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Recollections: Part 2 – “While Rolling” is preceded by “While Enrolling” Autobiographical Alumna Recollections of Berkeley – Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD’83

Updated on 10/18/2022

Received on 10/18/2022

 

Updated on 10/13/2022

Image source: UC, Berkeley, October 2022, UC Berkeley Social Sciences Connect

 

On May 24, 2018

 

Recollections: Part 1 – My days at Berkeley, 9/1978 – 12/1983 –About my doctoral advisor, Allan Pred, other Professors and other Peers

https://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2018/03/15/recollections-my-days-at-berkeley-9-1978-12-1983-about-my-doctoral-advisor-allan-pred-other-professors-and-other-peer/

 

Part 2 places an emphasis on my feelings as time had passed by and I was looking back in time.

I describe my eventful five years at Berkeley, 9/1978 – 12/1983, as a walk on a steep uphill trail, simulating a climb on Mount Rainier. Why this mountain?

• Mount Rainier is the highest mountain of the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest (PNW), and the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Washington.

My arrival to California and enrollment at Berkeley was equivalent to climbing the highest mountain in the PNW. 

• Mount Rainier is a large active stratovolcano located 59 miles (95 km) south of Seattle, in Mount Rainier National Park. 

My arrival in the San Francisco Bay Area was like approaching a cultural stratovolcano, and the Californian landscape I traversed on my daily rides was like a daily visit to a national park along highway 280 between Palo Alto and San Francisco at 8:30AM and 5:30PM

The Gutenberg Express bus service between Stanford and UC, Berkeley would drop me off at Doe Memorial Library and I would climb the campus path to McCone Hall or to the I-House on Piedmont Avenue.

Some days, I would arrive with BART to Berkeley and use the Bogart Shuttle to the West Gate.

Berkeley Campus Architecture, Image Source: Google Images

At Berkeley I walked uphill from Moffit Hall to Cory Hall when I taught a Quantitative Methods upper division course three trimesters in two academic years. I walked northeast from Giannini Hall to Wurster Hall at the South Gate or from Crescent/Springer Gateway at the West Gate to the Health Services building, which was located where today the Haas School of Business is located on the southeast corner of the campus.  

While the walking paths were the most magnificent arboretum design of any campus in the US and the topography seemed most pleasantly hilly (288 m to 860 m), the elevation felt like “climbing” a prominent mountain, in my mind, Mount Rainier.

Trees of Berkeley. Slide show with photos and identification of several notable trees on campus.

SOURCE: http://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/campus_research/landscape 

 

Like Mount Rainier in my Doctoral Dissertation, filed 12/1983, titled “Corporate Growth and Locational Interdependence: Observations on the Production, Location, Merger Activity and Organizational Structure of American Paper Companies.”

 

Mount Rainier, Image Source: Google Images

 

I researched, the Pacific Northwest timber industry, the hemlock evergreen tree used for its pulpwood by the paper industry, studying its production and location. The world’s leading paper company, International Paper (IP) Co’s timberland holdings in the Mount Rainier region are included in one of the chapters. This material was extracted from IP’s Corporate Annual Reports, 1901-1975, located in the stacks of the Graduate School of Business (GSB) at Stanford University in the summers of 1980 and 1981, when I was in an exchange program between UCB and Stanford’s GSB.

 

As a memorium to my mentors, I describe the interactions and the lasting impact they had on my professional life. It was a way to compose their eulogies as an autobiographical account of professor – graduate student relationships.

 

“While Enrolling”

Public Eulogy of Note: Prof. Allan Pred, University of California, Berkeley

Edit

http://oldweb.geog.berkeley.edu/PeopleHistory/faculty/AllanPred_InMemoriam.html#A%20reflection%20by%20Aviva%20Lev-Ari

January 2007

The sudden and most untimely death of Prof. Allan Pred, my doctoral advisor, 1978-1983, was both an unexpected event and very shocking and unbelievable news to every doctoral student Allan had, to our department, our discipline and academic sciences fields in the US and the world.

A giant of unprecedented proportions is gone. His legacy is eternal.

I was stunned and couldn’t believe the cause of death: lung cancer. Allan never smoked, biked up hill every day six month of every year, was slimmer than most of us, enjoyed lunch more than most of us and was engaged intensely in research and writing a rather solitary activity which caused him much pleasure. This was not a stressful activity since he was a great writer, most prolific, published in quality and quantity unmatched proportions compared to most other faculty at UC Berkeley. Thus he was not under pressure from the administration. He joined UC in 1962 at 26 years old and was tenured before he was 30 years old!! No publisher ever rejected his books or requested fundamental changes to his writings.

