Gator Buzz
IN NOVEMBER Stan Mazor (attended
’60–’65) and his former Intel colleagues Marcian E. "Ted" Hoff, Jr. and
Federico Faggin received the White House’s National Medal of Technology and
Innovation for developing the first microcomputer. The medal is the 
highest
U.S. award given to scientists, engineers and inventors. Another innovative
Gator, Charles
Hall (B.A., ’67; M.A., ’68), who gave the world the waterbed,
has gone on to make waves with inflatable kayaks produced by his company, Advanced
Elements. Earlier this year, Hall, Clayton Haller (B.A.,
’95) and Ryan
Pugh (B.A.,
’08),
all design and industry grads, received an I.D. Annual Design Review award
for their AirFusion Kayak. A Gator designer of the fashion kind, Christopher
Collins (B.A.,’03), made
it work for 11 episodes on the latest season of "Project Runway" before he
returned to the San Francisco-based line he runs with creative
director Erica Tanamachi (M.F.A., ’07). Musical innovator
Israel "Cachao" Lopez
is the subject of "Cachao: Uno Más," a production
of SF State’s DOC Film Institute that began airing in the fall on PBS’s "American
Masters" series. Alumni Day’s panel of SF State
film masters included visual effects artist Victoria Livingstone (B.A.,
’85),
sound engineer Christopher Boyes (B.A., ’85) and
documentarian Steven Okazaki (B.A., ’76), who hold
a total of six Academy Awards among them. If
you were onthe edge of your seat
reading
Stieg Larsson’s novel,
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," get ready to scoot forward in a theatre
near you. Another Academy Award-winner, Steve Zaillian (B.A.,
’75),
wrote the screenplay for the soon-to-be- released American film version. Also
in the riveting film department: Pulitzer-winning Washington Post reporter
Jose Antonio Vargas (B.A., ’04) wrote and co-produced "The
Other City," a
documentary on AIDS in America that opened in Washington, D.C. earlier this
year and is screening in cities nationwide. Moving from the screen to the stage:
Tony Award- winning conductor and music director Paul Gemignani (B.A.,
’68) will be inducted into
the
Theater Hall of Fame in January. Then comes February, the busy season for Roger
Vincent (B.A.,’53), Abraham Lincoln presenter. A score minus
five years ago the retired school 
teacher
started speaking at schools and museums, where his audiences have included
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Vincent is not the only education grad with
a mission to bring history alive and an uncanny resemblance to a dead president. Fred
Rutledge (cred., ’80), chief of staff for the California
Center for Military History,
makes the lecture circuit as Theodore Roosevelt. This year triumphs of the
historic kind came to the San Francisco Giants as well as the University’s
Creative Writing Department, which just claimed the literary equivalent of
a sweep in a baseball series: Alumni Anhvu Buchanan (M.F.A.,
’10), Roxanne
Beth Johnson (attended ’02–’05) and Dustin Heron (B.A.,
’05; M.A., ’09) took home all of the San Francisco Art’s Foundation’s
distinguished 2010 Joseph Henry Jackson, James Duval Phelan and Mary Tanenbaum
Literary Awards.
For more Gator news, visit: http://sfstategatorbuzz.wordpress.com
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