The rock-encircled mound, the crossroads of the play, is barren except for a small boulder and a spindly tree. Clouds are on the horizon, projected on a black screen to magical effect.

Iacovelli

This is where Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot played out a year ago at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles — on a set for which Professor John Iacovelli recently received the LA Drama Critics Circle Award for best design.

“It is a minimal set, which I am definitely not known for,” Iacovelli said. “I usually would be called a maximalist.”

Variety entertainment news ran a review giving “special praise” to Iacovelli “for his boldly artistic choices in creating the necessary sterile promontory. There’s a palpable despair in the rock piles … a strange mixture of majesty and sorrow in that lonely tree.”

The Center Theatre Group’s Waiting for Godot received five LA Drama Critics Circle awards, including best revival — more than any other production among more than 3,000 productions in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Santa Barbara counties in 2012.

Iacovelli, who teaches design in the Department of Theatre and Dance, now has two LA Drama Critics Circle awards for sets, the other given in 1991 for his work on Heartbreak House at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.

In 2000, he received the LA Drama Critics Circle’s Bob Z Award for lifetime achievement in set design, or, as Iacovelli prefers, “career achievement.”

He has designed more than 300 theater productions nationally and internationally, including Broadway revivals of Peter Pan starring Cathy Rigby, in 1998 and 1999. The A&E Network subsequently filmed the Rigby production for television, and Iacovelli won an Emmy award in 2001 for his art direction.

Iacovelli’s TV work includes Ed, Babylon 5, The Cosby Show and Resurrection Blvd., and his film work includes Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Ruby in Paradise.

Today he is designing the August Wilson play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, directed by Phylicia Rashad, and a musical version of the movie Sleepless in Seattle.

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Colin Carter of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics is officially a “commodity-friendly professor,” one of 15 so named recently by Commodity HQ, an online information source for commodity-related news and analysis for investors.

Commodity HQ cited the commodity-friendly professors for being pioneers in the field and providing the public with a better understanding of the complex commodities market.

Carter, director of UC’s Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics, has done extensive research on China’s grain market and international trade. He is the author of a new book, Futures and Options Markets.

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The national Beef Quality Assurance program, which provides guidelines for beef cattle production, has recognized UC Davis’ John Maas as 2013 Educator of the Year. Maas is a Cooperative Extension veterinarian in the School of Veterinary Medicine, as well as a cattle rancher himself.

The Beef Quality Assurance program noted Maas’ passion in educating California beef producers and their employees on best management techniques. In the sharing of state, regional and national curricula, he emphasizes the importance of disease prevention and animal welfare.

Additionally, he promotes consumer confidence as a frequent spokesman for the beef industry.

He has a long affiliation with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. He is chair of Producer Education, which oversees Beef Quality Assurance and other programs, and a member of the Quality Assurance Advisory Board.

He often represents the national association and the California Cattlemen’s Association on legislative and regulatory issues.

Hear from Maas in a Beef Quality Assurance program video.

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The ChemComm journal editorial board has awarded its 2013 ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship to Louise Berben, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry.

The lectureship comprises three talks over the next 12 months in three locations, including an international venue.

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The American Society of Parasitologists announced Professor Steve Nadler as the recipient of the Henry Baldwin Ward Medal, named after the society’s first president, the scientist considered “The Father of American Nematology.”

The medal, recognizing outstanding contributions to the field of parasitology, is due to be presented in June in Quebec City, during the society’s 88th annual meeting.

Nadler, a past president of the society (2007-08) studies the evolutionary biology and molecular phylogenetics of parasites, focusing mainly on nematodes. He joined the UC Davis faculty in 1996 and served as chair of the Department of Nematology from 2005 to 2011; that department has since merged with another, to create the Department of Entomology and Nematology.

He is the co-author of the textbook Foundations of Parasitology, and has published more than 90 journal articles.

He has served as an associate editor or editorial board member of several journals, including the Journal of Parasitology (founded by Ward), Parasitology and Systematic Parasitology.

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Ralph Rago has been inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. He was an assistant coach at UC Davis from 1987 to 2002, during which time the Aggies went to the College World Series for the first time, in 1995.

Rago began his coaching career at Fresno’s Roosevelt High School in 1959, moved to Davis High two years later — and would spend 29 years with the Blue Devils as an assistant and head coach, winning three Delta League coach of the year awards.

Rago also worked as a Major League Baseball envoy coach. In 1996, he was named European coach of the year after bringing Great Britain its first-ever championship. 

He continued to coach in Europe until 2009, while simultaneously assisting at Solano Junior College, then joined Guy Anderson, the winningest high school baseball coach in the country, at Cordova High School in Rancho Cordova.

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

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