Opportunities for Distinction Building Boosters Faculty and staff members, alumni and other supporters are among the latest contributors to the Division of Biological Sciences' "Opportunities for Distinction" campaign. Their gifts and pledges brought the campaign total to $411,894 by the end of the academic year. The Opportunities for Distinction campaign aims to raise $9.5 million for endowed faculty chairs, graduate-student fellowships, new facilities for the UC Davis Herbarium and the Botanical Conservatory, office space for the division's Undergraduate Educational Enrichment and Outreach Programs, and a computer laboratory that will be devoted to training in the new field of bioinformatics. Many of the new facilities would be located within the future Sciences Laboratory Building, but their costs are not covered by the $47 million in state bond financing for the instructional lab building. Kate Mawdsley, an associate university librarian emerita, gave $25,000 toward a plant-identification laboratory in the new herbarium. She made her gift in memory of June McCaskill, a longtime curator who died in May. Mawdsley said she would like to see the herbarium continue and expand the public service for which McCaskill, a weed identity expert, was widely known. "Heaven knows the herbarium could be much more effective with better space and working facilities," said Mawdsley, who has devoted so many hours volunteering at the herbarium over the past eight years that she has earned the honorary title of research associate. A $10,000 gift from John Brinley, a Davis businessman and UC Davis supporter, will also go toward the herbarium. Tom Rost, associate dean for the Division of Biological Sciences, and his wife, Ann, donated $10,000 for office space for the outreach programs. "I have been working on the K-12 science teaching internship program and feel committed to improving the numbers and quality of science teachers in the state," said Rost, chair of the building committee. "Contributing to the development of space in the new building seemed like a small positive step to help with these efforts." An alumnus of the UC Davis vegetable crops graduate program and spouse, who wish to remain unnamed, made a $10,000 unrestricted contribution. And Tung-tien Sun, Ph.D. ' 74, biochemistry, and his wife, donated $2,000 to name two seats in the Great Hall, a 500-seat lecture hall to be constructed along with the Sciences Laboratory Building. Sun is a professor of dermatology at New York University Medical School.