Evelyn Lett, one of the founders of UBC's Alma Mater Society, has been named an officer of the Order of Canada.

Lett was cited for her revolutionary work in women's rights. One of the first female graduates of UBC, she helped draft the school's constitution, which gave women the right to vote in 1914 -- before women were given the right to vote in federal elections.

In 1996, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from UBC's Alumni Association, which she also helped found and with whom she served as vice-president.

Years after leaving UBC, she served on a federal government commission studying the employment problems of women. She was also a founding member of the Vancouver Art Gallery and Vancouver Community Arts Council women's auxiliaries.

The recipients will be invited to an investiture ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, where they will be presented with the insignia of the order.

Bruce Sweeney, a graduate of UBC's film program, was in Park City, Utah last month to show his new feature film at the Sundance Film Festival.

Sweeney won the CityTV Award for best Canadian film at the Toronto Festival of Festivals in 1995 with his feature debut Live Bait.

His new film, Dirty, is about four city dwellers whose lives interconnect.

Assoc. Prof. Takis Mathiopoulos, of the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Centre for Integrated Computer Systems Research, has been appointed by the European Commission in Brussels as the only non-European member of a panel dealing with advanced wireless and mobile telecommunications.

The five-member panel's mandate is to provide technical advice in the field of telecommunications and independent visionary research perspectives to guide the commission's research and development program. After 1998 the panel will also advise a major publicly funded European research and development program called Advanced Communications and Technologies Services, which has a budget of $500 million.