MY HERO: We all dream of meeting our childhood heroes, but News and Information staffer Steve Goldsmith was lucky enough to have that dream come true. As a kid in the Bay Area, Goldsmith grew up watching - and idolizing - Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants. So while on vacation in the area recently, it wasn’t a hard decision for him to buy a charity raffle ticket for a chance at a Mays-autographed baseball. To his own surprise, Goldsmith won the ball, as well as an introduction to the great outfielder himself. It wasn’t a disappointment. “He was low key and very nice,” Goldsmith said. “And he was really involved with the charity - not just a rent-a-celebrity.”

PROUD PAPA: And speaking of celebrity, the University’s new vice president for university relations, Jack Faris, has one in the family. His daughter Anna, a 1999 UW graduate, is the heroine of the current film, Scary Movie. Faris says Anna appeared in a low budget independent film in Seattle last year and did so well she was advised to go to Los Angeles. She did, and in her father’s words, talked her way into a couple of meetings, the result of which was her current part and a three-picture deal with Miramax. Faris calls the film’s humor “truly offensive,” but of course he loved it anyway. “I’m really proud of Anna’s talent,” he says, “but mostly I’m proud that she’s a wonderful, intelligent and sensitive young woman.”

KUDOS: Business Professor Elizabeth Stearns was chosen by the business school’s MBA students to receive the PACCAR Award for Teaching Excellence . . . Dale Winebrenner, a senior research scientist at the Applied Physics Lab, was recognized by the Journal of Glaciology as an exceptional reviewer . . .Sociology Professor Pepper Schwartz is this year’s recipient of the National Distinguished Professor Award given by AKD, the sociology undergraduate honors society, for “outstanding scholarship, teaching, and research that serves humanity” . . . Engineering Dean Denice Denton has been named to the Scientific Advisory Board of ScienceWise.com, the business-to-business workplace on the Web for science and engineering. ¶