Notables

Richard V. Burkhauser, the Sarah Gibson Blanding Professor and chair of the Department of Policy Analysis and Management, has joined, for a one-year term, the 2003 Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods to advise the federal Social Security Advisory Board. The panel of expert actuaries, economists and demographers, appointed by the advisory board, is charged with providing technical assistance to the board by reviewing the assumptions and the methods used by the Social Security actuaries to project the future financial status of the funds.

"Specifically, it will advise the Social Security Administration (SSA) on how to improve the way it calculates the expected inflow and outflow of Social Security trust funds over the next 75 years," said Burkhauser. "These calculations are based on a set of budgetary assumptions made by SSA to determine the solvency of the Social Security system. These assumptions are also used to estimate any proposed reforms of the social security system meant to solve the long-term deficit in the current system. Our committee will evaluate the reasonableness of the assumptions and the sensitivity of solvency projections to changes in these assumptions."

Patricia Baron Pollak, associate professor of policy analysis and management and director of the Cornell-Ithaca Community Outreach Partnership Center (Cornell-Ithaca Partnership or C-IP), is the recipient of the first Marcia Marker Feld Award for Outstanding Leadership in the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP). Pollak accepted the award at the association's annual conference in Baltimore in November. The conference had a record attendance of over 900 university faculty and administrators in the various fields of planning.

The selection committee was unanimous in its choice of Pollak for the award, citing her significant leadership within, and the resulting outcomes for, ACSP. In presenting the award, Sanda Kaufman of Cleveland State University noted the organization's debt to Pollak "for her ability to develop a cohesive, coherent, and unanimously accepted set of rules to both codify ACSP's goals and objectives and lay out the strategies and procedures that the organization will follow in their pursuit."

Pollak also has served ACSP as the first program chair for the Fannie Mae Foundation Housing and Community Development conference track and the initiator of the Fannie Mae Foundation student conference scholarships. She has recently been the central figure in developing and implementing strategies to advance the mission of the Faculty Women's Interest Group (FWIG) of ACSP and is the president of the organization. Pollak is on sabbatical leave this term as a senior research fellow at the University of Rhode Island's Urban Field Center in Providence, R.I.

Kenneth A.R. Kennedy, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, received the William W. Howells Book Award from the American Anthropological Association at the group's 100th annual meeting, Nov. 21, in New Orleans. The prize was for God-Apes and Fossil Men: Paleoanthropology of South Asia (University of Michigan Press, 2000), which the selection committee called the best book published in biological anthropology in the past three years.

The publication also has received numerous, laudatory book reviews, including this from the Journal of Physical Anthropology: "Only a scholar with wide-ranging interests, a deep regard for South Asia, and some 40 years of experience could write such a book as this. The scholarship behind this work is daunting and provides a sobering reminder of the depth of knowledge that comes with experience and dedication."