This Month's Top Stories . . .
US News Ranks College of Medicine 9th in Primary Care (up^) The University of Vermont College of Medicine ranked ninth for quality in primary care training among the country's top 125 medical schools according to U.S. News & World Report's latest graduate school rankings. The rankings appear in the April 11 issue of the magazine and in the book America's Best Graduate Schools. The medical school rankings are based on assessments by medical school deans and senior faculty, admission acceptance rates, test scores, faculty/student ratios and other factors. Link to the US News & World Report online rankings here: US News Medical School Rankings. Read more at: Groundbreaking Saturday for New Student Center (up^) The University of Vermont will hold a ceremonial groundbreaking for the Dudley H. Davis Center, the university's new student center, on Saturday, April 30, at 11:00 a.m. The building is expected to open in September 2007. The 221,000+ square foot building is planned to be built in two phases. The first construction phase, now under way, will comprise 186,000 sq. ft. of space and will house the majority of the building functions,. The 35,000 sq. ft. second phase of the building will be a 600-seat theater. Full story at http://www.uvm.edu/news/?Page=News&storyID=6313. UVM Among "Colleges with a Conscience" (up^) 'The University of Vermont is one of the nation's best colleges at fostering social responsibility and public service, according to The Princeton Review and Campus Compact, which joined forces to create a list of institutions featured in The Princeton Review's forthcoming book, Colleges with a Conscience: 81 Great Schools with Outstanding Community Involvement. Chosen from 900 institutions, UVM is cited for academic and co-curricular programs that provide support and opportunities for community involvement for students, faculty, and staff through a range of programs and services on campus. Available in bookstores on June 21, 2005, the book has two-page profiles on each college and advice for applicants. Read more at http://www.uvm.edu/theview/article.php?id=1595. Research Produces Mastitis-Resistant Cows (up^) Collaborating scientists from the University of Vermont and United States Department of Agriculture have, for the first time, produced dairy cows resistant to a form of mastitis, the widespread and painful bacterial infection of cows' udders that is difficult to control with antibiotics. David Kerr, assistant professor of animal science at UVM, along with several colleagues and Robert J. Wall, principle investigator and USDA animal physiologist, published their results in the current issue of Nature Biotechnology. "This is an important step toward helping dairy farmers," says Kerr. "Every year, U.S. farmers lose $2 billion to mastitis in discarded milk, veterinary costs and the like. This approach could cut that substantially. Full story at http://www.uvm.edu/theview/article.php?id=1617. Archbishop Desmond Tutu Speaks at UVM (up^) "Diversity is the law of life," Archbishop Desmond Tutu said to an appreciative audience of some 4,000 at UVM's Patrick Gymnasium on Tuesday, March 29. The human rights activist and Nobel laureate was in Burlington to accept honorary degrees bestowed by UVM and St. Michael's College, and he shared with his audience a stirring and heartfelt message of diversity and inclusion, often mixed with humor and whimsy. "God dreams that we will come to realize that we are family, the human family, God's family, made up of all sorts and conditions of people," he said. "And God says, 'Please help me to realize my dream, please.'" Read more at http://www.uvm.edu/theview/article.php?id=1596. Gift Endows Presidential Lecture Series, Scholarships (up^) A major gift from a member of the Class of 1955 is the largest individual 50th Reunion gift in UVM history. The gift will be used to endow the Dan and Carole Burack President's Distinguished Lecture Series as well as a scholarship fund to support teacher education. Full story at http://www.uvm.edu/theview/article.php?id=1574. Gene Mutation Linked to Body Clock, Health Conditions (up^) Geneticists from the University of California, San Francisco, University of Vermont, and University of Utah have uncovered a new gene mutation that causes familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS), an inherited condition that produces 'early birds' who struggle to function in daily life. Their research findings are reported in the March 31 issue of the journal Nature. Full story at http://www.uvm.edu/news/?Page=News&storyID=6192. "Cinderella" Cats Stun Syracuse, Yield to Michigan State in NCAA Tournament (up^) The "Cinderella" Vermont men's basketball Catamounts captured the hearts of the region and the attention of the nation