dance Serenade
undreds of hours of painstaking precision and practice went into the Dance Visions 2019 production at the Irvine Barclay Theatre this February. The creative collaboration among choreographers and performers in the UCI Department of Dance’s annual faculty-run show resulted in patterns of fluid motion and feats of astonishing athleticism onstage. Guest artists Nicole Corea and Tobin Del Cuore from the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in New York joined UCI dance students in “Dvorák Serenade” (2007), an ethereal piece choreographed by Lubovitch, a UCI Distinguished Professor. It portrays a love story between the principle dancers set to movements 1, 2, 4 and 5 of Antonín Dvorák’s Serenade in E major, Op. 22. Says Lubovitch: “The UCI students excelled, with the level of artistry and commitment that I would expect from the best contemporary dance companies in the U.S.” About 2,000 people viewed the four shows, which were enriched by music, light and sound provided by other departments within the Claire Trevor School of the Arts.
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S P E C T R U M
Pacific Ocean
Indian Ocean
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The Perils of Plastic The global fight against ocean plastic pollution came into sharp focus at the fourth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly in March, with Joleah Lamb (at right), assistant professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at UCI, making a key contribution. Lamb, who studies how diseases affect coral reefs, is co-author of a report released at the event titled “Plastics and Shallow Water Coral Reefs,” which was based in part on her research from across the Indo-Pacific. The document spotlights current science on the subject and provides recommendations to policymakers for addressing and reducing the impact of plastics. Lamb is a marine disease ecologist who identifies strategies for mitigating outbreaks of infectious ailments that threaten ocean and human health. A pioneer in the field, she helped discover that plastics, which make up 60 to 80 percent of marine litter, can carry microbes capable of sickening and killing corals. Lamb is encouraged that the U.N. is taking the problem to heart. “We’re finding that countries which properly control the amount of plastic entering the oceans also have healthier reefs,” she says. “But it’s an issue the world needs to address together.” The report is just a start for Lamb, who’s planning a large-scale study of how pathogens move around in the oceans, with a focus on the biosecurity threat that plastic litter can present.
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Q&A
P E R S P E C T I V E Dan Klatt ’01 Head coach, women’s water polo
Glenn Feingerts / UCI Athletics
Setting a New High-Water Mark Dan Klatt’s life path has never taken him far from the chlorine-scented blue water of a swimming pool. He spent hours on the deck as a kid in Fresno; his father coached swimming and was part of the world record-setting U.S. men’s 4 x 200 meters freestyle relay team in the 1973 World Aquatics Championships in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Klatt took up water polo in seventh grade, finding it a happy blend of pool time and team camaraderie. As a UCI student majoring in social science, he made the men’s water polo team and was named All-American in 1998. He also played defense for the U.S. Olympic water polo team for eight years, competing in the 2004 Athens Games. Today, Klatt – who graduated from UCI in 2001 – is back on the pool deck in his 15th season as head coach of UCI’s women’s water polo team. The winningest coach in
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league history, he has built the program into a Big West powerhouse that has won seven of its nine conference finals appearances in 10 years. He has earned Big West Water Polo Coach of the Year honors seven times since 2009. And he is assistant coach of the U.S. women’s national team and head coach of the U.S. women’s junior national team. The women on Klatt’s UCI roster get more than coaching on corner throws and backhands. They receive a little life coaching as well. This year’s team members read and discussed Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, by Angela Duckworth, which explores the importance of resilience, ambition and self-control in goal setting. Klatt sat down with UCI Magazine contributor Cathy Lawhon to talk about how UCI Athletics, leadership and academic programs work together to foster strong teams and student success.
Q: UCI is a force in women’s water polo. How do you build that kind of reputation and expertise?
Q: Do you think the larger student body appreciates the excellence of UCI’s athletic teams?
First, we’ve developed a value structure that speaks to our work ethic, competitiveness, recruitment philosophy and training. It took time to establish what was important to me, and the teams take part in it too. Once those values are established, it becomes evident in how you compete. People watch and listen, and we’ve gained a reputation. The bar is set high, and the players expect to win. UCI’s graduation rates, its GPAs, and the growth and excellence of certain academic majors – specifically, business and education – have helped us a lot in recruiting too, because many athletes aim for professions in those areas.
I think the success of our men’s basketball program is helping promote interest in athletics. But we could do a better job connecting with the campus in general. I’d like to see a robust integration of research and the athletics department – give the biological sciences students, for example, access to our athletes for research opportunities, which would also open our athletes’ eyes to what kind of research goes on here. We could also do more to utilize our events to interact with the rest of the students. And we’re only 54 years old, so with time we’ll be able to do so much more to show the entire community what’s going on with UCI Athletics.
Q: What do you want your team to take away from participating in a competitive and demanding sport such as water polo? Women have better opportunities than they once did in the workplace, but it’s still not equal. Being part of a competitive team helps get them ready for competition in life in general. It teaches how to get along with people who believe differently from you. It provides leadership opportunities and a chance to represent what UCI is all about. Winning and losing helps them learn to appreciate the highs and lows in life; sometimes we forget to enjoy the journey rather than the result. It is demanding; the NCAA allows 132 days of full-time training, and those are 20-hour weeks. But I’m a big fan of “I choose.” I graph the practice time so I can show them visually how much time it takes. And yes, it’s tiring, but 20 is a good age to be tired. I want them to pick a tough major if they want, do research with a professor if they have the chance, push themselves academically, because if everything is going well, they’re happier. There’s so much here for them. Whether they “choose” to take advantage or “choose” not to, it’s up to them. Q: What’s your most memorable moment as a coach? Last season in the 2018 Big West Tournament, we beat the University of Hawaii in sudden-death overtime. We scored with a well-executed play that we had worked on. We played like a team that expected to win, even though Hawaii had beaten us earlier in the season. That win rewarded resilience. Q: What’s the difference between coaching a university team and the national team? The national team women are older. They’ve been molded and nurtured in the sport, and they’re all about it. Here, the team members are not so sure of themselves. So part of my job is to help them become the confident, independent women they can be.
“I’m a big fan of ‘I choose.’ … I want [team members] to pick a tough major if they want, do research with a professor if they have the chance, push themselves academically, because if everything is going well, they’re happier.”
Q: You’ve been very loyal to UCI. What’s so great about this campus? In the last 15 years, I’ve seen so much growth – in the physical campus but also in the leadership and values. We have our ear to the ground as an institution in terms of sustainability, green energy, and services for Latino and first-generation students. We’re going up in the rankings, and we do the right things to get there. We’ve been called the “best-kept secret,” but I hope that will be replaced with “best-known success.” Campus pride in general is at the highest level I’ve ever seen. Q: What do you like to do on your own time? My wife and I have a large family in Fresno, so we go up there a lot or take short trips to San Diego or the Central Coast. Right now, my 3-year-old twin boys dominate my life. They spend a good amount of time around the pool at UCI, and they’re in weekly swim lessons. At their age, they’re still working on lifesaving and floating, but it won’t be long before they can move through the water.
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U C I AT H L E T I C S Reveling In Its Shine
Historic March Madness Win Puts Spotlight on a Rich Sports Program That Prides Itself on Making Champions Both On and Off the Court
By Barry Faulkner
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1960s Anteater
Sports
Highlights
“It’s meaningful to be on this platform,” Turner told assembled media in San Jose before the 2019 tournament began. “People joked in 2015 that we had put UC Irvine on the map. I always said, ‘No, we didn’t put [the Anteaters] on the map, but we put them on the bracket. And a lot of people notice when you’re on the bracket.’” “It gives an opportunity for our university to have positive exposure through incredible representatives of our place, and that’s our players. I’m excited for that,” he added. “It is satisfying not just for our players, but for our fans and our community. This is special.”
Oct. 8, 1965: At UCI’s first intercollegiate athletic match, 900 students watch the men’s water polo team wallop Cal Poly Pomona, 22-6, as Randy Howatt scores the first point in UCI Athletics history. Al Irwin is the team’s coach.
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“One Shining Moment,” a musical tribute played over a video montage of NCAA men’s basketball tournament highlights at the conclusion of the annual March Madness-capping championship game telecast, included a magical UCI moment. After the No. 13-seeded Anteaters achieved the most noteworthy victory in the program’s history by upending No. 4-seeded Kansas State (70-64) in the first round of the South Regional on March 22, UCI joined basketball blue bloods Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and North Carolina in the reflective consciousness of one of college athletics’ most heralded events. The Kansas State triumph, followed two days later by a second-round loss to No. 12-seeded Oregon, gave coach Russell Turner’s now perennial Big West Conference champions a school-record 31 wins. It also topped more than a week of revelry that enveloped and elevated ’Eater Nation into the media spotlight. Fans caught the excitement too: A GIF of mascot Peter the Anteater doing the popular floss dance got over 25 million views. It was hardly the first such visible exposure for athletics at UCI, a so-called “hidden” jewel that may not boast a football team but has captured 28 national championships in nine sports, including four NCAA men’s volleyball titles in a seven-year span, capped by back-to-back crowns in 2012 and 2013. But Turner, a former assistant coach at Stanford and Wake Forest, as well as with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, clearly savored guiding UCI to its second NCAA Tournament appearance. He also choreographed UCI’s first Big Dance, which featured a first-round near upset of No. 4-seeded and three-time national champion Louisville, in 2015.