We are all mortals. How can anyone predict the risk of dying based on life style? Allan, the healthiest of all, died at the age of 70 (1936-2007) from lung cancer as a non-smoker. For Allan no modification to his activities of daily living was recommended!!

Who was Allan to me since 9/1978 and before? A mentor, a teacher, a friend, a well-wisher, a source of encouragement, a critic, a standard setter, and a source of over thirty years of inspiration which started with reading his Location and Behavior (1967), while I was a Masters student in urban planning at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, 1973 – 1976.

During these three years, I was a student of Prof. Barry Kibel, who got his PhD in the City Planning Department at UC Berkeley under Prof. Michael Tietz in Planning and Allan Pred in Geography. Prof. Kibel encouraged me to apply to UC Berkeley and explore working with Allan Pred. Kibel’s recommendation letter was a determining factor in my initial contact with Allan Pred in 1978.

I was very fond of Allan, wrote poetry for him as I corrected the draft of my doctoral thesis because of the intense inspiration he provided and the challenging comments he made on my writings. I knew that nothing but very exceptional would be approved, needless to say signed. Allan’s breath of interests included organizational behavior economics. This enabled me to work on a topic which was very interdisciplinary in nature and to combine location theory with this area in economics, which took off later, in the late 80s and 90s, chiefly through the work of Prof. Paul Krugman, an entire decade after my thesis was completed.

Prior to my graduation from Berkeley, I worked in several academic institutions: at HUJI, as RA and TA, four years. At Technion – IIT, as research associate, two years. At UCB, as TA, two years.

Allan’s guidance during my graduate studies at Berkeley yielded a body of research which facilitated my 20 year career in the “for-profit” sector in key industries such as top tier management consulting (SRI, Int’l), computer hardware and software (Amdahl Corp), federal funded research and development (MITRE) and publishing (McGraw-Hill). Allan’s most impact was on my positions in the top tier management consulting industry: Stanford Research Institute (SRI) Int’l in Menlo Park, and the Monitor Group in Cambridge, MA, to where I moved in 1990. Allan suggested that I inquire about opportunities at Arthur D. Little in Cambridge, MA; he knew all about the management consulting field.

At SRI, my dissertation under Allan Pred was viewed as a readymade body of theory that I could apply to their clients in mature industries requiring new conceptualization for revitalization of otherwise stagnant sectors of the economy. It was in the mid 80’s when the chemical and automotive industries needed a new strategy. My thesis at Berkeley under Allan Pred could provide consulting for SRI clients such as General Motors, DuPont, Alcan, and Phone-Poulenc, as I did till late 1988 when I joined Amdahl Corporation in Sunnyvale, CA.

Without him, I would not have had the confidence to get my first job in the US at the Stanford Research Institute in 1984, where I held the director title at age 35. I knew I had Allan’s blessing and that should I need to build another theoretical model, he would accept my phone call from Menlo Park and continue to instruct me. Without him, I might not have received the three teaching assistantships which covered my tuition as a non-California resident for the first three years at UC Berkeley. Without him, my admission to the University of Chicago (his own alma mater) might not have been transferred or transferable to UC Berkeley.

Allan gave me my first chance in the US, and following graduation from Berkeley, I took off to conduct applied research in corporate America. The twenty years I worked in this field, yielded over sixty technical reports and over 200 invited lectures. Allan knew the details and told me that my career demonstrated the viability of our discipline outside of academe. I had the opportunity to share with him these facts and discuss their impact on corporate decision making.

I met him for the last time in 2000 in San Francisco in the lobby of the Museum Of Modern Art, and we walked together to an exhibition in architecture by the most gifted woman architect in the 20th century, Ms. Zaha Haddid. Having the chance to look at her exhibit in his company and experience many moments when both of us were in awe at her ingenuity made this SF visit the most special afternoon in my entire life. We looked at each other with complete admiration for her accomplishments in computer graphics and concept modeling. He told me, “I planned to go to her exhibit, I am glad, because of you and with you I am here in San Francisco today.” We continued to another exhibit on the upper floor on Wired magazine since its inception. Allan told me that he likes to browse there once in a while, though he does not do it often enough. Having a chance to look together at the first five issues, issued in the early 80s, caused him great joy.

