Five South Bay high school seniors won...

Five South Bay high school seniors won $2,000 National Merit Scholarships for academic achievement. Only 2,000 students nationwide are chosen for the honor. The South Bay recipients are: Edward S. Ahn and Robert Y. Shih of Palos Verdes Peninsula High School; Stewart L. King, South High School in Torrance; David A. Korka, Torrance High School, and Seung H. Yoo, West High School in Torrance.

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Rancho Palos Verdes resident Jacki Bacharach has been appointed commissioner of the National Commission on Intermodal Transportation. The commission is charged by Congress to investigate and study transportation in the United States and abroad.

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North Gardena’s Boy Scout Troop 719 honored four members who achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. The recipients are: Kyle K. Fujishige, Jun Ishizeki, Russell Murata and Keith M. Shimazaki.

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The Torrance Fine Arts Commission gave Excellence in Arts awards to four local artists. They are: Jane Akiko Kamiya for dance; Betty Jo Ravitz for music; and George Z.C. Lin and Harrison Storms for visual arts.

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Poet, writer and editor Wanda Coleman was recently named the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Literature and Writing at Loyola Marymount University. The chair is funded by a $1.5-million grant from the Fletcher Jones Foundation, a California charitable organization.

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Father Arthur Bartlett of San Pedro, an Episcopal priest, has earned the Michael F. Dowling Award from the San Pedro-based Beacon House, a nonprofit corporation serving 120 homeless alcoholic men. Bartlett won the award for helping found the house and for his service to the people who live there.

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The El Segundo-based Aerospace Corp. has named two of its employees Asian-Pacific Americans of the year. They are: Sheng-Rong Lin of Pacific Palisades and Lu Tolentino of Torrance. Aerospace Corp. is a nonprofit organization that provides engineering support to the Air Force.

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Four South Bay students majoring in communications at Cal State Dominguez Hills have been awarded $1,000 scholarships by the 1994 Hispanic Public Relations Assn. Scholarship Program, established in 1977 to recognize outstanding students pursuing careers in communications. This year’s winners are: Miriam Galicia of Wilmington; Marisol Garcia of Carson; David Novigrod-Davilla of Rancho Palos Verdes and Marie Yoder of Torrance.

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Loyola Marymount University senior Gabriella C. Gomez will be an intern in the British government’s House of Commons from January to August. She will also attend the London School of Economics as a Hansard Scholar. Gomez, 21, is a political science major.

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Ray Russell, a research scientist, won a $1,000 achievement award from Aerospace Corp. for his work on a national security space program. The Aerospace Corp., a nonprofit organization providing engineering support to Air Force space programs and national security space systems, singled out Russell for verifying several key untested principles relating to infrared and optical sensing.

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The Friday Morning Club, a 68-year-old South Bay organization devoted to promoting interest in the humanities, installed Mary Harris of San Pedro as president. The organization has provided the South Bay with cultural programs featuring art, history, literature, music and drama.

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Rancho Palos Verdes resident Linnae Anderson has been appointed to the board of directors for the Center for the Partially Sighted, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping those with impaired vision function independently. Anderson is a vice president at Northern Trust Bank in Los Angeles.

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David Mintz of Hawthorne was elected to the board of directors of the National Tuberous Sclerosis Assn., a national nonprofit organization devoted to eliminating the disease, a genetic disorder characterized by seizures, skin lesions, tumors and mental retardation.

Mintz, whose child has the disorder, is a health care administrator.

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Author and teacher Thomas I. White has been appointed business ethics scholar at Loyola Marymount University.

White, whose areas of research include the ethical implications of human and dolphin interaction and the differences in the approaches to business taken by men and women, will teach undergraduate and graduate courses in business ethics.