Four faculty members in civil and environmental engineering, environmental planning, applied science and family-practice medicine have received 1997 Distinguished Public Service Awards from their colleagues at UC Davis. The annual awards, including a shared $1,000 honorarium, were presented to Daniel Chang, Seymour Gold, Thomas Nesbitt and V. Rao Vemuri by the Representative Assembly of the Academic Senate, the governing body of UC Davis professors. Established in 1990, the awards recognize faculty members who have made distinguished public-service contributions to the community, state, nation and world throughout their academic careers. Daniel Chang In 1994, the Mare Island Naval Shipyard was ordered to close in two years, affecting thousands of workers and threatening the area's economy. Before the city could turn the old base into a new industrial park, contaminated sites had to be cleaned up and new types of industries found to occupy the former shipyard facility. In response, civil and environmental engineering professor Chang quickly mobilized UC Davis resources to retrain more than 70 mechanical, civil, electrical and chemical engineers. Through this and existing programs run by University Extension, several hundred other base staff also received training as environmental technicians. Chang's efforts produced a significant contribution to decontamination of the base and a model retraining program for the U.S. Department of Defense. In the process, he helped forge an environmental education partnership to sustain ongoing retraining, risk assessment, environmental cleanup and education efforts. Chang is credited with the shipyard being named as a national remediation test site for the defense department. He also pursued defense department funds and partners to sustain the educational, environmental and entrepreneurial activities. To help the former shipyard clean up unanticipated "mixed wastes" at a material re-utilization site, Chang initiated a screening technology and evaluation process to assess the problems and test new solutions. He also has helped launch an ecological risk assessment curriculum in collaboration with Merritt College. The course was piloted by shipyard employees and elements from that curriculum have since been provided to local Restoration Advisory Board members and to Native Americans through D-Q University. Seymour Gold A nationally recognized authority on park and recreation planning and management, environmental planning professor Gold has worked passionately for nearly four decades to transfer university research findings to the public to be put to practical use. He was one of the first park professionals to call attention to the under-use of city parks, suggesting that many urban parks were over-designed, over-maintained spaces that did not reflect the preferences of city residents. Gold also conducted pioneering playground-safety studies. To reduce the estimated 200,000 injuries that occur annually on the nation's playgrounds, he helped develop the playground safety standards adopted by the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission in 1981. One of Gold's landmark contributions was the drafting of playground safety guidelines for the state of California, which were signed into law in 1990 in the form of Senate Bill 2733. He is the author of two highly respected books, Recreation Planning and Design and Urban Recreation Planning. Gold has established one of the nation's largest recreation safety libraries, generously sharing its contents with colleagues, students and private citizens around the world. He served as the technical consultant for "Mickey's Safety Club," an animated playground safety video prepared by Walt Disney Productions for pre-school children and as technical editor for the training video "Inspecting Playgrounds for Hazards," which was distributed worldwide. Over the years, Gold has shared freely of his time and expertise. In 1994-95, alone, he served 65 times as a pro bono consultant for schools, parks and other public agencies. He also has helped to prepare playground safety pamphlets and video presentations that show parents and public agencies how to assess the safety of both backyard and public playgrounds. His career contributions were recognized in 1995 when the National Recreation and Park Association presented him with its Professional Honor Award. That award honors his research and significant contributions to public policy and professional practice in America. Thomas Nesbitt Nesbitt, associate professor of family practice and medical director of UC Davis' Telemedicine Program, has made significant contributions to improve health-care delivery to various underserved populations in California, especially women, children and rural residents. Appointed to the state advisory panel for the access to infants and mother's program, Nesbitt makes recommendations on providing perinatal coverage to uninsured women in California. The program is regarded as a national model for health-care delivery. As a member of the advisory committee of Sierra Health Foundation's Community Partnerships for Healthy Children, he works to provide a lasting, positive impact on rural communities and to enhance their ability to respond to children's health-care needs. He also serves on the board of directors for the California Health Collaborative and volunteers and serves on the advisory board for the California Institute for Rural Health Management. Through the American Academy of Family Physicians, Nesbitt helped create the "Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics" program, which standardized training for the management of obstetrical emergencies. He also created the California Telehealth/Telemedicine Coordination Planning Project with the help of the California Health Collaborative and has advised the state government in addressing telemedicine policy issues. In 1992 he launched a pilot project with Colusa Community Hospital linking physicians in the sparsely populated county with perinatal specialists at the medical center, 70 miles away. This fetal-monitoring connection facilitated the reopening of obstetrical services in Colusa County. Telemedicine and Telehealth Networks magazine named the project among the top 10 outstanding telemedicine programs in the country. He also is developing a telemedicine program to link the primary-care practices within the UC Davis Health System to the medical center to allow physicians to better care for their patients without having to send them to a distant site for a referral. Nesbitt has received many honors and awards in recognition of his work, including being named Family Physician of the Year by the California Academy of Family Physicians in 1993. V. Rao Vemuri Known to some as the "Isaac Asimov of Andhra (India)," Vemuri has waged a career campaign to popularize science in his native India. He is a UC Davis professor of applied science at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Like most productive scientists, Vemuri has written research papers and technical books, and served within his professional group. But he also has authored popular science books, science fiction short stories, essays and articles on science and linguistics, radio commentaries, a new popular science magazine and popular science essays. Most of Vemuri's extensive prose has been penned in Telugu, a language of southern India with a rich literary tradition dating back to the 11th century. But, like most Indian languages, it has not been used much in science. After struggling with the lack of an adequate vocabulary while writing books in Telugu, he compiled an "English-Telugu and Telugu-English Science Dictionary for Students, Journalists and Translators," now ready to be published. Vemuri serves on the board of the nonprofit Vanguri Foundation, which helps promote literary efforts in Telugu, translates Telugu classics into English and encourages computer software in Telugu. Science and technology in India are accessible to that 2 percent of the population who can read and write English, Vemuri says. The rest of the 98 percent are science illiterates in a country that is roughly 50 percent literate. In Vemuri's home village of Gollaprolu, children had to walk three miles and cross a busy national highway to attend an elementary school. When villagers approached Vemuri for help, he raised $1,000 to help defray the cost of building a school. He also helped raise more money with a group of people to build and equip a cancer treatment and research center in Viskhapatnam, India, especially to combat cancer in the mouth. In a new project called "A Model Center for Science Resources," Vemuri hopes to provide a science center for rural Indian youngsters. He also has instituted a computer contest known as the The Lotus Award for Excellence in Creative Computing, to encourage and honor creative applications of computers by youngsters of Indian heritage who are now living in North America.