Related story: 'Pet' project wins awards, needs support

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By Dateline staff

The California Breastfeeding Coalition recently declared UC Davis a “Mother-Baby Friendly Workplace.” And no wonder:

• We have a Breastfeeding Support Program that provides hospital-grade breast pumps at 50 sites on the Davis and Sacramento campuses, and policy that says participants should have to walk no more than five minutes to reach a lactation site.

• University policy also addresses break times and flexible work arrangements to accommodate pumping.

• Further, the Breastfeeding Support Program provides lactation consultations and support group meetings, and breast-feeding and infant nutrition classes.

So, on May 7, lactation consultant Shirley German was on the steps of the state Capitol, receiving the coalition’s award.

WorkLife and Wellness, a unit of Human Resources, runs the Breastfeeding Support Program, which is co-sponsored by the Foods for Health Institute and the Women’s Resources and Research Center.

More good news for the Breastfeeding Support Program: The UC Davis Medical Center component has received its second consecutive two-year Care Award (good through 2017) from the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners and International Lactation Consultant Association.

Each Care Award program must have at least one certified lactation consultant and provide lactation support five to seven days a week (hospital-based programs) or two to five days a week (community-based programs). Programs also must promote, protect and support breast-feeding.

Last year, the Davis campus’s community-based breast-feeding program received a 2014-16 Care Award.

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Law professor Brian Soucek has been named a winner of a Dukeminier Award for his article “Perceived Homosexuals: Looking Gay Enough for Title VII.”

The title’s “Title VII” refers to the section of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin — but not sexual orientation. According to Soucek, “judges have almost uniformly declined to enfold sexuality within Title VII’s ‘sex’ prong. But, for the past two decades, courts have recognized Title VII claims by employees who are perceived to violate gender stereotypes.”

Soucek’s article will be one of three in the 2015 edition of The Dukeminier Awards from the UCLA School of Law and The Williams Institute, part of the law school. The institute is dedicated to research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy.

Dukeminier awards recognize “the best sexual orientation and gender identity law review articles” of the previous year. Soucek’s winning article appeared originally in the American University Law Review.

Two other UC Davis law professors are Dukeminier Award winners: Courtney Joslin, 2010, and Angela Harris, 2006.

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Communicators Diane Nelson and Kathy Keatley Garvey are “ACEs” again, winners in the annual ACE Critique and Awards Program run by the international Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences.

Nelson, of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, scored her second ACE award for writing. This time it’s  a gold in promotional writing, for “When Good Oil Goes Bad,” about a biosensor developed by a team of students to quickly and easily evaluate the chemical profile of olive oil, providing producers, distributors, retailers and ultimately consumers with an effective, inexpensive way to ensure oil quality. The biosensor ultimately took top prize in an international science competition: iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machines

Garvey, Department of Entomology and Nematology, won gold and silver writing awards and two bronze awards for photography.

She won gold for newspaper writing, for "Football Game? What Football Game? It's Off to Alcatraz for Robert Kimsey and Entomology Club,” about a field trip to Alcatraz on Super Bowl Sunday.

She won a silver for writing for the Web, for “What’s for Lunch?” Posted on her blog, the “Bug Squad,” the story finds Garvey behind the Life Sciences Building, observing lady beetles (or ladybugs) at lunch, dining on aphids.

In one of her winning photos, a praying mantis is eating a western tiger swallowtail. The other is a fun scene from “Bugs and Beer” at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, showing one young man taking a picture of another young man as he eats a bug.

Garvey has now won more than a dozen ACE awards for writing and photography since 2008.

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Dateline UC Davis welcomes news of faculty and staff awards, for publication in Laurels. Send information to dateline@ucdavis.edu.

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