Nov. 30, 1965: After weeks of serving as UCI’s unofficial mascot, the anteater is formally chosen in a student election to represent the school. December 1965: Water polo players Bob Nealy and Pat Glasgow become UCI’s first All-American athletes.
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nearly six-hour, 13-inning victory over rival Cal State Fullerton in what was at the time the longest game in CWS history. Then-baseball coach Dave Serrano’s players – representing a program reinstated just eight years earlier by a student referendum that had halted nine seasons of baseball dormancy – went on to finish in the top four in Omaha. The Anteaters, who claimed NCAA Division II baseball championships in 1973 and 1974, have consistently shone on the diamond since, including a top national ranking in 2009 and another College World Series appearance in 2014.
All-Americans Brian Thornton (left) and Jayson Jablonsky raise UCI’s first men’s volleyball national championship trophy in 2007.
Most Brilliant Moment
March 1968: Men’s basketball, led by coach Dick Davis, advances to the first of two consecutive NCAA regionals.
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March 1967: Swimmer Dave Belknap (100-yard freestyle) and diver Bob Wilhite (3-meter) emerge as the school’s first individual national champions. Also, the 400-yard freestyle relay team of Steve Farmer, Bob Sharp, Bob Nealy and Dave Belknap wins the NCAA title.
UCI’s 2007 men’s volleyball team celebrates at the White House, where members presented a jersey and a stuffed Anteater to President George W. Bush, who ended his South Lawn address to all 18 national championship teams represented with “Go, Anteaters!”
1970s
Perhaps the most gleaming spotlight to be trained upon UCI Athletics was in 2007, the year the Anteaters collected the Division I-AAA Athletic Directors Association All-Sports Trophy, given annually to the best all-around sports program among non-football schools. One season after making its NCAA Final Four debut in 2006, then-UCI coach John Speraw’s men’s volleyball team defeated Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne in four sets to win the program’s first national title. The very day the triumphant volleyball squad was being saluted at the White House, UCI’s baseball team, competing in its first College World Series, earned a
March 1969: UCI’s inaugural NCAA team title comes courtesy of the men’s swimming squad, which also captures national championships in 1970 and 1971.
March 1971: Mike Martin caps his college career with five gold medals at the NCAA Men’s Swimming Championships. That gives him a grand total of 16 NCAA gold medals in swimming and follows his role as a member of UCI’s NCAA championship water polo team.
In UCI’s 2007 College World Series debut, the Anteaters became the first baseball team in CWS history to win extra-inning games on consecutive days, including a five-hour-40-minute victory over rival Cal State Fullerton.
Despite being known more, perhaps, for scholars than ballers, UCI – which jumped from the Division II ranks to Division I in 197778 – has also earned six NCAA crowns in men’s tennis, three each in men’s water polo and men’s swimming, two in men’s cross country and one in men’s golf. In addition, the campus has produced six national titles in sailing and 540 All-Americans, as well as enough
May 1977: The men’s tennis team wins its sixth national title in eight years under coach Myron McNamara.
July 1977: UCI moves up to NCAA Division I status and joins the Pacific Coast Athletic Association (now the Big West Conference). Linda Dempsay becomes the first female athletics director at an NCAA Division I school.
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June 1974: The baseball team wins 32 consecutive games and snags the second of two straight NCAA titles, defeating the University of New Orleans to complete a 48-8 season. First baseman Jeff Malinoff is named MVP of the Division II College World Series.
Olympians to outnumber the individual roster allotments for all of its current men’s and women’s sports. The UCI undergraduate student body passed the Athletics and Student Activities Referendum in 1999, which besides bringing back baseball, introduced women’s water polo and women’s golf – two of the most successful women’s programs. Women’s water polo has won
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seven Big West Championships and made six NCAA appearances, while women’s golf has captured five Big West titles and made three NCAA appearances. What’s more, 15 of the 18 current UCI programs have snagged regularseason championships. One of them, women’s basketball, won the Big West Tournament Championship to advance to the NCAA Tournament.
1977-78: Men’s cross country, tennis and track & field emerge as the first Anteater programs to win conference (PCAA) titles. June 1978: Track & field’s Steve Scott (1,500 meters; at right) and Mauricio Bardales (decathlon) are UCI’s first NCAA Division I individual champions. Women’s tennis player Lindsay Morse is UCI’s first female individual national champion, winning the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women singles title.
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November 1982: Men’s water polo, guided by coach Ted Newland, wins the NCAA championship game against Stanford to complete a perfect 30-0 season. November 1983: Cross country becomes the first women’s team to win a conference (PCAA) title. Lisa Gonzales gets the individual title. August 1984: Alumnus Greg Louganis takes home gold medals in springboard and platform diving at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, a feat he repeats at the 1988 Seoul Games.
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March 1981: Hoopster Kevin Magee scores a school-record 46 points in a 91-80 win over Loyola Marymount. He also earns the first of two NCAA Division I Associated Press All-America first team honors, joining the likes of Isaiah Thomas and Danny Ainge.
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1980s
The women’s water polo team captures its fourth consecutive Big West title in 2012 with a 10-5 victory over UC Davis. The Anteaters went on to the NCAA Championship for the second year in a row, finishing fourth in the nation and boosting UCI to second place in the Division I-AAA Athletics Directors Association All-Sports rankings.
February/March 1986: Men’s basketball defeats perennial national power UNLV twice in 12 days and tops defending National Invitation Tournament champion UCLA in the first round of the NIT at Pauley Pavilion. Jan. 8, 1987: The Bren Events Center debuts, with Scott Brooks scoring 43 points in a men’s basketball victory over Utah State.
May 1989: Coach Greg Patton’s men’s tennis team defeats No. 1 UCLA before 1,200 fans at Anteater Stadium. UCI ends the year ranked No. 4, with All-Americans Mark Kaplan, Trevor Kronemann, Mike Briggs and Richard Lubner.
December 1988: The women’s volleyball team earns its first at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament. Kris Roberts sets a school record with 12 block assists.
November 1989: Men’s water polo captures its third NCAA championship. Chris Duplanty, Julian Harvey, Tom Warde and Dan Smoot garner all-tournament and All-American honors. Warde is named NCAA Player of the Year and Ted Newland Coach of the Year.
“Obviously, we’re a premier research institution, and our students come here with the knowledge that they’re going to leave with a great education and degree,” she says. “Our graduation success rate for student-athletes is on par with the rest of the institution.” The most recent statistics published by the NCAA (detailing freshmen entering in 2011-12) indicate that UCI’s overall graduation rate and student-athlete graduation rate (including transfers) were both 85 percent. For those entering the prior year, the student-athlete rate was 88 percent, while the overall rate was 87 percent. “That’s close to unheard-of,” Smith notes. “We have studentathletes from every one of our schools. Some have double majors and some are in graduate school while still competing, so they take their academic endeavors as seriously as they do their sports. We have great student-athletes who are great ambassadors for our program.”
1990s
June 1988: UCI wins the dinghy and team-racing titles at the Intercollegiate Yacht Racing Association championships in Richmond, California. Jon Pinckney, Nick Scandone, Jamie Malm and Mike Sturman are named All-Americans.
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While proud of their studentathletes’ excellence in the athletic arena, UCI coaches are equally pleased by their passionate pursuit of academics. “UCI has so many things to offer,” says women’s golf head coach Julie Brooks. “We recruit competitive athletes who also thrive in the classroom. Competing at the highest level, whether on the course or in the classroom, is what makes UCI impressive. World-class academics, the location, the facilities and a staff committed to the ultimate student-athlete experience – what more could you ask for?” Jenna Phreaner, a senior goalkeeper for the women’s water polo team, says that competing in the pool has helped raise her level of academic achievement at UCI. “The way our coach [Dan Klatt ’01] arranged our schedule, he really does put academics at the forefront,” says the psychology & social behavior major, who plans to go to either physician assistant school or medical school. “In terms of us being athletes at a relatively elite level, I feel like
we don’t have a disadvantage in academics. Once I got to UCI, the support for the student-athlete, the resources I was given and the structured schedule that I had really promoted my best learning. It was important that I perform well academically not only to my family, but also to my coach and the culture we had on our team.” Phreaner, MVP of the 2018 Big West women’s water polo tournament, says that she appreciates her decision to attend UCI even more now that she has had some time to experience first-hand all that the campus has to offer. “UCI is kind of a hidden gem,” says the Santa Barbara native. “It has phenomenal academics and – as people have heard everywhere – it’s growing academically. That’s something that’s really exciting to be a part of.” Interim athletic director Paula Smith, the senior woman administrator for athletics who began working at UCI in 2006 and has been deputy athletic director since 2012, says that academics help UCI stand out in the collegiate sports landscape.
