Education 8-14

This fall’s three-seat race for the Santa Barbara School Board finally has more candidates than open spots. Joining incumbent candidate Annette Cordero and the already declared Susan Deacon is Charlotte Ware, former president of the Dos Pueblos High School PTA, and Ed Heron, former Partners in Education honcho. At least three other candidates, including 2006 hopeful Suzie Cawthon, have pulled official candidate papers but have not, as of press time, filed them with the district. The deadline to do so was 8/13.

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A proposal to hire six gang specialists in the Santa Barbara School District to soothe gang tension in the district’s secondary schools was sent back to the drawing board this week. School boardmembers at an 8/12 meeting supported the plan but worried about the cost-approximately $400,000-and the specific responsibilities of the jobs. The proposal will return to the board later this summer in hopes of starting a pilot program before the school year.

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Galen Stucky, a UCSB chemistry professor, was honored on 8/11 by the Department of Defense for his role in the invention of QuikClot, a type of gauze infused with instantaneous clotting agents and antimicrobial properties that also avoids the burning that some clotting agents can cause. Stucky’s modification utilized kaolin clay to make a “cooler” version of the product, which is used to care for soldiers in combat.

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UCSB researchers made global warming news twice this week. A paper on how warming of the Indian Ocean as a result of climate change has caused drought, famine, and strife in eastern Africa was published in the new issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. UCSB geography researcher Chris Funk served as lead author. And emeritus anthropology professor Brian Fagan published The Great Warming, a book that focuses on the temperature spike that occurred in between the 10th and 15th centuries. (/ucsb814)