Bargain Barn loves your e-waste

The Bargain Barn is sharing the love on Valentine’s Day — love for the environment — by inviting campus units to drop off their old, unused electronics for recycling, at no charge.

Michelle Borba, Bargain Barn coordinator, said the Bargain Barn normally charges $4 per item, plus salvage labor time to go out and pick up items or handle drop-offs.

But, come Monday, Feb. 14, the Bargain Barn is trying something new: A free drop-off — no recycling fees, no handling fees — from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Bargain Barn on La Rue Road.

All items must be university-owned, but they cannot have UC Davis property stickers, Borba said. She explained that the university does not attach stickers to a lot of items, such as phones, speakers, fax machines, scanners, personal digital assistants and chargers.

There is a size limit: nothing larger than a desktop computer. So feel free to bring in those old desktops, laptops, monitors, keyboards, mice and software; printers and shredders; projectors, televisions, VCR and DVD players; cords and cables; and microwave ovens. And, if any of you remember what these are: typewriters.

Borba said the Bargain Barn also accepts small lab items, such as shakers and water baths.

The e-waste will be turned over to the campus’s contracted vendor, California Electronic Asset Recovery, for environmentally safe disposal.

The Bargain Barn will not accept any items that require decommissioning or which contain hazardous chemicals.

Have something that isn’t noted here, and wonder if it’s OK to bring it in? Contact the Bargain Barn, (530) 752-2145 or bargainbarn@ucdavis.edu.

Active shooter training Feb. 14

Ninety minutes of your time on Monday, Feb. 14, may save your life — if you spend that time in an active shooter training class. It is scheduled to begin at noon; there is no charge and you need not sign up in advance — just show up to Ballroom B at the Activities and Recreation Center.

The campus Police Department is presenting the active shooting training, with the title referring to armed and dangerous people who may come on the campus.

The class offers advice and strategies to increase the likelihood of surviving such an incident. Topics include: how to escape, take cover and hide; how to make effective 911 calls and provide good descriptions of suspects; and how to recognize and take advantage of opportunities to overpower such suspects.

More sessions are planned and will be announced later. Training sessions for smaller or specialist groups can also be arranged.

For more information, contact Lt. Matt Carmichael, (530) 752-5350 or mecarmichael@ucdavis.edu.

Transition: Interim director of humanities institute

Dean Jessie Ann Owens of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies announced this week that Beth E. Levy, associate professor of musicology, will serve as interim director of the UC Davis Humanities Institute in 2011-12.

Levy will fill in for Carolyn de la Peña, professor of American studies, who will be on sabbatical in Barcelona, Spain.

De la Peña is completing her fourth year as director and, Owens said, will return to the post in 2012-13 to complete her five-year term. During her last year, there will be a campuswide search for her replacement, Owens said.

Owens said Levy is well versed in the workings of the humanities institute, having convened an institute-sponsored faculty research seminar on "California Pageantry" (for the California Cultures Initiative), and having participated in another, on the "Cultural Reverberations of Modern War."

Levy is the author of Frontier Figures: American Music and the Mythology of the American West, forthcoming from the University of California Press.

She is chair of the HArCS Graduate Assembly this year, and, as such, serves as a member of the Faculty Advisory Committee. And she can occasionally be heard playing her violin with the university's Baroque Ensemble.

She is the recipient of the UC Presidential Research Fellowship in the Humanities, as well as fellowships from the American Musicological Society, UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation.