MIDDLE EAST, SOUTH ASIA: UC Davis next fall will begin offering a new undergraduate major in Middle East and South Asia studies. "It's one of a handful of such majors in the country," said Suad Joseph, a professor of anthropology and women's studies and director of the new major. Two years in the approval pipeline, Middle East/South Asia studies will cover the culture, histories, languages and peoples of 44 different countries, from the easternmost Tibet to the westernmost Mauritania. "The major is quite interdisciplinary," said Joseph, "with courses in history, religious studies, art history, anthropology, comparative literature, women and gender studies, political science, Asian American studies and English." Students were the driving force behind the major, she said. A few years ago 874 of them signed a petition requesting courses in Arabic and Hindi, and last fall another 300 submitted a petition in support of the new major as the campus deliberated on it in November 2007. Joseph noted that 9/11 and a convergence of relevant faculty hirings created the critical mass for establishing the new major. She estimates that in five years as many as 50 students will graduate in it. For more information, see mesa.ucdavis.edu....

BIKEWAY BLUES: About $1.6 million of funding is needed to complete a long-hoped-for bicycle lane between Woodland and Davis. The unfunded portion consists of a one mile stretch along County Road 29. The Yolo Board of Supervisors last week revealed that more funds are needed to finish the project. Known as the Davis-Woodland Bikeway, the project runs south from Woodland on County Road 99, turns east on County Road 29, and then heads south on County Road 99D into Davis. So far, $2.3 million in funding has come from the state and Yolo Solano Air Quality Management District. Plans call for most of the bikeway to be done by fall. To bridge the gap, the county is seeking funding from the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, Caltrans and the cities of Davis and Woodland. Cycling safety between the two towns unfortunately made headlines last October when a motorist struck and killed 60-year-old UC Davis employee Francisco 'Willie' Lopez while Lopez was biking to campus along County Road 99....

SPORTS BUZZ: The UC Davis men's tennis team is serving it up quite well in its first official Division I season. The Aggies were ranked No. 75 in last week's Intercollegiate Tennis Association poll. The ranking comes after a perfect 3-0 start for the Aggies. In basketball, men's coach Gary Stewart is now taking the big picture — the team had a 9-13 record as Dateline went to press this week. "I think I've put too much emphasis on winning," Stewart told the California Aggie after his team's 74-57 win against UC Irvine on Jan. 17. "I was hired here to be an educator and to teach, so kind of getting back to that. I think I've put too much pressure on the guys to win, and now we're back to just 'let's get better at this; let's get better at that." ...

YEAR OF THE RAT RACE: Sue Jones, publications coordinator of the UC Davis Law Review and an alum of the master's program in creative writing, was profiled in a Jan. 31 Chicago Tribune story on middle class voters trying to make financial ends meet during a presidential election season. At work, Jones finds the students "nice" and the assignments "interesting" with a chief benefit being that her job wraps up in time for her to pick up son Benjamin from day care. As for the election season, Jones says parenting is important to voting. "I see Benjamin in everything," Jones told the newspaper. "Once I started seeing images from Iraq and hearing what was going on there, every little bit of it was Benjamin. I'm thinking about how terrified those parents had to be, with those bombs raining down on them and their children there. You can be brave for yourself, but it's hard to be brave for your child."