Making the Grade
November 1990: The women’s cross country team finishes fourth at the NCAA Championships behind All-American Buffy Rabbitt’s fourth-place showing. September 1992: Alumnus John Morgan, a blind swimmer, wins 10 medals at the Summer Paralympics in Barcelona, Spain. He sets six world records and two Paralympic records while amassing eight gold and two silver medals.
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Charles Jock ’12, the 2012 NCAA individual champion in the 800 meters, was one of eight UCI representatives at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Exuding the Olympic Spirit
March 1995: Women’s basketball wins the Big West Conference Tournament title in Las Vegas and advances to the NCAA Tournament for the first time. Allah-mi Basheer is named tournament MVP.
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May 1993: Runner Jade Preato is named Big West Women’s Track & Field Athlete of the Year after winning the 10,000 and 5,000 meters and finishing second in the 3,000 meters.
2000s
The UCI athletic narrative also features the Olympic Games. Nearly 40 student-athletes, three undergraduates and three graduate students have represented UCI on the Olympic stage. Men’s water polo leads the way with 13 Olympians, including current women’s water polo coach Dan Klatt ’01, who competed on the U.S. men’s team in 2004 and was
an assistant coach for the gold medal-winning women’s teams in 2012 and 2016. Men’s water polo standout Ryan Bailey ’99 was a four-time Olympian (2000 through 2012), while Peter Campbell ’83, a four-time All-American at UCI, was on U.S. Olympic water polo teams in 1984 and 1988. Among other noteworthy Olympians: Greg Louganis ’83, who captured four gold medals and one silver medal in diving over four Olympic Games, and Steve Scott ’78, who competed in track and field in 1984 and 1988 and – like Louganis – was a member of the U.S. team that boycotted the 1980 Games. Scott won four individual NCAA championships in the 1,500 meters and the mile while at UCI. Charles Jock ’12, an NCAA champion in the 800, ran at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where former men’s volleyball All-American David Smith ’07 competed in his second consecutive Olympics and won a bronze medal. Two Paralympians are also Anteater Olympians. Nick Scandone ’90, who was an All-American sailor and member of UCI’s 1988 national championship team, narrowly missed participating on the U.S. team in 1992. Later diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, he began training for the Paralympics. He was selected by his peers to carry the flag for the U.S. delegation in the 2008 opening ceremonies and went on to win gold in the SKUD 18 class with crewmate Maureen McKinnon-Tucker. John Morgan ’87, a blind swimmer, won 13 gold medals across two Paralympic Games, including five golds in 1984. At the 1992 Summer Paralympics in Barcelona, Spain, he set six world records and two Paralympic records in winning eight gold medals and two silver.
November 1997: The women’s soccer team takes the Big West Tournament with a 3-2 victory over Cal Poly in quadruple overtime at Anteater Stadium. May 1999: Seven years after budget cuts hobbled UCI sports programs, students pass a $99-per-year athletics fee that reestablishes Anteater baseball and launches women’s golf, water polo and indoor track.
March 2001: The men’s basketball squad ends the season with a school-record 25 wins en route to its first Big West Conference title. April 2002: In its inaugural season, the women’s golf team reels in the Big West Championship, with freshman Stella Lee winning the individual title. February 2004: Annmarie Turpin becomes the first Anteater to qualify for the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships, finishing 13th in the pentathlon. She also competes in the NCAA outdoor championships until an injury forces her out.
Five UCI men’s water polo players made the 13-man U.S. team for the 2004 Olympic Games: Ryan Bailey ’99, Jeff Powers ’03, Omar Amr ’97, Genai Kerr ’01 and Dan Klatt ’01 (from left), here flanking UCI head coach Ted Newland (second from left).
“Competing at the highest level, whether on the course or in the classroom, is what makes UCI impressive.”
May 2007: Men’s volleyball wins its first NCAA title. Matt Webber is named tournament MVP.
June 2007: UCI wins the Division I-AAA Athletic Directors Association All-Sports Trophy. The annual award is given to the best all-around sports program at a non-football school. November 2008: The men’s soccer team makes its first NCAA appearance and advances to the Sweet 16 before losing to St. John’s.
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November 2005: Runner Amber Steen is the 6,000-meter victor as UCI wins the Big West Cross Country Championship. Steen is named Athlete of the Year, and Vince O’Boyle is Coach of the Year for the 20th time.
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August 2004: Five men’s water polo alumni earn a spot on the U.S. Summer Olympics team competing in Athens, Greece: Omar Amr, Ryan Bailey, Genai Kerr, Dan Klatt and Jeff Powers.
June 18, 2007: In the (then) longest game in College World Series history, UCI’s baseball team defeats Cal State Fullerton in 13 innings. Earlier in the day, the school’s national-champion men’s volleyball squad is saluted at the White House.
April 2009: UCI baseball and men’s volleyball (above) are both ranked No. 1 in the nation, the first time in Division I history that two Anteater teams simultaneously hold the top spot. May 2009: In women’s rowing, the varsity 4 crew wins the grand final of the Dad Vail Regatta in Philadelphia, the program’s first such victory. The Anteaters also qualify for five of seven grand finals at the Western Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships.
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Snout Shout-Out
November 2010: The women’s soccer team makes its debut appearance in the NCAA Tournament and advances to the Sweet 16, losing to Washington in double overtime. May 2013: Women’s tennis earns its first NCAA Tournament victory. Ali Facey wins the third set to complete the 4.5-hour match.
March 2015: The men’s basketball team captures the Big West Tournament title to earn its first spot in the NCAA Tourney, where the 13th-seeded ‘Eaters fall to three-time national champion Louisville, 57-55, in their opening round. August 2016: UCI fields eight representatives at the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro: Kevin Tillie (France) and David Smith, men’s indoor volleyball; Charles Jock, 800 meters; student Persis William-Mensah (Ghana), 4x100 relay; Eva Lee and student Phillip Chew, badminton; and Dan Klatt and Dave Durden, assistant coaches.
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May 2010: The men’s golf team wins the Big West Championship behind conference medalist John Chin, who is a Ping AllAmerica first team selection, the first in UCI’s NCAA Division I era.
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2010s
Among the elements that make UCI Athletics unique is its mascot. An anteater based on a character in the “B.C.” comic strip defeated the roadrunner and the unicorn, among others, in a vote by 1,000 students in November of 1965. Peter the Anteater has resonated with even casual college sports fans, spawning the dawn of ’Eater Nation references and Zot! Zot! Zot! chants and hand signals (based on the sound the “B.C.” anteater makes when snaring prey). Two digital platforms ranked him No. 1 among mascots for 68 NCAA men’s basketball tournament teams in 2019.
“It’s not even close,” hoops coach Turner responded to a media inquiry during a March Madness press conference in San Jose. “We have the best mascot, I believe. There are no other anteaters anywhere. We’re unique. We’re fun. We get people’s attention, and I love that.” And the critter seems to give student-athletes a special boost too. “The Anteater becomes part of you,” notes women’s volleyball head coach Ashlie Hain ’04, who helped lift UCI to two NCAA appearances as an athlete and over the last two seasons has guided the squad to two postseason appearances. “You embrace it and own the fact that you are unique.” That’s all part of UCI’s special shine, some alumni say. “I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now if it weren’t for UCI Athletics,” says Scott Brooks, former collegiate and pro basketball player and current head coach of the Washington Wizards who came back to complete his degree in 1996. “My mom raised me to give back and don’t always take. Irvine has given me so much, enabling me not only to be an NBA player and coach, but also to have the life skills to be successful off the court.” On the heels of its latest triumphant achievement, UCI Athletics is working hard to create many more shining moments and futures. “My UCI experience has given me amazing opportunities to grow as a person physically, spiritually and mentally,” says senior women’s volleyball player Idara Akpakpa. “I’m excited for all of the adventures that I have ahead of me.”
