President James Appleton accepted an invitation to serve on the Honorary Retirement Event Committee for Hillel Cohn, rabbi of the Congregational Emanu El in San Bernardino for 38 years. The retirement celebration will take place the weekend of May 18.

Linda Granell, director of public relations, is president-elect of the Public Relations Association of Southern California Colleges and will serve as president in 2001-02.

After completing a two-year term as president of the Margaret Fuller Society, English Professor Robert Hudspeth was elected to the board of directors of the Thoreau Society, one of the largest of the single-author societies in American literature. This past spring, he was also appointed to the board of directors for the edition of "The Works of Henry D. Thoreau," a comprehensive edition of the author's works. He is also the editor of the "Correspondence of Henry D. Thoreau." In July, he gave a paper on "Thoreau and Abolition in His Correspondence" at the annual meeting of the Thoreau Society. This month, he will give a paper on Margaret Fuller at the international meeting of the Thoreau Society.

James Malcolm, professor of biology, along with Johnston Center student Matt Berk, a senior from Salt Lake City, are trying to determine the eating and roosting behavior of local parrots. The birds, thought to be Mexican parrots and possibly escaped pets, have been familiar sights around Redlands as of late. They have set up a hotline for Redlands residents to phone in their sightings of the exotic birds, hoping to get to the area in order to observe the behavior of the parrots.

Don McCormick, associate professor of management and business, has co-authored an article with Judith White of Santa Clara University that appeared in the fall edition of the "Organization Development Journal." The article, titled "Using One's Self as an Instrument for Organizational Diagnosis," is based upon a paper McCormick and White presented at the Western Academy of Management where it was nominated for the Best Paper award.

Jim Pick, professor of management and business and director of information systems programs, has been elected vice president of the Association for Borderlands Studies (ABS). He will serve a three-year term, becoming president-elect and program chair in 2001-02 and succeeding to the presidency the following year. ABS is an international scholarly association that studies borders worldwide from a multidisciplinary standpoint and sponsors a journal, annual conference and other activities.

Alexandra Pierce, professor of music, has again been named an award recipient by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). ASCAPLU$ Standard Awards are based upon individual writer's original compositions and recent performances of their works. Pierce has received this cash award yearly since 1979, the amount increasing annually.

The Salton Sea Database Program staff made a presentation to the Salton Sea Authority board of directors providing an overview of the information resources and technical support available to the Authority and the public. The Oct. 19 presentation highlighted some of the past and ongoing collaborations between the Authority and the university's program. The information repository contains a large number and variety of informational resources, including a bibliographic database referencing over 2,600 scientific documents, downloadable copies of over 600 documents in digital form, over 430 geographic information system (GIS) map data layers and references to over 600 organizations and 2,600 people that have had some involvement with the Salton Sea and the restoration program. It also contains references to 150 Web sites containing information about the Sea or Sea-related issues.

In October, Jim Spickard, associate professor of sociology and anthropology, gave a presentation to the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Houston on "Couched Symbols: A Response to Current Psychoanalytic Thinking in the Sociology of Religion." His article "Tribes and Cities: Towards an Islamic Sociology of Religion" will appear in the "Social Compass: An International Review of Sociology of Religion" next year.