Monday was the fifth annual Sustainability Summit, organized by the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability (a.k.a. CACS, you know, in case you were curious). The Earth Week event started off with a few people talking about how awesomely their green projects have been going this year–and then they started handing out the green for green from green, if you know what we’re saying.

CACS announced the 2008 recipients of Green Fund Grants, “supporting innovative campus sustainability projects,” and presented the Berkeley environmental equivalent of The Oscars (for whatever they’re worth), Sustainability Awards.

And the winners are …

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Six Cal profs were among “190 artists, scientists and scholars,” chosen from almost 3,000 applicants (all of whom, we assume, are much smarter than we could ever hope to be), who received 2008 Guggenheim Fellowships. This means that they will get lots of moneys to continue their work on lots of things that smart people work on, like Psych professor Arthur Shimamura’s “examination of a neurocognitive approach to the psychology of art and aesthetics,” and Philosophy professor Paolo Mancosu’s analysis of “the interplay between the philosophy of mathematics and mathematical logic.”

Guggenheim Fellowships, brought to you by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation since 1925, are awarded every year to cool people “who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts,” quite a number of whom are also Nobel Laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners. Plus, we know from experience that if it’s got a Guggenheim’s stamp of approval, it’s got to be pretty darn interesting.

Image Source: Finlay McWalter under GNU Free Documentation
Six Professors Win Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships [Berkeley News Center]
Guggenheim Fellowship [Wikipedia]
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation [Wikipedia]

The Daily Cal won nine awards (EDIT: nine individual, 11 total) at the California College Media Association awards presentation last weekend. Translation: We may not be perfect, but at least we’re better than other daily college newspapers in the state.

The Daily Cal got ultimate bragging rights with first place for “General Excellence,” and the Clog would personally like to claim victory with “Breaking news online.” May we remind you that we placed third last year in this category? We think we shall.

Last year, the Daily Cal won a total of 12 awards, but we’d like to blame the dip in laurel wreaths on UCLA’s general selfishness in picking up about 25 awards. Oh, and perhaps all the inches and time we devoted to oak coverage.

Here’s how the Daily Cal stacked up:
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Is there ever a day when UC Berkeley doesn’t get shiny accolades thrown at its feet? From Rhodes Scholarships to National Book Awards, these past few months have been quite a heavenly awards season for the geniuses among us.

Luckily for the admissions office, here are a few more distinguishing honors to add to the recruitment brochures.

* Discover Magazine released its top 100 most breakthrough science stories of 2007, and two UC Berkeley researchers are on the list. One did something important for the future of nanoscale optical imaging. The other took an interestingly morbid glimpse at the death positioning of fossilized dinosaurs.

* Last week, the Writer’s Guild of America nominated Lowell Bergman–a professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism–for three awards. We’re hoping a J-School tuition boost doesn’t follow.

* Surprise! We have grants, grants, and more grants. Silly British Petroleum hogs the spotlight, but thanks to the California Institue for Regenerative Medicine, we can afford to carry on with stem cell research. UC Berkeley will also assist in the improvement of national math and science education in an ironic move funded by Exxon Mobil.

* Lastly, people graduated! It isn’t exactly an award, but it’s a stellar accomplishment. Bravo.

The Clog offers our congratulations to all, and to all–happy finals.

The California College Media Association recently announced the winners for over 30 categories in media publication for California colleges. The Daily Cal (and even the Clog, motherfuckers) won awards in 12 different categories.

The Clog placed third for “Best Breaking News Online,” under USC’s dailytrojan.com and Santa Clara University’s thesantaclara.com. It must have been for our Craigslist sleuthing, no doubt about it. Let’s hear a nice, hearty golf clap. Good show, old chap.

So now you’re wondering how awesomely the rest of the Daily Cal scored. We’re glad you asked. Massive snaps to the following:

* No. 2, General Newspaper Excellence: Daily Cal
* No. 1, Best Special Section: Daily Cal
* No. 1, Best Headline Portfolio: Theresa Johnson (she totally waved to us today)
* No. 2, Best Headline Portfolio: Alia Salim
* No. 2, Best Illustration: Ian Cheng
* No. 1, Best Cartoon: Brad Aldridge
* No. 3, Best Cartoon, Deana Sobel
* No. 1, Best Sports-Page Design: Nancy Yao
* No. 1, Best News-Page Design: Joyce Lee
* Honorable Mention, Best Photo Illustration: Skyler Reid
* Honorable Mention, Best Features Photograph: Athena Azavedo
* No. 1, Best Sports Photograph: Linda Zhu
* No. 1, Best Arts & Entertainment Review: Stephanie Lee

And you thought we all sucked.

THe CCMA website says

Newspaper entries were judged by the Orange County Register, San Jose Mercury News, Fresno Bee and Sacramento Bee. Online entries were judged by the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, and magazine entries were judged by LA Weekly.

Supposedly the judges commented on many of the entries, but their comments aren’t up on the site yet.

USC and SDSU also snagged a bunch of honors, with USC boasting top spots in the sports categories.

But never you mind that.

Winners at California College Media Association [CCMA]