 NEW ON BOARD: CINDY MISCIKOWSKI UCLA Arts welcomes UCLA alumna Cindy Miscikowski to our Board of Visitors. Miscikowski represented the 11th district on the Los Angeles City Council from 1997-2005. During her tenure, she focused on quality of life issues affecting neighborhoods and the important public policy issues of the region.A knowledgeable City Hall veteran, she served as staff to councilman Marvin Braude for 22 years. For 18 of those years she was his chief deputy, managing and coordinating the activities of the council staff, handling all planning-related matters and serving as principal legislative consultant. In mid-1994 she became executive director of the new Skirball Museum and Cultural Center in Brentwood. Her duties included overseeing the final phases of construction of the $100 million facility and readying it for the public. She left the Skirball in 1996 to run for the City Council. Miscikowski served on the board of directors of the Southern California Planning Congress from 1990-94 and is a professionally-credentialed member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. In 2001 she received the American Planning Association’s Distinguished Leadership Award for an Elected Official. Miscikowski and her husband, attorney and developer Doug Ring, are avid collectors of contemporary art and active supporters of numerous community organizations, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles Conservancy, AIDS Project Los Angeles and radio station KCRW. DR. MOHINDER SAMBHI PLEDGES $1 MILLION TO UCLA Arts TO ESTABLISH ENDOWED CHAIR IN INDIAN MUSIC Dr. Mohinder Sambhi has pledged over $1 million to the Department of Ethnomusicology to establish the Mohindar Brar Sambhi Endowed Chair in Indian Music, named in honor of his late wife. The endowed chair will support the teaching and research activities of a distinguished faculty member by underwriting research, graduate student and postdoctoral fellow support, and special projects. “It is gratifying that I can honor my wife with a gift that will ensure that the study of Indian musical culture will continue to be supported at UCLA,” says Dr. Sambhi, a professor emeritus in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. |  |
“Dr. Sambhi’s pledge—to my knowledge the largest-ever private gift for Indian music study to a university—has enormous value for the field of ethnomusicology, which has for a half-century championed the teaching of Indian music, as well as other musical traditions from around the world, in American universities,” says Daniel Neuman, executive vice chancellor and provost of UCLA and a scholar of Indian music. “This gift will ensure the continued commitment to teaching and scholarship of Indian music at UCLA.” The study of Indian music at UCLA was developed within the music department’s Institute of Ethnomusicology, which was established in 1960 by the late ethnomusicology pioneer Mantle Hood. The earliest teacher of Indian music at UCLA was the late T. Vishwanathan from South India, who taught flute and vocal music. Throughout the years, many teachers, musicians and scholars have come to UCLA. All, in their own way, helped to consolidate the nearly 50-year tradition of the teaching and performance of Indian music. The Mohindar Brar Sambhi Endowed Chair in Indian Music is part of UCLA’s Ensuring Academic Excellence initiative, a five-year effort aimed at generating $250 million in private commitments specifically for the recruitment and retention of the very best faculty and graduate students. The initiative was launched in June 2004 and its goals include $100 million to fund 100 new endowed chairs for faculty across campus, $100 million for fellowships and scholarships in the College of Letters and Science, and $50 million for fellowships and scholarships in UCLA’s professional schools. |