June 2017: In the Major League Baseball draft, national batting average leader Keston Hiura is selected as the ninth overall pick by the Milwaukee Brewers, the highest pick in UCI history. May 2018: In a span of two weeks, three UCI teams compete in NCAA championships: Men’s volleyball is an at-large selection; women’s water polo makes its sixth NCAA trip; and men’s golf logs its 14th regional visit. March 2019: Men’s basketball clinches its second NCAA March Madness berth after winning the Big West title. The 13th-seeded Anteaters notch the program’s first NCAA Tournament win with an upset over fourth- seeded Kansas State before falling to Oregon. Source: UCI Athletics
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Parallel Passions These stellar student-athletes see connections between their sport and career pursuits By Greg Hardesty
Grit, stamina, drive. These and other qualities are required for star athletes to thrive. But they’re also key to success in the classroom. The four high-achieving individuals featured on the following pages – which provide a glimpse into UCI’s 313 talented student-athletes in 18 programs – say there are parallels between their sport of choice and their majors and career plans. “My [pursuits] on and off the court are constantly intertwined,” says Dante Chakravorti, a standout volleyball setter and senior in computer science. “I think a lot of great athletes are really great problemsolvers,” he adds. “They come together, agree on a methodology for learning, and then pose questions and root out the answers. “When I’m on the court, I need to problem-solve quickly, with variables that are moving much faster than changes in the classroom. The only way to be successful
in this is to prepare thoroughly through study and practice – just like in the classroom.” Student-athletes develop a multitude of applicable skills, agrees Alexis McDonald, the assistant athletic director for academic & student services at UCI and a former volleyball player at the University of Washington. “We continuously see their competitive drive and determined mindset transfer over from their sport to the classroom,” she says. “As a student-athlete, environments are ever-changing, and we often find that their ability to adapt to most situations sets them apart from their peers. Their adaptability shows in the classroom as they communicate, problem-solve and take on leadership roles in group settings. The development of these transferable life skills throughout their collegiate career better prepares them for life after sports.” Read on for more insights from exemplary studentathletes.
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LE E
Hometown: Carlsbad, California
S H E LBY
Year: Senior
Major: Public health sciences
Sport/positions played: Soccer/midfield and defense Significant athletic achievement: 2018 Big West Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year Fun factoid: She was an avid baseball player in her youth. Mantra: “Sometimes you’re on top; stay humble. Sometimes you hit a low; stay hopeful.”
Shelby Lee’s achievements on the soccer field are a product of trying to keep up with two older brothers who were super athletic. (One of them, Slater, 24, plays professionally for the Oakland Athletics baseball team.) Lee, 22, has grown into a soccer talent with a passion for working to improve the well-being of student-athletes nationwide. For the last two years, she has served as the Big West representative on the NCAA’s Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. “It’s been an amazing experience and has allowed me to travel far and wide all over the country,” she says. Meeting three or four times a year, Lee and other committee members discuss the lives of student-athletes and provide feedback on rules the NCAA is voting on. Last summer, she was the only student-athlete to sit on a panel at an NCAA convention to address the need for coming up with a uniform time management plan for student-athletes. “I was able to tie the importance of a stable schedule for student-athletes to their overall mental health,” says
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Lee, who also has attended a U.S. Olympic Committee summit on sexual violence in sports. She sees a strong parallel between playing soccer and nursing – her career goal. For two summers when Lee was in high school, she tended to seriously ill babies as an intern in the neonatal intensive care unit of the Tri-City Medical Center in northern San Diego County. “It’s the teamwork aspect of it,” she says. “Everything that I’ve learned [playing soccer] as far as being a teammate in general and learning how to listen has really helped me. When you’re on the hospital floor, when you’re switching shifts, you have to check in with the nurse that was on the previous shift. You have to get in tune with what the doctors are saying. It’s a very team-oriented job.” So is soccer. “I definitely don’t want to close the door on it yet,” says Lee, who is applying to nursing schools. “In a perfect world, it would be great to play a couple of months abroad. If my soccer playing could line up with my nursing school timeline, that would be amazing.”
DAN T E
Major: Computer science Year: Senior Sport/position played: Volleyball/setter Significant athletic achievement: 2018 Big West Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year Fun factoid: He plays the old computer game “Minesweeper” at least once a day on his cellphone. He’s pretty good. Mantra: “Leave it better than you found it.”
Dante Chakravorti grew up eating a lot of Indian food. He also spent a lot of time in Italy every summer. That’s because his father is a native of India and his mother is from Italy. It’s no surprise, then, the 21-year-old is keeping a global perspective about his plans for after he graduates from UCI this spring. Chakravorti is going to try to pursue volleyball professionally in Europe for at least a year before embarking on a career as a specialist in data science and artificial intelligence. “I will get an agent and try to find a team that fits well with me and play a season and either try to move up the ranks over there or come back here and start working,” he says. Chakravorti’s mother named him after the great poet Dante Alighieri, whose The Divine Comedy is considered the greatest literary work in the Italian language. Chakravorti admits he hasn’t read it yet, although his mother has read him excerpts. He’s fascinated by AI and how it can be harnessed for the good of society: “Machine learning is a wonderful tool that we can use to take advantage of the ever-growing
presence of data. As the world becomes flooded with sensors and trackers, we can use artificial intelligence to extract meaningful patterns from an ocean of information.” Chakravorti, who’s particularly intrigued by the mental health applications of AI, presented a paper at a seminar in Singapore on detecting and characterizing trends in online discussions of the issue. “Mental illness is a widespread public health concern – especially among people my age – that affects many individuals on a daily basis,” he says. “Increasingly, people are turning to social media to talk about their mental health. The result is a rich dataset of authentic discussions from which to draw insights.” Chakravorti relishes the brainwork involved in his sport and major. “Both require a lot of problem-solving,” he says. “I think that’s what computer science and much of volleyball is about: problem-solving. “Every point is its own little puzzle. You have things that you can do, and your opponents have things that they can do, and you’re trying to figure out how to win more of those little puzzles than the other team.”
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C H AK R AVORT I
Hometown: Glencoe, Illinois
VI LLAN UE VA B R IA NNA
Hometown: Atascadero, California Major: Public health policy Year: Junior Sport/events: Track and field/hammer and discus Significant athletic achievement: Her personal records are among the top 10 of all time at UCI. Fun factoid: She loves to bake, a passion that began in high school. Lemon bars are a specialty. Mantra: “Everything happens for a reason.”
Growing up in Atascadero, in San Luis Obispo County, Brianna Villanueva loved to play softball. Understandably, she was crushed when she didn’t make the Atascadero High School girls softball team. Out of that disappointment, however, eventually sprang big achievements in another sport. Darvell Cullors, who coached Villanueva on the AHS girls basketball team and had a daughter who competed as a Division I discus thrower, told the teenager that she had the body type to excel in track and field’s discus and hammer events. Cullors was right. Villanueva developed her skills and got even better at UCI. In the 2018 Big West Challenge, she logged personal bests in the discus (155 feet, 8 inches) and in the hammer (157 feet). The marks rank among the top 10 in UCI women’s track and field history. Both types of throws are highly technical and require lower-body strength. Villanueva says hurling a discus or hammer is akin to ice skating, in which competitors performing, say, a triple axel spin the lower half of their bodies around before whipping their arms around and launching.
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She too recognizes similarities between her sport and career: “They involve methods to refine little things. For instance, my sport requires a lot of fine-tuning to improve technique, and many times in public health, you’ll need to fine-tune policies to find something that works for all communities or people involved. You can’t always get it perfect, but that’s what we strive for.” Villanueva says she’ll wait until the end of her discus and hammer competitions during her senior year before deciding whether to compete in post-collegiate throwing groups as she seeks a master’s degree in public health or healthcare administration. The weightlifter, who likes to clear her head by running, is interested in preventing the spread of diseases in lowerincome communities. “I want people to be healthy and live better lives,” Villanueva says. She believes that not many people are educated in how to maximize their personal health and well-being. “I’m looking to educate those people and increase their knowledge of health and what steps they can take to reduce their chances of disease in the future,” she says. “If I can help make a difference, I want to be able to.”
Major: Criminology, law & society Year: First-year graduate student Sport/position played: Basketball/forward
Fun factoid: Being half Chamorro (Guamanian), he plays for Guam’s national basketball team every year, traveling around the world to compete. So far, he’s been to Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and China. Mantra: “Control what you can control.”
A defensive specialist who emerged this season as leader of UCI’s history-making men’s basketball team – which notched its first-ever win in the fabled March Madness NCAA tournament – Jonathan Galloway loves to slap away shots and pull down rebounds. Off the court, he’s pursuing a career in which he’ll also be a “stopper” – a crime stopper. The future police officer, at 6-foot-10, certainly has the physical presence to intimidate would-be bad guys. Galloway, 22, who earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology, law & society at UCI in 2018 and is working on his master’s, continues to nurture his hoop dreams beyond the Anteaters. This past season was Galloway’s last year on the team (he redshirted as a freshman and so was able to play one year as a graduate student). His coaches have said that he’s definitely pro material. “I’m trying to get an agent right now and play professionally for as long as I can,” he says. “I see myself in Europe.” His father, Kenny, who died a few years ago, was a correctional officer in the Bay Area – where Galloway grew up – for more than 15 years. And Galloway has several other relatives in law enforcement.
