January 7, 2002 Accolades Telephone Outreach Program A dedicated corps of UCSC students is hard at work behind the scenes during the academic year calling alumni and parents of current students to ask them to support the campus and its programs. The student callers had a very successful fall, raising $358,622--$65,000 more than last year at this time. Donations received through the Telephone Outreach Program provide crucial operating support for such campus staples as financial aid, academic units, the University Library, student activities, athletics, and college programs. Sammy the Slug, athletics director Greg Harshaw, and OPERS executive director Dan Wood stopped by the TOP office recently to pump up the student callers and remind everyone that Slug sports are setting the standard for academic and athletic excellence. TOP student callers pictured above are (front row, l-r) Noelle Deocares-Lengyel, Jino DeCastro, Kelly Stamatis, Sarah Malashock, Veronica Bursiaga, Mark Chang, (second row) Ember Van Allen, Tasha Triana, Anthony Diongzon, Teresa Virgen, Amy Fernandez, Felicia Pate, (third row) athletics director Greg Harshaw, Sammy, Ethan Perry. UCSC Photo Services Scott Shaffer Research biologist Scott Shaffer was awarded the Elton Prize by the editors of the Journal of Animal Ecology, published by the British Ecological Society. The society awards an annual prize of 100 pounds sterling for the best paper by a young author in each of the society's journals. The Elton Prize is named after the great English ecologist Charles Elton. Shaffer was honored for a paper entitled "Behavioural Factors Affecting Foraging Effort of Breeding Wandering Albatrosses," coauthored with Daniel Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and French ecologist Henri Weimerskirch. Published in the September 2001 issue of the journal, the paper presents research Shaffer conducted for his Ph.D. thesis. He found that the energetic cost of flight for the wandering albatross is among the lowest reported for any seabird, and that the main factor determining energy expenditure by these birds is how often they land and take off, rather than how far or fast they fly (see Currents story on Shaffer's research). Return to Front Page