UC Santa Barbara Geography / Giving to Geog / Established Designated Gift Funds

The Akella Family Scholarship

Undergraduate majors scholarship
Each year the Akella Family Scholariship will be awarded to talented and deserving undergrad student(s) enrolled in the department. The Scholarship will be used to support undergraduate student(s) based on the criteria of compelling family/personal circumstances and academic achievement. Highest consideration is given to those who have unique and challenging obligations (i.e.; re-entry/non-traditional students, extended family responsibilities, etc).

The Nicholas Bourdakis Memorial Fund

Undergraduate majors scholarship
The Bourdakis Fund was established after the tragic death of Nicholas, who died in February 2001 when struck by a car in Isla Vista. He had just declared Geography as his major. This fund helps to keep Nick's memory alive by supporting future generations of outstanding undergraduate students in Geography at UCSB.

Jack and Laura Dangermond Fund

1) Annual graduate and undergraduate GIScience awards, 2) annual, multiple travel expense awards, and 3) an honorarium plus travel expenses for a speaker for the annual Jack & Laura Dangermond Lecturer Series speaker
The Jack & Laura Dangermond Graduate Fellowship and the Jack & Laura Dangermond Undergraduate Scholarship are awarded to a promising graduate and undergraduate geography student in geographic information science (GIS) in the department of Geography. Multiple travel expense awards are available to help students present GIS related work at conferences/workshops. In addition, an internationally outstanding researcher in geographic information science is invited to campus to speak and share research in a public forum annually.

Jack and Laura Dangermond are the co-founders and President and Executive Vice President respectively of Environmental Systems Research Institute. ESRI is a major industrial supplier of software in the field of GIS. Jack Dangermond currently serves on the board of directors of the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science at UCSB

The Jack Estes Memorial Fund

Graduate students in remote sensing award
Jack Estes was a Geography faculty member for over thirty years and the Director of the Geography Remote Sensing Unit. His primary research interests involved the use of remote sensing and geographic information systems technology for analysis of earth resources. Among the agencies he conducted studies for were NASA on land-use change, crop identification and advanced soil moisture conditions; the U.S. Forest Service on fire fuels monitoring and modeling; and the Environmental Protection Agency on hazard and pollution detection and modeling and resources management. The fund was established to support students who are continuing his field of research.

Reginald Golledge Distinguished Lectureship in Geography

Travel expenses and honoraria for annual speaker
The Golledge Distinguished Lecture was instituted in 1984 when Prof. Reginald Golledge lost his sight. The Golledge Distinguished Lecture was instituted in 1984 when Prof. Reginald Golledge lost his sight; the department set up a Distinguished Lecture Series to enable Golledge to invite a distinguished person whose work related to his interest areas and with whom he could interact. Although Reg passed away in May 2009, the Golledge Distinguished Lecture continues in his honor. For a list of Golledge Distinguished Lecturers who have shared their expertise with the department over the years, see The Reginald G. Golledge Distinguished Lecture Series.

The Leal Anne Kerry Mertes Scholarship Award

Undergraduate and graduate student award
Leal Mertes was a Geography faculty member who investigated rivers, wetlands and floodplains globally. Her interests spanned the dynamics of river channel, floodplain and wetlands interactions; the remote sensing of wetland environments; and the long term evolution of large river systems. She also devoted a great deal of effort to educational issues, including curriculum design and assessment.

This fund was established to honor Leal Mertes by supporting UCSB students (graduate or undergraduate) who are planning or are engaged in field research. The Leal Mertes Scholarship is awarded to talented and deserving UCSB students enrolled in any UCSB department where fieldwork in natural science is conducted. For the purposes of this scholarship, "field work" is defined as any off-campus activity devoted to studying, observing, sampling, investigating or measuring natural or human phenomena.

The David Simonett Memorial Fund

Graduate student award
The David S. Simonett Memorial Fund has been established in memory of David S. Simonett, Professor of Geography at UCSB from 1975 until his death on December 22, 1990. A world-renowned authority in the field of remote sensing, Simonett was a founding director of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA). The UC Board of Regents renamed UCSB's division of the NCGIA in honor of Professor Simonett. David Simonett was the first chairman of the Department of Geography from 1975 to 1982 and Dean of Students until 1989. David Simonett provided the vision and energy to build what has become one of the nation's finest Geography Departments here at UCSB.