“I just really want to work with the community,” he says. “That’s the appeal of it.” Galloway interned for UCI Public Safety during the spring quarter of 2018. “I took a lot of bike theft reports,” says Galloway, who as an Anteater logged 13 steals on the court in the 2018-19 season himself. He says he enjoyed the daily interactions between officers and students. “The men and women of that department use every opportunity they have to make a positive impact on the community,” Galloway notes. “This is something that reinforced my aspirations to become a police officer in the future.” He says this year was so epic for Anteater basketball that it’s difficult to pinpoint just one defining moment. “If I had to, I’d pick upsetting Kansas State during the NCAA Tournament. Once the buzzer went off, so many different emotions began to overwhelm my teammates and me. Being able to reach our goal of advancing in the tournament was special. That was something we set out to do before the season even started,” Galloway says. “Having the whole university and the community of Irvine behind us made the win that much better. Accomplishing that with our team is a memory I will cherish for the rest of my life.” Spring 2019
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G AL L OWAY
Significant athletic achievements: Big West Defensive Player of the Year for three straight seasons; most rebounds (927) in program’s history
J ONAT H AN
Hometown: Brentwood, California
Steve Zylius / UCI
The Ultimate Anteater Parents By Rosemary McClure
K
athleen and Mark Santora are supercommuters. They may live in Silicon Valley, but there’s a special place in their hearts for UCI. And that means they’re in Orange County often. It’s not because they want to keep an eye on their college-age children. Yes, at one time, they shuttled south to see Kevin and Kristen, who were Anteaters. But the younger one, Kristen, graduated five years ago; Kevin graduated nearly a decade ago. Both now work in high-tech in the Bay Area. So why are the Santoras still drawn to the school? “There’s always something happening at UCI. We come for soccer games, winter basketball and spring baseball,” Kathleen Santora says. “We toured the Esports Arena recently, which was fascinating. We go to events at the Cove innovation center and to Shakespearean plays. There’s just so much going on.” What she doesn’t mention is the role she and her husband play as mentors, activists and philanthropists.
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They are the ultimate UCI parents – engaged, involved, and happy to share their talents and resources with the school and its students even though their own children moved on long ago. Among their commitments, they are members of the UCI Foundation board of trustees, the Undergraduate Success Leadership Advisory Board and the Chancellor’s Club. Mark Santora has also enjoyed interacting with UCI students as a guest lecturer in Professor Michelle Khine’s biomedical engineering class on negotiation skills, which are integral to navigating the complex world of startups. In addition, the couple gave the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics – where daughter Kristen worked before graduating in 2014 with a degree in business economics – a landmark donation to renovate and expand its strength and conditioning facility, renamed the Santora Elite Training Center. The five-star, 8,500-square-foot weight room, which opened in fall 2014, offers resistance training, speed
development, conditioning and flexibility workouts. It also enables the more effective rehabilitation of injured student-athletes by providing access to non-impact exercise machines and cardiovascular equipment. The gift evolved through their son’s interest in soccer. Kevin, who graduated in 2010 with a degree in business economics, played on UCI’s Division I soccer team, which in his junior and senior years qualified for the NCAA soccer tournament – the squad’s first appearances in campus history. “We came down to watch all the games,” Mark Santora recalls. “We noticed that some of the facilities could use a refresher. We thought about what we could do, and the weight room seemed like it would have the greatest impact on student-athletes.” “Since its opening, the Santora Elite Training Center has been instrumental in the sports performance achievements of our 350 student-athletes,” says Paula Smith, UCI’s interim athletics director, adding that it’s “a place that builds champions.” David Kniffin, UCI head coach for men’s volleyball, says the facility “has been a game changer. It helps us recruit, retain and prepare our student-athletes for success.” The Santoras were happy to be able to contribute, they say. “What was once a very tired office building was transformed into a modern, efficient and exciting space,” Mark Santora says. “It’s a very green space incorporating two retractable, 70-foot doors that go up during the day; it almost never needs air conditioning.” “Our children had a rich and broadening experience at UCI, and my wife and I were extremely
grateful and strongly motivated to give back,” he adds. As a child, Mark Santora moved frequently with his parents. His dad was in the military, and he spent time in Tokyo, Kansas, Florida, California and Utah – where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business, with a computer science emphasis, at Salt Lake City’s Westminster College. Kathleen Santora grew up in a college town in Pennsylvania; her father served as vice president of academic affairs at West Chester University. “I saw the benefits of my dad’s work with lifelong learners,” she says. “That’s why I believe
the board of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District foundation in Los Altos Hills, where she’s working on a project to increase transfer and graduation rates among disadvantaged students. Mark Santora has worked in the high-tech industry for the past 40 years and currently is chairman of the board for Panzura, a hybrid cloud data management company in Silicon Valley. “I’ve been involved with numerous startups over the years,” he says. “You analyze the people, the technology and the market and make investments of time and capital in the ones that look the most promising.”
“Our children had a rich and broadening experience at UCI, and my wife and I were extremely grateful and strongly motivated to give back.” wholeheartedly in the power of a good education.” She earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at Pennsylvania’s Ursinus College. While working at Xerox Corp., she completed an MBA, with an emphasis in organizational behavior, at Temple University. The couple’s paths crossed in Silicon Valley; she was an early employee of Sun Microsystems when he applied for a position. “I checked his references very closely,” she says, laughing. “He got the job.” The two were married in 1985, and Kathleen Santora eventually left the workforce to devote more time to raising their children. With them grown, her avocation became helping underserved students compete with their peers. She’s on
The couple is also making an investment in something else that looks promising: UCI. “Kathleen and I have always wanted to make a difference,” Mark Santora says. “In today’s world, there is an incredible amount of need and opportunity to give.” His wife adds: “With its leadership position in helping first-generation college students attain the American dream, UCI is one of the best environments for tomorrow’s leaders to work cross-collaboratively, developing their leadership and problem-solving skills.” “With UCI’s outstanding leadership,” he says, “it’s easy to see why the university’s future is so bright.”
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A Prescription for UCI research into the mechanisms behind the physical and cognitive benefits of activity could enable healthcare providers to personalize interventions By Shari Roan
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R
ichard Carpenter, 75, was going through the mail one day last year when he saw a postcard from UCI seeking participants for a study on whether exercise can help with age-related memory loss. “I almost put it into the recycle pile,” Carpenter says. “But I mentioned it to my wife, and she said ‘Wait!’ She knew I could use a program like this. For the last 20 years, I have not really been involved in exercise at all, and my memory is really bad.” Today, the retired criminal investigator for NASA works out at the Huntington Beach YMCA four times a week as part of a 15-site national study on the effects of aerobic exercise on adults with mild memory problems. The Exercise Evaluation Randomised Trial is co-led by Carl Cotman, a UCI professor of neurology and neurobiology & behavior who’s a renowned expert on age-related dementia and exercise. “What we’re hoping to get with EXERT is compelling evidence that exercise can improve fitness and cognitive ability and help protect people from cognitive decline,” he says. “We would like to have enough solid evidence for physicians to write prescriptions for exercise.” Across the UCI campus, researchers are exploring the impact of exercise on health from childhood until the end of life. That focus now includes a bachelor’s degree in exercise science that emphasizes the health effects of physical activity. The university has a long history in exercise science, says James W. Hicks, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and director of the campus’s Center for Exercise Medicine and Sport Sciences. However, he says, the twin epidemics of obesity and diabetes have propelled research away from questions about exercise and sports performance toward the theory that “exercise is medicine.” “That concept has exploded,” Hicks says. “That’s where the future is: understanding how exercise alters disease trajectories and improves outcomes.”
Exercise Exercise may help prevent age-related cognitive decline, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 53 percent of U.S. adults meet national guidelines for aerobic physical activity (at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous activity throughout the week).
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An Antidote to Aging If anyone has been at the forefront of exercise and health, it’s Cotman. More than two decades ago, his research showed that exercise increases production of a substance called brain-derived neurotrophic factor. BDNF aids in learning and memory and facilitates connections among nerve cells. It’s so critical to brain function that it has been dubbed “Miracle-Gro for the brain.” “Exercise builds brain health,” says Cotman, a founding director of UCI MIND, one of 30 National Institutes of Health-funded centers for aging and dementia research. “It makes you more efficient. You’re thinking cleaner. It introduces a state of readiness.” The EXERT study will be a critical test of the theory that sufficient aerobic exercise can help stave off dementia. With the burgeoning number of Americans with Alzheimer’s disease, its findings are highly anticipated. While Cotman has pursued his research over the past 25 years, many other dementia theories and treatments have withered away. “Since 2002, 420 clinical trials on drugs targeted for Alzheimer’s have been launched. All of them failed,” Hicks notes. “No drug will change its trajectory. But physical activity might.” EXERT researchers plan to enroll 300 people, who will participate in either stretching and balance exercises or aerobic training. They’ll undergo testing for cognition, brain atrophy and inflammation, as well as amyloid-tau biomarkers linked to dementia in blood and spinal fluid samples. Results could be available in about three years.
‘The Best Dirty Drug Around’
“We’re entering an era in which we have to figure out how to build better exercise prescriptions. We can tailor exercise interventions. It’s very much consistent with the notion of precision, or personalized, medicine.”
