Aimée Dorr, veteran dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, on June 19 was named the next University of California provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs.

As UC provost, she will serve as the system’s chief academic officer and lead efforts to ensure the academic excellence of UC’s 10 campuses during a time of unprecedented fiscal challenges.

She was selected by UC President Mark G. Yudof after an exhaustive national search that included consultation with a 15-member advisory committee of faculty, students, staff and senior academic leaders representing all 10 UC campuses. Her appointment was ratified by the Board of Regents at a special meeting. She will assume her new responsibilities on July 2, replacing Lawrence Pitts, who previously announced his retirement.

Dorr, a professor of education at UCLA since 1981, became dean of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSE&IS) in 1999. Among the leadership positions she has held within the UC system are chair and vice chair of the UC Academic Senate and faculty representative to the UC Board of Regents.

“Aimée Dorr is an accomplished leader with superb management skills, strategic vision and a longstanding commitment to expanding educational opportunities for all segments of society,” Yudof said. “Her inclusive management style and understanding of the University of California at all levels will serve the entire system and each of our 10 campuses very well during these challenging times.”

Before joining the faculty at UCLA, Dorr was a faculty member at Stanford University, Harvard University and the University of Southern California, where she served as associate dean of the Annenberg School of Communications. At Stanford, she also served one year as special adviser to the president for childcare policy. At the same time that she became GSE&IS dean, she became co-chair of UCLA’s Academic Preparation and Educational Partnership Programs, formerly known as Outreach Programs.

“I look forward to joining with those who have been striving to sustain and grow the academic excellence of the University of California during these particularly difficult times,” Dorr said. “Building on the accomplishments and talents of the academic affairs team led so ably by Provost Pitts, I am confident we can overcome the obstacles that, without our combined efforts, would undermine the quality and access that have made this great university a model for the world and a treasure for the people of California.”

Dorr, who is 69, received her B.S. in mathematics from Stanford University, where she also earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology.

Go to the UC Newsroom for the complete story.

Did you know that Mark Bingham, a national hero who helped resist the hijackers of United Airlines flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, was an alumnus of UC Berkeley and a proud gay man?

This is just one of the stories told in the UC Berkeley online exhibit Gay Bears! The Hidden History of the Berkeley Campus, co-edited by Steve Finacom, who will speak at UCOP Pride’s second annual ice cream social, June 29, 3 to 5 p.m. in the Franklin fifth floor rooftop garden.

The event is being held in recognition of LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex) Pride Month, celebrated each June to mark the Stonewall Riots in New York’s Greenwich Village in June 1969, considered the genesis of the LGBTQI movement.

UC President Mark Yudof will also be on hand at the event, which is cosponsored by UCOP Pride (formerly UCOP’s LGBTI Staff Association) and the OP Staff Assembly. Several varieties of ice cream and toppings will be served.

Finacom, a career staff member at UC Berkeley and president of the Berkeley Historical Society, will speak about the Gay Bears! exhibit, which tells the story of sexual minorities who have studied, taught, worked at and visited the Berkeley campus.

The exhibit grew out of a lesbian/gay-themed campus tour and was created in 2002. Finacom will also talk about A Place at the Table, a gathering of LGBTQI texts, images and voice on exhibit at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library through the end of July.

The Stonewall Riots occurred at the Stonewall Bar on June 27, 1969, following a police raid, a common occurrence for gay-patronized establishments at the time. Patrons resisted, sparking five days of protest and igniting the modern struggle for equal rights for LGBTQI people worldwide.

UCOP Pride is dedicated to providing advocacy, education and community building for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex community within UCOP and beyond.

All staff are also invited to attend UCOP Pride’s monthly meetings, 12 to 1 p.m. every third Wednesday of the month. To get meeting locations or join the listserv, email co-chairs Karin Rice at karin.rice@ucop.edu or Brad Niess at brad.niess@ucop.edu.

In Oakland High School’s Engineering Geometry with Physics class on a recent morning, there wasn’t a textbook or protractor in sight. Instead, a handful of old saws stood piled onto a workbench. X-acto knives and rolls of duct tape lay scattered across lab tables, while students hunched over cardboard models of houses in various stages of construction.

The assignment: Design a house that could produce heating and cooling, relying only on sunlight and not-so-simple math. Tenth-graders Luis Almendarez and Jesse Marino demonstrated how, on their model, the ratio of glass to inside space created enough thermal mass to store energy, while the angle of the roof overhangs controlled for the amount light slanting in.

At the start of the year, the students in this class were struggling in math, in danger of falling behind at a juncture critical not just to their prospects for college, but also for productive employment.

Not all students in the class have been willing to engage with the coursework, which teacher Kory Mildenberger says is more demanding than its strictly academic equivalents. But for many, the hands-on exercises have sparked a new appreciation for the subjects.

“I figured out you actually do need math to do something like this,” said Almendarez. “Before I had the feeling you could sort of make it up — but you really do need to know how to do the measurements and make the calculations or it doesn’t work.”

The course was developed through the University of California’s Curriculum Integration (UCCI) Institutes, a program to develop new curricula that will both teach trade job skills and meet core college-going requirements.

“A lot of students may have this idea that they’re not college material — they’re just taking these courses because they’re cool, fun and interesting,’” said UCCI Communications Coordinator Deborah McCaskey. “And then they end up becoming prepared because they’ve taken integrated courses. They think: ‘I know I can do this and it’s interesting. I’m going to apply to college.’”

Teachers say the courses have the potential to breathe new life into academic subjects that even high-achieving students can find abstract and irrelevant.

See UCOP Academic Affairs Communications Coordinator Nicole Freeling’s complete story, featuring a slide show of student images by Communications Web Editor/Manager Ernie Granillo, in the UC Newsroom.

Carolyn Laub, founder and executive director of the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, will speak about creating safe and inclusive schools for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth as part of the President’s Speaker Series.

The talk, which is co-sponsored by OP Pride, is 12 to 1 p.m. Tuesday, June 26, in Franklin Lobby 1 Conference Room.

In her talk, “On California: Safe, Fair, and Inclusive Schools for LGBT Youth,” Laub will describe the state of California’s K-12 schools for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth, including harassment and discrimination LGBT youth face and what research says about effective solutions to create safer schools.

Based on her leadership in the LGBT safe schools movement in California for the past 15 years, Laub will provide her perspective on how anti-bullying policies are helping or harming young people, and what we can expect in the future as policies such as the FAIR Education Act go into effect.

The Gay-Straight Alliance Network is the nation’s largest youth-driven organization that empowers youth to fight homophobia and transphobia in schools.

Laub’s activism has mobilized a vibrant and diverse LGBTQ and straight ally youth movement, by expanding the number of Gay-Straight Alliance clubs in California high schools and middle schools from 40 in 1998 to more than 875 in 2012. The GSA Network’s successful youth-led organizing model is being replicated in other states.

Laub helped lead the effort to pass California’s school nondiscrimination law, the California Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act of 2000. Her organization has trained youth who have successfully advocated for passage of 10 pieces of legislation supporting the health and safety of LGBTQ youth.

In 2000, Laub was honored as one of the first U.S. recipients of the international Ashoka Fellowship for her work as a social entrepreneur. This year, she received the prestigious James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award for her innovative youth empowerment model.

The President’s Speaker Series, “On California,” was initiated by President Mark Yudof last year to showcase the talent and public contributions of UC faculty, alumni and other prominent Californians in the areas of education, policy/politics and research.