• Award for Overall Excellence: Deirdre Pfeiffer
• Harvey S. Perloff Scholarship: Ava Bromberg
• Mimi Perloff Award: Adam Garcia, Revel Sims
• Service to the Department: Guillermo Jaimes, Sandra O'Flaherty, Matt Lum, Maureen Purtill
• Service to the Community: Nancy Villasenor, Jennifer Tran, Bonique Salinas
• California Planning Foundation Continuing Student Merit Award: Peter Carter
• California Planning Foundation Graduating Student Merit Award: Lily Song
• Julie Roque Fellowship for Environmental Justice: Vanessa Carter, Anna Kim
• American Institute of Certified Planners Outstanding Student Award: Ava Bromberg
• Vanessa Dingley Fellowship: Konstantina Soureli
• Katherine Gouvias Fellowship: Kennetha Gaines
• James Ortner Memorial Fellowship: Ryan Dunn
• Alumni Book Awards: Andrea Osgood, Michael Matsunaga
• Most Valued Alumnus: Stanley Hoffman

Genevieve Carpio, who will be awarded her M.A. in Urban Planning in June, has received a Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship to use toward her Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. Her particular focus is on how people of color and the working class assert and renegotiate their place in the city through the built environment.

Ford Foundation Fellowships at the predoctoral level are intended to identify and facilitate the academic, intellectual, and professional development of individuals who have demonstrated superior scholarship, are committed to a career in teaching and research at the college level, show promise of future achievement as scholars and teachers, and are well prepared to use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students. The award consists of an annual stipend of $20,000 for three years, tuition and fees, and attendance to the Conference of Ford Fellows.

Michael Smart, a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Urban Planning, has been selected to attend the 2007 Eno Leadership Conference. The conference, which will be held May 14-18 in Washington, D.C., is designed to provide exceptionally promising master’s and doctoral degree students who plan to pursue careers in transportation with a first-hand look at how transportation policy is developed and implemented, said Tom Downs, Eno Transportation Foundation President and CEO.

Smart is among a select group of students who will meet with top government officials, association leaders, and members of Congress and their staff members. Candidates were also chosen based on their leadership ability and potential to assume a senior role in a transportation-related organization in the future. Universities were allowed to nominate one student from each transportation-related discipline.

The ENO Transportation Foundation was created in 1921 by William Phelps Eno, a pioneer in the field of traffic control. Foundation programs cover all modes of transportation in the public and private sectors.

Dontraneil Clayborne has been selected to receive the 2007 WARA (West African Research Association) Pre-Doctoral Fellowship for his research project on "Colonial Legacy and Post-Colonial Approaches to Urban Land Tenure, Property Rights and Slum Upgrading in Ghana." Clayborne was one of two recipients selected from a national pool of applicants. The fellowship will provide travel funds and a research stipend to enable him to conduct preliminary fieldwork for his dissertation proposal.

Second-year Urban Planning MA student Adina Ringler has been selected by the Los Angeles Chapter of the Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) to receive the Myra Frank Memorial Scholarship for 2006. She will receive her award at the group’s upcoming Annual Scholarship and Awards Dinner. The Myra L. Frank Memorial Scholarship was established in 2005 by the Los Angeles Chapter of WTS to encourage women to pursue career paths in transportation. The scholarship, in the amount of $5,000, is awarded to women pursuing graduate studies in transportation or a related field. The award is competitive and based on the applicant’s specific transportation involvement and goals, job skills and academic record.

In her personal statement for the award, Ringler wrote, “When deciding to study Urban Planning, I knew that my education would not only come from the extraordinary professors at UCLA, but also from the city itself. The complexities and challenges of urban planning in Los Angeles provide an exemplary forum in which to study the connections between transportation, land use, and environmental protection. As a transportation planner, I hope to actively work towards new transportation geographies in Los Angeles.”

Ringler said she became interested in transportation research in the Transportation Economics course taught by UCLA Urban Planning Professor Donald Shoup. Since taking the course she has become a graduate student researcher, working with Urban Planning faculty on transportation and green sector issues. Outside of UCLA she has worked as an intern with Global Green USA’s Green Building Resource Center in Santa Monica where she helped inform homeowners, architects, and developers about green building products and principles and organize monthly educational panel discussions on various green building topics. Ringler also is involved with Leaders in Sustainability with UCLA’s Institute of the Environment.

Victor Pineda has received the Jefferson Award for making a difference in his community. Jefferson awards are administered by the American Institute for Public Service, a national foundation that honors community service. Each week the San Francisco Chronicle features a Bay area resident who has won a Jefferson Award and Pineda is featured this week.

Pineda, a first year Urban Planning doctoral student, has worked on the U.N. Disability Treaty and the World Bank’s Disability and Development Team. In 2005 he founded the Victor Pineda Foundation, a nonprofit organization that inspires, educates and informs the global audience on the capabilities and potential of people with disabilities. The VPF helped start the country's first inclusive media center.

Pineda has made four documentary films, including “In Cuba, Disabled.” His exploration of why some countries are able to take care of their citizens and others are not has taken him as far away as Thailand and Cuba. Victor Pineda was 7 years old when his family moved to America from Venezuela where he had been denied education past kindergarten because of his muscular dystrophy. He is currently working on a new film that follows disabled Serbian women who are seeking love and building families.

Second year M.A. student Karina Muniz was the first place outstanding student scholarship winner for APA's California Planning Foundation (CPF) for 2006. Muniz is the student representative to the Board of Directors of the CPF, a nonprofit, charitable corporation established to further the professional practice of planning in California.

M.A. student Genevieve Sharrow received the California Planning Foundation Los Angeles Section Award.