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Michael Yassa, UCI Chancellor’s Fellow and professor of neurobiology & behavior, is known for his on-the-move meetings. Exercise is so important to health and cognition that the director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory and his students tackle agendas while making a loop of the campus or heading for coffee. Yassa’s translational neurobiology lab focuses on learning and memory and their role in education, technology and disease processes. He calls exercise “the best dirty drug around.” In pharmaceutical science, a dirty drug is one that binds to many molecular targets in the body instead of just one. That’s usually a recipe for disaster in drug development. But exercise may be the perfect dirtydrug formula for overall good health and the prevention of a wide range of ailments.
“Exercise has myriad different mechanisms, and all of them are good,” Yassa says. “There’s something magical about it.” Physical activity is underutilized as a health prescription, he says, in part because researchers can’t really explain why it works wonders for some people but not others. Nor can anyone describe the appropriate “dose” for specific conditions. That’s the frontier facing 21st-century exercise scientists. “We’re entering an era in which
we have to figure out how to build better exercise prescriptions,” Yassa says. “We can tailor exercise interventions. It’s very much consistent with the notion of precision, or personalized, medicine.” He’s using highly controlled laboratory research to do that. In many of his experiments, the oxygen consumption of exercise participants is controlled, while brain function is gauged via functional MRI. In a study published last year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Yassa and his colleagues found that memory, as measured by a test, improved in healthy young adults after just a 10-minute, light-intensity run on a treadmill. Using functional MRI, the researchers showed heightened activity in the hippocampus – the seat of memory in the brain – after the mild workout. “People used to think, ‘If I can’t get out and do 30 minutes at the gym and break a sweat, it’s not worth it,’” Yassa says. “But even 10 minutes of walking can give you an extra boost.”
The UCI Health Pediatric Exercise and Genomics Research Center is one of the very few research facilities in the country with state-of-the-art pediatric performance labs to conduct exercise tests and evaluate the effects at the molecular level.
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Sweat Equity His carefully crafted PNAS study caught the attention of Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. In a blog post, Collins said the work illustrates the importance of an ongoing NIH-funded project exploring the molecular, or cellular, changes that arise with physical activity. The project is called the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium, and UCI is involved in that project too. The UCI Health Pediatric Exercise and Genomics Research Center is one of just 11 sites participating in MoTrPAC – and the only one focusing on children. There, you’ll find youngsters on treadmills or engaged in resistance training. It’s among the very few research facilities in the country with state-of-the-art pediatric performance labs in which to conduct exercise tests and evaluate the effects at the molecular level. By examining children before and after exercise – for example, by looking at blood samples to analyze genetic and molecular affects – MoTrPAC will develop a database on how a child’s cells respond to exercise, a database that can be accessed by scientists around the world, according to Shlomit Radom-Aizik, PERC’s founder and executive director.
According to the CDC, just 22 percent of children ages 6 to 19 engage in 60 or more minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity at least five days per week, the amount recommended under national guidelines.
What the Experts Do UCI’s exercise scientists practice what they preach
James W. Hicks
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Cycles 60 to 120 miles a week; walks to campus every day; never takes an elevator less than five floors “I have always been pretty active, but busy lives can get in the way of exercise. After I had a health scare, I got serious about my diet – and I got very serious about exercise.”
Shlomit Radom-Aizik
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Rides bike to work one or two days a week; does Pilates once a week; completes circuit training twice a week “I was a competitive gymnast as a child. I knew from very early on what I wanted to do in my life. I wanted to study exercise, and I wanted to do it on a molecular level.”
Michael Yassa
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Runs each day at sunrise; hits the gym regularly for elliptical and weight training after work; avoids sitting at a desk during the day “I try not to stay in the office very long.”
Carl Cotman
..................................................... Works out at LA Fitness four times a week; plays doubles tennis once a week “Doubles tennis is a lot of fun. It’s social, and you get a fair amount of exercise if you play an aggressive game. But I have to talk myself into it sometimes. At the end of the day, I think: ‘You’re telling everybody else to exercise. Get out there, boy!’”
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“This will bring exercise science to a completely different level,” she says. “Understanding the mechanisms is where we’ll have an opportunity to make a huge leap and be able to use exercise as medicine.” The study, which is being undertaken in collaboration with the UCI Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, includes children
between the ages of 10 and 17 from local schools. Nationwide, MoTrPAC will collect data from a diverse group of 2,700 people up to age 75. Center experts also conduct other research, such as looking at the impact of exercise on youngsters with chronic conditions like asthma, autism and cystic fibrosis, as well as children who have survived cancer.
UCI scientists found that the memory of healthy young adults improved after just a 10-minute, light-intensity run on a treadmill.
Unlike adults, who may have to drag themselves to the gym, pediatric subjects embrace moving, Radom-Aizik notes. “In our studies,” she says, “we make it clear to the children that they’re part of something that’s going to benefit them and help us develop and implement exercise programs for other children with different clinical conditions. They love that.” Similarly, retiree Carpenter enjoys participating in the EXERT project. “You huff and puff,” he says. “It’s not only good for me, but what I’m doing will be analyzed at a future time and maybe add a little bit of information to the big picture.” All of the EXERT sites are affiliated with local YMCAs. This was done for a reason, Cotman says: so the study’s results won’t be confined to the pages of a science journal. “It gives us a community-based organization that knows how to do this once the trial is done,” he says. “There will be a place where people can continue to practice the exercises and bring new people in. Translation to the public is essential.”
Using functional MRI, researchers see heightened activity in the hippocampus – the seat of memory in the brain – after even a mild workout.
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An Eye for Sports
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ou may not recognize his name, but you’ve probably seen Robert Beck’s work – particularly a photo of soccer standout Brandi Chastain that went viral before going viral became a thing and inspired countless young girls. For more than three decades, the 1977 UCI history alumnus has been one of the nation’s premier sports photographers, a career he fell into almost accidentally while working as a middle school teacher and football coach. Beck’s road to shutterbug stardom began in the early 1980s, a few years after he had earned a teaching credential at UCI. To pick up some extra cash while substitute teaching in San Diego, he borrowed his dad’s Canon AE-1 Program camera and started shooting high school sports, selling the prints to parents and students. He soon had enough money to buy his own camera and – because he was a surfer – a waterproof housing so he could photograph fellow wave riders. The ocean action pictures led to gigs with surfing magazines, a stock photo agency and, eventually, Sports Illustrated. Since then, Beck has shot 10 Super Bowls; a half-dozen
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Olympics; and countless games, matches and athletic achievements, such as Wayne Gretzky’s record-breaking 802nd hockey goal. He has also developed a reputation for compelling portraits. Using such props as Fruity Pebbles cereal, underwater furniture, Navy jets and a herd of sheep, he has coaxed intriguing poses out of everyone from skateboarder Tony Hawk and pitcher Madison Bumgarner to hurdler Lolo Jones and Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt. To date, Beck’s portfolio includes more than 150 cover photos for Sports Illustrated. Curiously, the South Pasadena native has had little formal training. Although he took a photography class in high school and spent his first year at UCI as an art major, Beck’s skills are essentially self-taught. “I just have an eye for composition,” he explains. And for offbeat photographic equipment. He occasionally snaps pictures with Polaroid, Russian and even infrared cameras, the last producing what he calls “a dreamy black-and-white effect.” “Sometimes you’ve gotta find something that sets you apart,” Beck says. – Roy Rivenburg
Usain Bolt crouches over a makeshift reflecting pool that Robert Beck constructed from plywood, thick sheets of black plastic, a swatch of indoor-outdoor carpet (to mimic the feel of a track) and an inch of water. To help cajole the Jamaican athlete and “fastest man in the world� into what turned out to be a difficult-to-hold pose, Beck played his favorite style of reggae music.
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Surfing superstar Kelly Slater is seen frozen in motion – 10 times – during a 2014 contest at Trestles, along San Onofre State Beach. Multi-exposure photos are “a good way to show the complete effort of an athlete during a maneuver,” Beck says. “Here, I’m showing how far Kelly travels during an aerial. He’s not just going up and down and falling. He’s traveling across and above the wave. It’s quite a difficult maneuver to complete.”
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No, that isn’t a blanket of snow that golfer Jordan Spieth is playing on at the 2015 Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia. The picture was snapped with an infrared camera, producing what Beck calls “a dreamy black-and-white effect.” It’s one in a series of dramatic infrared photos he took at the event. “At Sports Illustrated, we can experiment,” he says.
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While preparing for the 2012 Olympics, hurdler Lolo Jones had her running and jumping mechanics analyzed via high-speed cameras set up along a track in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “To illustrate what was going on,” Beck says, “we bought some wire at Radio Shack and little round Band-Aids at a pharmacy, then connected her to my laptop with a display of what the speed cameras saw.”
Shot with a macro lens and illuminated solely by a hotel window, this “interesting character study of Kobe Bryant without all his basketball trappings” was taken after a media event to promote the Lakers star’s Showtime documentary.