We had an hour of talking over his favorite cappuccino with all the trimmings in the museum cafeteria. He was smiling constantly, asking questions, and continuing professor-graduate student relations as if twenty years had not gone by. We parted with his bear hug and few e-mails since. In May 2002 when I arrived in Monterey, CA, I e-mailed him to say that he is invited to visit. He said, “another time, since I am leaving to Sweden in one week, after I’ll return to Berkeley by mid of August 2002.”

I met Allan at the memorial for Prof. Vance, the centennial to the department, and on a talk I gave at the Haas School of Business in 2001 when he came to listen. In 2002/2003, while living in Monterey on an assignment for McGraw-Hill, I visited the campus and gave a talk at Berkeley’s Center for Globalization and Information Technology, where I meet Dick Walker, who was a discussant, but missed Allan who was on sabbatical.

I planned to share with Allan my new research on biomarkers for cardiovascular disease, in particular a forthcoming paper in American Journal of Cardiovascular Drugs. I waited to have it published to let Allan know. Now it is too late to share.

Allan, was a person who, once you knew, you knew you were not going to ever forget. For myself and his other doctoral students, Allan remains vivid in memory, eternal like the memory of a much loved parent.

Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD ’83

http://oldweb.geog.berkeley.edu/PeopleHistory/faculty/AllanPred_InMemoriam.html#A%20reflection%20by%20Aviva%20Lev-Ari

 

Public Eulogy of Note: Prof. David Hooson, University of California, Berkeley

Edit

http://oldweb.geog.berkeley.edu/PeopleHistory/faculty/HoosonMemorial/DavidHooson_Memories.html

2008

I am very sad to learn about another great loss to humanity, to academia, to UC Berkeley, and to human geography.

David Hooson had probably the greatest generosity of spirit I have encountered in my life.

His courses were a 360 degree vista of human ecology with the finest sensitivity to the human condition paralleled only by that in Bernard Q. Nietschmann’s courses at Berkeley.

David Hooson will always have a special place in my heart for being most kind to me in several critical junctions in my career: (a) the admission to the doctoral program in the department, (b) while I was a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, 1978-1983, as an international student in his courses, in need of TLC while facing the unfamiliar academic landscape at UCB (c) meeting with me when my doctoral advisor, Prof. Allan Pred was on Sabbatical and I was writing my thesis, (d) his warm greetings at the end of the graduation ceremony, 5/1983, when I held my 18 month old son in my arms and he said to me, “Aviva, you are the only PhD we had to have a baby while a doctoral student, and to graduate in five years, while our average used to be 7 1/4 years” (e) a lengthy conversation during an open house weekend in the department in the late 80s, (f) a conversation during the memorial to James E. Vance, Jr., (g) a conversation at a memorial lecture to Professor Carl O. Sauer, and on our last meeting at the centennial celebration of the department.

David Hooson and no other man, has let me feel that he offered his undivided attention to me. In our interactions, he offered as much time it took to complete an intellectual exchange.

To Prof. Hooson’s family, I say that his legacy as a humanist will remain in the minds of all his colleagues and all his students — a touching smile just to comfort the other’s heart. He put so many at peace with themselves.

Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD’83

http://oldweb.geog.berkeley.edu/PeopleHistory/faculty/HoosonMemorial/DavidHooson_Memories.html

 

“While Rolling”

When Prof. Allan Pred was on sabbatical, 1980 – 1983, Prof. Michael Watts served as my acting advisor.

On May 13, 2018, I wrote:

Dear Prof. Watts,

I remember you so very fondly. You put me at ease while the competition among the peers was fierce. I had deficits in English language, American culture, and the Berkeley campus-specific cultural ecology. I had to learn the ropes fast!! [Some I did not get right then, and even today I make some mistakes.]

It was providence that aligned Prof. Allan Pred to hover over my Berkeley existence.

If he were alive, he would have become familiar with my professional activities, after 2007, the 3rd and 4th phases. He praised me for getting the job at SRI International. Prof. Pred had attended two talks I gave at Berkeley over the years, one organized by Prof. Arie Segev at the Haas School of Business, and the second and third talks arranged by Prof. Michel Laguerre at the Center for Globalization and Information Technology. Allan knew that I took the job at McGraw-Hill in Monterey, CA while he was on sabbatical. We even discussed his potential visit to Monterey upon his return from Sweden, August 2002, although the time was left open.

