Students, faculty, staff and retirees are eligible to volunteer for UC Davis’ new Event Observer Service, set to launch in the fall. Applications are due by this Friday (May 23).

“The mission of the Event Observer Service is to provide trained volunteers to serve as impartial observers at events, including protests and demonstrations on campus,” states the Event Observer Service website. “The role of the impartial observers is to observe events and report impartially on acts observed. They do not interpret or evaluate actions or behaviors, give advice or mediate any conflict.”

The Event Observer Service is available to all members of the campus community; anyone hosting or sponsoring an event may ask the Office of Campus Community Relations to assign volunteer observers.

Volunteers will go through a six-hour training session on such topics as the observer’s role, neutrality/impartiality/objectivity, report writing, dealing with difficult people, police practices, complaint procedures, safety issues and site logistics.

The Event Observer Service stems from the 2012 Robinson-Edley report, “Response to Protests on UC Campuses." Recommendation 41 states: "Establish at each campus a formal program to allow designated, trained observers to gain access to the protest site for purposes of observing, documenting and reporting on the event."

Upon receipt of each application (by email), the Event Observer Service manager will scheduled a 30-minute interview to review important skill-sets of an impartial/objective observer and to clarify expectations.

Faculty can get WordPress websites with ‘ucdavis.edu’

Faculty members now have the option of setting up personal WordPress websites with “ucdavis.edu” in the domain name. The sites are free, available through Academic Technology Services (a unit of Information and Educational Technology), via the Faculty Website Network.

The sites are free of advertising and can be set up in under a minute, said Simon Dvorak, an ATS programmer. The default name for each individual site is "(UC Davis user name).faculty.ucdavis.edu," but faculty members may change the site subdomain name to whatever they would like, such as "name.faculty.ucdavis.edu" or "namelab.faculty.ucdavis.edu."

The sites are available to any of the approximately 6,000 faculty, including adjuncts. More information (including overview, support documents, examples and terms of use) is available online.

ATS has scheduled training sessions on the second Friday of each month, from 2 to 4:30 p.m. in Surge III 1310, through October.

Questions and comments cane be directed to Charlie Turner, who leads ATS' Academic and Research Programming unit. Or use the IET Faculty Website Network’s contact form.

Big Bang! finale Thursday night

The “big bang” in the UC Davis Big Bang! Business Competition is set for this Thursday (May 22), when the five finalists present their entries and learn who wins. The program is free and open to the public.

The Graduate School of Management’s Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship organizes and hosts the competition, which provides workshops, mentorship, financing and networking to accelerate commercialization and advance the startup process.

This year’s contest, the 14th annual, drew a record 66 teams comprising more than 200 aspiring entrepreneurs. The finalists: Ambercycle Inc., MedWorks Medicine By Design, SV Biomedical, Zasaka and zInspector. Read about them here.

Top prize is $10,000, while second place gets $5,000. Thursday’s night’s audience will pick the winner of the $2,500 People’s Choice Award. Other prizes include $5,000 to the team that is judged the best at promoting innovation and social change; $2,500 for the best concept in agriculture, food and ag-tech related innovations; and two $1,000 awards for the top undergraduate teams.

The Big Bang! finale begins with a reception at 5 p.m., followed by the team presentations and awards ceremony from 6 to 8, all in the Conference Center. Admission is free, but reservations are requested.

Fundraiser for ‘invisible children’

The UC Davis Invisible Children Club announced that it will hold a fundraiser where people are invited to have dinner at Raja’s Tandoor, and the Indian restaurant will donate 20 percent of sales to the club.

The club, in turn, will give the money to Invisible Children, said club President Annie Ashmore. Invisible Children is a nonprofit organization that works on behalf of Ugandan children caught up in the conflict between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army.

The fundraiser is scheduled from 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 11. Raja’s Tandoor is at 207 Third St., Suite 230 (upstairs), Davis.

For more information, contact Ashmore by email, amashmore@ucdavis.edu.

Celebration of life for John A. Jungerman

A celebration of life for professor emeritus of physics John A. Jungerman is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Friday (May 23) at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 27074 Patwin Road, Davis.

Jungerman, founding director of the university’s Crocker Nuclear Laboratory, died March 28. He was 92. Read his obituary.

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