with an upset of Big East champion and 11th ranked Syracuse to advance to the second round of the 2005 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship. It was a fantastic E-ticket ride while it lasted, but the fifth-seeded Michigan State Spartans denied Vermont in the second-round, 72-61, despite T.J. Sorrentine's game-high 26 points including the 2,000th of his career. The finest season in the 105-year history of basketball was the last for retiring coach Tom Brennan. "It was the greatest ride that I could ever, ever have had," said Brennan. "You know you're in a very special place when your realities outweigh your dreams." Full coverage at http://www.uvm.edu/~sportspr/?Page=News&storyID=6160. Ski Team Places Second in National Championship (up^) The University of Vermont was the top Eastern team and second nationally at the 2005 NCAA Skiing Championship hosted by the Catamounts at Stowe Mountain Resort and the Trapp Family Lodge. The final day of competition featured two dominating performances in the women's 15K and men's 20K freestyle events. Full story at http://www.uvm.edu/news/?Page=News&storyID=6111. Men's Hockey Cats Best Dartmouth in Quarterfinals, Fall to Cornell in Semifinals (up^) The UVM men's hockey Catamounts crafted a 2-1 win over Dartmouth in the third and deciding game of the 2005 ECAC Men's Hockey
League Championship quarterfinal series at Gutterson Fieldhouse
before falling to the top-seeded Cornell Big Red 3-0 in the
semifinal a week later in Albany, New York. The Catamounts,
21-14-4 in 2004-05, open the 2005-06 regular season at the Nye
Frontier Classic at the University of Alaska-Anchorage October
14-15th, 2005, and open at home the following weekend, taking on
Minnesota-Duluth in a two-game series on October 21-22nd. Vermont
starts its inaugural Hockey East season at Northeastern on
Tuesday, November 1. The Catamounts host their first Hockey East
game at Gutterson Fieldhouse on Friday, November 11, against
Providence College. Read more at: Campus Kudos (up^) A team of UVM students was named overall university champions at the Northeast Student Affiliates animal science competition held at Rutgers University: Andrew Book, Christine Coe, Adrienne DiCerbo, Alyse Henderson, Gavin Hitchener, Ladan Karimian, Amanda Kissell, Keeley McGarr, Sarah Messmer, Megan Richmond, Jessica Scillieri, and Jason Weinstein. Marianne Burke, Director of the Dana Medical Library, has been elected to the board of NELINET, a member-owned, member-governed cooperative of more than 600 academic, public, and special libraries in the six New England states. Declan Connolly, associate professor of education, has been appointed chair of the National Strategic Health Initiatives Committee, a joint effort of the Centers for Disease Control and the American College of Sports Medicine. The committee is responsible for providing guidelines for the national health objectives and works to produce documents such as "Healthy People 2010" and, shortly, "Healthy People 2020." Connolly and Brian Reed, associate dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, published a paper in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness evaluating the role of anti-oxidant supplements in the prevention of muscle damage. Student Laura Douglas won the undergraduate student paper prize for the best student paper at the Northeastern Anthropological Association annual meeting held April 3-6. The paper, "Mzunguism: How Visions of Whiteness Control Our Developing World," draws on her experience as a volunteer in Africa exploring the multiple dimensions of racism in the developing world and how race and power influence the outcomes of development projects. Charles Irvin, professor of medicine and director of the Vermont Lung Center, has been selected to serve on the molecular medicine faculty and respiratory physiology section of the Faculty of 1000, an online research service produced by Biology Reports and published by BioMed Central that highlights and reviews papers published in the biological sciences. Kathleen Manning, associate professor education, received a "pillar of the profession" award from the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. The award was presented at the association's 2005 national conference in Tampa, Florida. Brian Mitchell, a postdoctoral associate in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, has conducted research featured in two recent publications. He was the principal investigator in "Coyote Depredation Management: Current Methods and Research Needs" in the Wildlife Society Bulletin and published "Coyote Movements and Social Structure Along a Cryptic Population Genetic Subdivision" in Molecular Ecology. Jim Murdock, a UVM assistant athletic trainer, has been selected as one of the National