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Beck’s most famous photo captures Brandi Chastain’s victory celebration after her history-making penalty kick at the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup final in Pasadena. Years later, she told him, “You don’t understand what that picture meant to thousands of little girls across the country. It conveyed that they could play sports and be on the cover of Sports Illustrated.”
This Sports Illustrated cover shot of teen snowboarding sensation Chloe Kim and her miniature Australian shepherd was taken after Kim won a gold medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. “The web went crazy with that image,” Beck says.
At a high-profile 2012 match, boxer Juan Manuel Marquez delivers a crushing knockout punch to Manny Pacquiao in round six at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. After Pacquiao collapsed to the ground, “I thought he was dead,” Beck recalls. “His wife and family were seated behind me. I think his wife feared the worst as well. It was the perfect punch.”
The original idea was to shoot Brazilian soccer king Neymar playing a piano. “But he was not quite the musician we’d been led to believe,” Beck says. While workers dismantled the set and Beck pondered a plan B, Neymar began kicking a ball around the studio. “So I started taking pictures, and this was one of them,” the photographer says.
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Upset Alert Evan Leonard leads the fast break with Max Hazzard (left) and Robert Cartwright (right) as the 13th-seeded Anteaters eliminate fourth-seeded Kansas State, 70-64, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. UCI was the lowest-seeded team to win a game in this year’s championship – which also marked the first time the men’s basketball squad advanced to the second round.
Duke Burchell / UCI Athletics
R E F L E C T I O N S
Stacey King / UCI Athletics
Sporting Life Lessons
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By Paula Smith
y introduction to sports was early in my adolescent years. My love for it was shaped naturally – while playing – and I didn’t even realize it was happening. Being a daughter of a military family, I lived in several states and in Germany. It didn’t matter if you were the new kid on the block or if you
understood the local language; you could connect playing sports. To me, it was simply
adapting to a new environment and making friends. I bowled with my family (mom, dad and two sisters). I enjoyed it so much that I joined teams with my sisters and, eventually, on my own. I played recreational sports, including fast-pitch softball and basketball, in city leagues and then in high school. I lettered in volleyball and basketball. I assumed these opportunities had always existed. It never occurred to me that there was a time when women were denied such access to sports. Thankfully, due to Title IX, the doors had been opened for women.
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Coming out of high school, I knew I was not a recruitable athlete and that my playing days would likely be over. I went off to New Mexico State University not sure what I wanted to do, like many freshmen. I chose to study accounting but quickly realized I was not interested in preparing and examining financial records; it just didn’t keep my interest. Again like many students, I changed my major – from accounting to marketing. This was lesson No. 1 on my journey. At the basic level, marketing is the
business of creating relationships with and satisfying customers. Lightbulb moment: What connected this field of study to my love of sports? Relationships. Since I had not been recruited to play sports and didn’t even contemplate doing so in college, the next-best thing was the opportunity to work in the athletics department in a college work-study job. It was an extension of sports and an opening to realize a career in this field. Fastforward four years and graduation was upon me. What would I do? Continue to study or work? I decided to take a break from studies and apply for jobs. I took my business law professor’s recommendation and applied for an internship. It was with the Big West Conference office and was created through an NCAA grant for minorities and women in sports. That internship launched my career in athletics, and I never looked back. It’s hard to imagine a career in another field. This brings us to lesson No. 2: matching one’s passion with work. Athletics is more than a job that compensates me. My employment opportunities have provided me with experiences and education that fuel my current and future actions. I have had a wonderful career working at the Big West Conference in the compliance and championships units as well as sports administration at two University of California campuses (UCI and UC Riverside). My passion for sports has been shaped through intercollegiate athletics, which fosters character; good sportsmanship; teamwork; health, physical fitness and safety; social skills; hard work; and perseverance. There is a value to sports in higher education that reaches beyond the classroom; it is woven into the fabric of campus life and extends into the community. At UCI, the mission is to mobilize knowledge, serve the people and educate its students. UCI Athletics consists of 313 student-athletes and 125 coaches and staff who contribute to the student-athlete experience on campus. It aids the community through stewardship and produces the best and brightest on and off the field. It is all about people. This is my why. Why I do what I do. Why I love what I do. Why I have passion for what I do. And it aligns with the institutional why. Pivoting back to the beginning of my career and that internship brings me to lesson No. 3: Give back and pay it forward. The NCAA grant that created the internship was intended to increase the involvement of minorities and women in sports by developing an inclusive environment, thereby generating a culture that promotes fair and equitable access to opportunities and resources. People have to see someone like them participating to believe it’s possible.
My why equals passion and that, in turn, makes all things possible. Thus, over the course of my career, I have given back by volunteering with various NCAA entities, such as the Minority Opportunity and Interest Committee, the National Collegiate Men’s Volleyball Committee and the Division I Council. Paying it forward is working every day as a leader to create an inclusive future for minorities and women in sports.
“People have to see someone like them participating to believe it’s possible.”
Accepting and understanding the responsibility of having a seat at the table to influence policies and decisions is key. In my own journey, there were times that I delayed advancing my career for fear of failure or not being comfortable saying “I’m not sure I’m ready” and asking for support. This is something women do but rarely acknowledge. But men and women have encouraged and supported me countless times. For me, paying it forward is willing to be vulnerable, to share my fear and discomfort, with the intention of helping other underrepresented individuals take a leap of faith to advance and know that they’ll be supported. Celebrating women in sports requires acknowledging UCI’s first female athletics director, Linda Dempsay, and the achievements of women’s programs at UCI, such as numerous Big West titles, NCAA appearances, AllAmericans, conference Players of the Year and Lauds & Laurels recipients. After 30 years, I still think back to how oblivious I was about the opportunity to play sports or have a career in athletics. And I’m grateful for the lessons provided. Smith is senior woman administrator for UCI Athletics and has been deputy athletics director since 2012. She’s currently serving as interim athletics director.
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Getting Into the Game UCI Esports scholarship player Parsa Baghai (in hat) guides participants in last summer’s Girls in Gaming program on campus. This July, another 20 students from various middle and high schools throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties will attend the one-week day camp – which is hosted by UCI Esports in partnership with the North America Scholastic Esports Federation in an effort to introduce teen girls to the types of workforce opportunities in the industry and to encourage early networking.
Courtesy of UCI Esports
A N T O U R A G E
Steve Zylius / UCI
Mr. Go-To Longtime UCI administrator (and eventual alum) honored for behind-the-scenes influence on campus .............................................................................................................. By Roy Rivenburg He calls himself “the accidental administrator,” the high-ranking UCI official who for most of his 40-year campus career didn’t have a college degree. “I wore [the lack of a diploma] like a badge but also as a chip on my shoulder,” says Michael Arias, who started as a copy room assistant in the School of Physical Sciences and worked his way up to associate chancellor and chief of staff for Chancellor Howard Gillman before retiring last fall. Morphing from shaggy-haired hippie (“My wife sometimes had to remind me to wear shoes to work,” he admits) to seasoned executive, Arias helped engineer some of UCI’s loftiest undertakings, including the law school, the Anteater Learning Pavilion, the Cove, the Buck
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Collection of California art, the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing and Douglas Hospital. This spring, the UCI Alumni Association bestowed on him its highest honor, the Lauds & Laurels Extraordinarius award, citing his “substantial” influence on the campus and his mentoring of numerous professors, staff members and Aldrich Hall bigwigs. “He was my own personal Virgil, a guide through the obscure dark wood of [UCI’s] central administration,” says former Vice Provost Michael P. Clark. Adds Gillman: “In every position that Mike held, he made UCI a better place.” But you might not know about it. Arias typically toiled behind the scenes and avoided taking any credit, his colleagues say. True to form, when asked about his role in
various university projects, he offers scant details, saying he prefers simply “having my fingerprints on things without getting recognition for it.” Arias’ original career goal, however, would have entailed gobs of glory. “Nobody grows up hoping to be a college administrator. I wanted to be a rock star,” says the Santa Ana native, whose University Hills home is outfitted with a dozen-plus guitars, mandolins and a ukulele. Instead, after dropping out of UC San Diego because of family financial problems, Arias sold his Fender Telecaster, married a high school classmate and took a series of odd jobs: liquor store clerk, factory worker, restaurant employee and, in 1979, UCI copy meister. Two years later, when a chance to move up the Anteater food chain arose, Arias had to borrow a sports jacket and belt for his interview. The loaner attire helped him land a position as director of the academic budget. He quickly fell in love with the campus, even joining the basketball team broadcast crew as a statistician so he could see every game without breaking the bank. In the early 1990s, Arias briefly reverted to his hippie persona. It was after he had become assistant dean in the School of Social Sciences. Struggling to connect with his staff, he consulted an executive coach, who recounted a similar problem in her own past. To make herself more relatable, the consultant had invited her employees to a bar and sang karaoke in front of everyone. “Be vulnerable,” she advised Arias. “Find your own karaoke.” Realizing that many social sciences professors at that time had come of age in the 1960s and ’70s, Arias stopped wearing suits to work, sprouted a beard and let his hair
grow long again. “It changed everything,” he recalls. The lesson stuck as he ascended to chief of staff for UCI’s provost in 1998 and developed a reputation as an easygoing, attentive listener who could establish a rapport with just about anyone.