I believe that Professor Pred would have said that a professional is judged by “his or her’s contributions to science, society, making the world a better place for others and the pursuit of happiness.” His work was interdisciplinary in nature, and I have pursued the interface between disciplines since my Masters thesis at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 1973-1976. In 25 years of working in corporate America for companies that are #1 in their sector, i.e.: I received and accepted eleven job offers!

Chiefly,

• SRI International, Menlo Park, CA – Largest THINK TANK in the US [My Title: Director Business & Economic Statistics]
• Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale, CA  – 3rd largest Main Frame Computer company in the World, acquired by Fujitzu [My Title: Manager, Demand Forecasting and Modeling]
• Monitor Group, Cambridge, MA – Top Tier Management Consulting, acquired by Deloitte [Senior Methodology Consultant, Financial Sector]
• MITRE, Bedford, MA – Largest Federal Funded R&D Corporation [My Title: Head of Research, Economic & Decision Analysis Center]
• Perot Systems Corporation, Cambridge, MA – Top IT Outsourcer, acquired by Dell Computers [My Title: Director, Advance Analytics Digital Marketplaces]
• McGraw-Hill/CTB, Monterey, CA – World Oldest Publisher [My Title: Director of Research: Methods and Applications]

I have used economic geography and industrial organization economics every day — the cognitive skills provided by geography as a discipline have served as the best preparation for applied research in diverse institutions. These employers needed people to be able to think out of the box. I had to devise solutions and present them to management. 

I was reliving Allan Pred’s unique approaches to research and the broad spectrum of topics he has written about, so creatively.

“Data Modeling” is my middle name. I was a geographer, an economist/econometrician, a statistician/research designer. An urban planner/transportation analyst, an organization theorist, a social scientist — a “variant” of Prof. Allan Pred not in academia, but in multiple sectors of the American economy that needed people who used critical thinking processes and methods in formulating original actionable solutions.

It was the confluence of existential forces that assisted my survival while thriving in the non-academic world, where the rules of behavior are less crisp than the determinants for the “pathway to academic tenure.”

 

• The Mentor

Often musing on Allan Pred’s creativity and confidence, I saw a very slender blue-eyed lion, the king of all mammals, walking in full command of the Berkeley hills or bicycling uphill. Never rushing, running or escaping, it was always full sun, no shadows in sight, the dominion king arrived, The Chairman.

Other Mentors

The three signatures on my doctoral dissertation, are:

• Allan Pred [died in 2007 at 70]
• Richard Walker, and
• John Freeman in the Business School [died in 2008 at 63]

 

• The Institution

The aura of Berkeley as an institution of excellence has been pervasive. No one could pronounce my name. (No hiring manager could go wrong, all reported with assertiveness, “We have hired a Berkeley PhD and an ex-director from SRI”.)

 

• The Candidate

The unique “born with” a “primordial” endowment that Aviva had demonstrated since the 6th grade in Israel – an ability to produce original syntheses from very complex multi-factor interactions.

For 25 years a quantitative economic geographer in the non-academic world – a top designer of algorithm-based decision support systems (DSS) for operations management problems [N=26 modeling solutions completed by 2004].

I have addressed:

• a most diverse range of business and organizational problems involving decision-making under uncertainty with complex constraints;
• in multiple industries: automotive, chemical, advanced materials, paper & allied products, computer hardware, computer software, B-to-B electronic commerce, financial sector, adaptive educational testing, and education publishing;
• for several functional domains: product planning, marketing and market research, finance, geographic plant and HQs location decisions, and resource allocation for R&D initiatives;
• in half a dozen theoretical & applied disciplines: operations research, behavioral economics, multivariate non-linear statistics, econometrics, urban geography, and city transportation planning;
• Listed here is a sample of problems that I solved and/or designed the modeling for, including, technology assessment models, modeling competitiveness, software and intellectual property (IP) pricing models, real-time supply chain planning, new product demand forecasting, and modeling computer hardware obsolescence.

Enjoyed every moment of it and was/am so very proud to have been through the trajectory from University of California, BERKELEY to the non-academic world, for which Berkeley prepared me so well.

 

A related article for review:

• Reflections on a Four-phase Career: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN, March 2018