CHALLENGE GRANT . . . The Challenge Learning Center of East Palo Alto was recently awarded $24,804 by the federal government to fund the center's Youth Leadership Program for high school students and a high school readiness program for eighth-graders at Menlo Oaks School in Menlo Park. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, helped present the money at a ceremony Feb. 17 at the school.
MOVING ON . . . Palo Alto resident and prominent banker Roger V. Smith announced recently he will resign as vice chairman of Silicon Valley Bank, which he helped found in 1983. Poor real estate loans the bank made in recent years overshadowed the success the bank has had in spurring growth in Silicon Valley's high-technology markets. Smith said he will begin a career in venture capital with a Menlo Park firm that specializes in technology investments.
MULTICULTURAL DIRECTOR . . . Stanford University announced last week that Sally M. Dickson, associate dean for student affairs and lecturer at Stanford Law School, has been named director of the university's Office of Multicultural Development. She succeeds acting director Judith Little, who has held the post since last May, when Sharon Parker resigned. Dickson will be responsible for monitoring the school's hiring and promotion of employees who are African-American, Asian-American, Native American, Chicano/Latino, female or disabled. At the Law School, Dickson is credited with putting together over the past six years a recruitment effort that has doubled, from 500 to 1,000, the numbers of minority applicants the school gets annually.
SWING SHIFT . . . Palo Alto Medical Foundation physician William Straw has been named president-elect of the Association of Major League Baseball Team Physicians. He will assume the post in December 1994. Straw is team physician for the San Francisco Giants and San Jose Sharks. . . . In other news, the medical foundation recently was awarded a $20,000 grant for having the highest patient satisfaction among 30 TakeCare health maintenance organizations in Northern California. Dr. Sydney Hecker, the medical foundation's managed care medical director, accepted the award.
AT CASTILLEJA . . . Among 12 students recently named to the Cum Laude scholarship society, a national honor society recognizing academic excellence, were Sara Gilliland of Menlo Park, Rebecca Kwaan of Palo Alto and Carolyn Seeth of Atherton. Gilliland was also among four students named finalists in the 1994 National Merit Scholarship Program. . . . Also at Castilleja, student Emily Mace recently was selected by the California Band Directors Association to perform in the 1994 California All-State Honor Band last weekend in Fresno. Mace, who plays the French horn, was one of 250 students chosen from a field of 600 to play in the prestigious musical event.
INNER-CITY CRISIS . . . Poor black and Latino neighborhoods of American cities have become "reservations" for the jobless not unlike American Indian reservations, according to Sylvia Wynter, a Stanford University professor of Spanish and Portuguese who has organized a three-day conference to explore solutions to the problem. The symposium, titled, "The Two Reservations: Western Thought, the Color Line and The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Revisited," starts March 3 at 9 a.m. in room 112 of the Center for Educational Research at Stanford. It runs through March 5. For more information, call the Stanford African and Afro-American Studies Program at 723-3781.
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