Three years later, Gillman tapped him to join the chancellor’s office, where he played a major part in creating the Susan and Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences, two student dorms and the Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering Building, among other projects.
“I think of Mike as the consummate ‘fixer,’ the person who always knows what to do in a difficult situation.” “I think of Mike as the consummate ‘fixer,’ the person who always knows what to do in a difficult situation,” says Bill Maurer, dean of social sciences. “He also advised me to always think about the next several steps beyond a particular decision, saying that how you solve a problem now will set other people’s expectations in the future. In other words, Mike was effective because he’s both a fantastic communicator and a savvy chess player.” Despite his rise in the ranks, Arias says, he “often felt like a bit of a fraud.” So, at age 50, he enrolled at UCI as a social sciences major. In addition to filling a hole in his résumé, “it was good for my soul to walk a mile in student shoes, because administrators can be so out of touch,” he says. Taking classes during lunch, at night and over summers, Arias finished his coursework in two and a half years, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 2011. At commencement, his boss at the time, Provost Michael Gottfredson, handed him his diploma. “It was a profoundly moving moment for me,” Arias recalls. “I wish my mom had been alive for that, because she was always urging me to get a degree.”
Since departing from Aldrich Hall, Arias has turned his energies to preparing for the arrival of his first grandchild, getting more exercise and traveling with wife Linda, a fellow UCI retiree who served as personnel director in The Henry Samueli School of Engineering. In March, the couple planned to embark on a train trip to Chicago, then return to California via rental car along Route 66. But not before Arias, now a longtime Anteater basketball season ticketholder, took a quick detour. On the morning of UCI’s first game in the 2019 NCAA men’s basketball tournament, he flew to San Jose to watch the squad defeat Kansas State University. After a quick meal, Arias caught a plane home that evening so he could be at the train depot early the next day. He’s similarly devoted to UCI’s baseball team. “I recently went on a cruise and realized that nearly every garment I packed said ‘UCI baseball,’” he quips. But Arias wouldn’t have it any other way. “UCI is like a giant bookmobile that brings the world to you,” he says. “It’s an agent of change – not just for students but for this local kid.”
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Class Notes
Laurence Jackson ’76, social ecology An African philosophy steeped in spirituality guides Laurence Jackson’s work as CEO of the Progressive Life Center, a nonprofit that offers child welfare, juvenile justice and counseling services in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. An L.A. native, Jackson traces his interest in mental health to an encounter with UCI professor Joseph L. White, a pioneer in the field of black psychology. “I set a new course of study – switching from computer science – and never looked back,” he recalls. After graduation, Jackson collected a master’s degree in counseling from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. He later joined the Progressive Life Center, a hub for Africanbased psychotherapy, and rose to its top post in 2008. Citing studies that link laughter and health, Jackson is currently writing a manual to help mental health professionals incorporate humor into their work.
..................................................... Maurya Simon, M.F.A. ’84, poetry After watching a royal wedding on the streets of Paris at age 5, Maurya Simon scrawled her first poem. Decades later, she’s still at it, with an awardwinning oeuvre that muses on everything from the origin of parentheses (in her chapbook A Brief History of Punctuation) to what lies beyond death (answer: “A fever of unknowing, a match-head struck in the darkness of the void. A blue door without a handle that suddenly swings open”). Simon, a UC Riverside professor emerita who was raised in Western Europe and Hermosa Beach by an artist mother and musicologist father, has also created monoprints and composed an opera libretto. She’s now working on a young adult detective novel about a diamond heist. Other new projects include a memoir about her dad, who taught at Cal Poly Pomona, and her 11th volume of poetry.
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Jenny (Hong) Lau ’95, economics and Chinese language & literature Tiptoeing through minefields and toiling in slave labor camps were a big part of Jenny Lau’s formative years. The ordeal began in 1975, when Khmer Rouge soldiers stormed into her Cambodian hometown, and didn’t end until her eightmember family escaped to Thailand in late 1979 and eventually came to the United States under the sponsorship of a Michigan church. Now co-owner of a Santa Ana certified public accounting firm, Lau recently penned a book about her childhood experiences as a way to “exorcise my own demons; I often had nightmares from that period,” she says. The memoir, Beautiful Hero, has collected several honors, including a first-place Writer’s Digest award for self-published e-books. In addition to writing about her homeland, Lau sits on the board of the Savong Foundation, which provides free tuition and other aid to high school and college students in Cambodia.
..................................................... Jennifer Day dos Santos ’05, flute performance A benign brain tumor transformed Jennifer Day dos Santos from woodwind professional to bodybuilding contestant. Along the way, she also married a former mixed martial arts fighter from Brazil and began making prosthetic hands at home. Raised in Hemet, dos Santos spent five years playing flute in Iranian singer Dariush’s traveling band while working for UCI’s English department and battling exhaustion caused by an anti-tumor medication. Hoping to feel better, she put the touring on hold, took up competitive bodybuilding and opened a gym with her husband. She kept her day job at UCI, where she currently manages the anthropology department. Outside work, dos Santos and her husband belong to Enabling the Future, a charity whose members use 3-D printers to create primitive prosthetic hands – sometimes held together with Velcro, fishing line or rubber bands – for impoverished children with missing limbs.
Anthony D. Mays ’06, computer science “A rose bush of beauty and pain” is how Anthony D. Mays describes Compton, where he grew up amid gangs and “ghetto birds” (aka police helicopters). Abused by his stepfather as a youngster, he was placed in foster care and adopted by an older couple who had babysat him. At age 8, Mays taught himself computer programming, a skill that began blossoming in middle and high school. He continued his digital development at UCI, where he also sang and played keyboard in a campus gospel choir. “God is the hero of my story,” says Mays, who recounts his zigzag life path in a short BuzzFeed video titled “How I Went From Compton to Google,” where he currently works as a software engineer. During off hours, he enjoys playing “The Legend of Zelda” with his children and speaking at colleges to encourage more diversity in the tech industry.
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In Memoriam Edward “Ted” Newland, head coach, men’s water polo Legendary UCI men’s water polo head coach Edward “Ted” Newland died April 4. He was 91. “Newland inspired integrity and demanded excellence from all of his ‘sons,’” said current UCI men’s water polo head coach Marc Hunt ’94, who played for Newland and served as an assistant coach before taking over the team in 2005. “He taught us to set lofty goals and exemplified the toughness it takes to achieve. … As an educator, coach, mentor and friend, Newland’s impact exceeds well past the scope of our sport. He was a maker of men and a truly great man.” Newland, who arrived on campus in 1966, became the first NCAA water polo coach to reach 700 victories and finished his 39-year career at UCI with an overall record of 714-345-5. He led the Anteaters to 21 NCAA Championship appearances and brought three national titles back to Irvine (in 1970, 1982 and 1989). His 1982 squad had a perfect season, with a 30-0 record. UCI was also the NCAA runner-up six times. The “Old Man,” as he liked to be called, mentored 69 individual All-Americans who received the honor a total of 111 times, while 11 of his players went on to compete in the Olympic Games. He also served as UCI’s assistant swim coach in the 1970s, guiding the men to three NCAA Division II Championships. Newland was a four-time NCAA Men’s Water Polo Coach of the Year and was tabbed conference Coach of the Year on nine occasions. He was inducted into the U.S. Water Polo Hall of Fame (1995) and the UCI Hall of Fame (1999). In 2007, Newland was awarded the UCI Medal, the university’s highest honor.
Ryan Trainor ’08, physics He’s a telescope time traveler, observing galaxies so far away that the light they emitted billions of years ago is just now reaching Earth. The ancient glimmers enable astronomer Ryan Trainor to glimpse what the universe was like in its infancy and understand how it evolved “from a cosmic soup of gas and matter into the complex array of structures we see today.” Raised in Placerville, Trainor was initially intrigued by math but switched to studying stars as an Anteater. After UCI, he earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in astrophysics at Caltech, where he also helped build Mosfire, a $14 million infrared camera, for the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Following postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley, Trainor joined Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania as an assistant professor of physics & astronomy.
To submit or view additional Class Notes, go to engage.alumni.uci.edu/classnote.
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P A R T I N G
Z O T !
Spring Fling A painted lady butterfly – one of thousands that flew across campus in March during their annual migration north – makes a stop on an Asteraceae in the coastal sage scrub demo bed at the UCI Arboretum. “Painted ladies feed on many different kinds of flowers and are common to observe every year,” says nursery manager Rebecca Crowe, “but this was a banner year for butterflies moving through our area.” Guided arboretum tours are available by appointment. For info, go to arboretum.bio.uci.edu.
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Steve Zylius / UCI
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