Athletic Trainers' Association's 2005 Athletic Trainer Service Award recipients. "Quantifying effects of altered temperature and precipitation on soil bacterial and microfaunal communities as mediated by biological soil crusts," a project led by Deborah Neher, associate professor and chair of plant and soil sciences, was featured in a federal report titled "Our Changing Planet." The document will supplement the fiscal 2004 and 2005 budgets submitted by the President to Congress. David Jones, assistant professor of business administration, and his coauthor, Daniel Skarlicki, had an article published in the March issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology titled "The Effects of Overhearing Peers Discuss an Authority's Reputation for Fairness on Reactions to Subsequent Treatment." Nora Mitchell, adjunct assistant professor of natural resources in the recreation management program of the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, received the George Wright Society Cultural Resources Management Award, one of the organization's four top annual awards. Mitchell was cited "for her many innovations in cultural landscape management and heritage preservation." A paper by Jane Okech, assistant professor of counselor education and counseling, titled "A New Model of Group Work Supervision: Empowering Group Work Supervisors by Clarifying Roles, Supervision Foci, and Supervisor Competencies," has been accepted for publication in the Journal for Specialists in Group Work. Ongoing research by Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solomon, both members of the psychology faculty, and Kimbery Balsam, who received her Ph.D. from the program, was featured in an article in the American Psychological Association Monitor. The story is available online at "A Crucial Time' for LGB Research". Another member of the department, Mark Bouton, was covered in the article "Fresh Funding for Translational Research" in the same issue of the publication. A recent issue of Community Transportation, the publication of the Community Transportation Association of America, highlights Fred Schmidt, associate professor of community development and applied economics and co-director of the Center for Rural Studies. Jianke Yang, associate professor of mathematics and statistics, was the principal investigator of the study "Necklacelike Solitons in Optically Induced Photonic Lattices." The research was published in the March 25 Physical Review Letters journal and described in an article in the April issue of Technology Research News magazine. In Memoriam (up^) Jeremy Felt, emeritus professor of history, died on March 8. His career at UVM spanned 39 years, during which time he served as chair of the Department of History, Director of Area and International Studies, and as University Ombudsperson. Felt directed Scandinavian Seminar, a national study abroad program in which many UVM students participated. His commitment to teaching and enriching the lives of undergraduates was recognized when he became the third recipient of the university's George V. Kidder Faculty Award. Professor Felt specialized in United States history, specifically, social reform and the progressive era of U.S. history. His publications include Hostages of Fortune, a book on the history of child labor reform in New York. Stuart "Red" Martin, longtime friend of UVM's College of Engineering and Mathematics, died April 2 at age 91. He was scientist, mathematician, engineer, and founder of the state's first television station. He endowed a professorship, the Dorthean Chair for Computer Science, in memory of his wife, the late Dorothy Martin. Willard Miller , activist and UVM emeritus professor of philosophy, passed away March 31 at Fletcher Allen Hospital after a battle with cancer. He was 64. Miller, who retired in March of this year, began his career in the University of Vermont's philosophy department in 1969. His scholarly interests ranged from Marxism and the history of American philosophy to the philosophy of education and political philosophy to radical ecology and animal rights. During his 36 years, he served as faculty advisor for numerous student organizations, including the Radical Student Union, the Union of Concerned Students, the Gadfly alternative student newspaper, and the Student Political Awareness and Responsibility Collective. Miller was an engaged member of his community, working as an activist in such organizations as the Vermont Veterans for Peace, Burlington Area Draft and Military Counseling, the Green Mountain Fund for Popular Struggle, the Vermont Cuba Committee Haymarket People's Fund, and the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. Dateline UVM Would Like to Hear from You (up^) |
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