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MonthA news summary for the UVM Community

April 2010 (Vol. 9, No. 6)

This Month's Top Stories . . .

VA’s Secretary Shinseki to Deliver Commencement Address (up^)
United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki will deliver the address to graduates at the University of Vermont's 2010 commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 23. Secretary Shinseki will also receive an honorary doctor of laws degree at the ceremony. Secretary Shinseki was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as the seventh secretary of Veterans Affairs on January 21, 2009. A retired U.S. Army four-star general, Secretary Shinseki served as chief of staff of the United States Army from 1999 to 2003, when he retired from active duty. Secretary Shinseki holds a bachelor of science degree from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and is a graduate of the National War College. He also earned a master of arts degree in English literature from Duke University. In addition to Shinseki, the university will confer honorary degrees upon three individuals who have made vital and important contributions to the state, the university, the nation, and the world over the course of their distinguished careers: Judith M. Buechner, Professor Susan Brody Hasazi and Raymond C. Pecor, Jr. The university will return this year to the traditional model of a single ceremony in which all of the graduates receive their diplomas. The event will be held on the University Green at 9 a.m. on Sunday, May 23. The student and faculty line up will begin at 7:30 a.m., and the procession will begin at 8:15 a.m. The ceremony officially begins at 9 a.m. Specific details about the ceremony are available on the Commencement 2010 website. For questions about commencement, please contact Leslie Logan, (802) 656-4205 or Academic_Ceremonies@uvm.edu. More on Secretary Shinseki and the other honorary degree recipients here.

Medicine Ranks 4th for Primary Care, 8th for Rural Medicine (up^)
Primary care education at the University of Vermont College of Medicine has been ranked fourth among 146 accredited U.S. medical and osteopathic schools, according to U.S. News & World Report's 2011 edition of "America's Best Graduate Schools," on newsstands April 20. UVM ranked sixth last year and has ranked in the top five percent of all medical schools for Primary Care for four years in a row. UVM also ranked eighth this year in Rural Medicine specialty programs, chosen by medical school deans and senior faculty who identify those schools offering the top 10 programs in selected specialties. Full story here.

Interview: Stuart Kauffman (up^)
Stuart Kauffman is famous for arguing that biology must look beyond Darwin. From molecules to ecosystems, he sees self-organization as the twin to natural selection in giving order to living systems. He's joined the UVM faculty to continue making his case -- and he'll be in residence this fall, "eager for conversation across disciplines," he says. Read the interview here.

Raul Hilberg Profiled in 'The Nation' (up^)
Raul Hilberg, the late professor emeritus of political science and author of the masterwork 1961 book The Destruction of the European Jews, was profiled this month on TheNation.com.
Drawing on documents of Hilberg's gifted to the UVM Libraries upon his death, the article, "A Conscious Pariah: On Raul Hilberg," reveals his complex and scholarly antagonistic relationship with Hannah Arendt, political theorist and author of Eichmann in Jerusalem, a book about the man responsible for implementing the Final Solution. Read more here.

Viewpoint: Health Care Reform (up^)
President Obama signed into law a sweeping health care reform bill in March considered the nation's most substantial social legislation in four decades. Debate leading to the passage of HR 3590 was intense and raised a number of questions about the effectiveness and affordability of the nearly $1 trillion plan. Read UVM expert opinion on the issue here.

Boston Area Alums Rally to Support Recent Grad (up^)
If anyone ever doubted the strength of the UVM alumni network, the experience of Ben Aguer might make that person a believer. Aguer, who graduated from UVM in 2007, embarked on a job search that had dozens of alumni and UVM staff across Massachusetts and Vermont rooting for him. Read the full story here.

Business Course Makes Innovators of Undergrads (up^)
As Sarah Madey '09 learned the ropes of her new position at Maguire Associates, a research-based consulting firm in Boston focusing on higher education, she found herself drawing on concepts she learned in the School of Business Administration. One course in particular, she says, prepared her especially well for the marketing, promotions and product development aspects of her current job as director of client relationship management. Read more here.

Sociology by the Numbers (up^)
Quantitative research conducted by Dan Krymkowski, associate professor of sociology, has shed light on why certain groups of people have had trouble moving out of the social class they were born into. Krymkowski has a simple way of describing the complicated research he's conducted for more than two decades on social stratification. "I study who gets ahead," he says. The mathematical formulas he uses to draw conclusions about why some people get ahead while others never attain social advantages like education, money and social status are a little more complicated. Krymkowski, associate professor of sociology who was named associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in February of 2010, is a mathematical sociologist who prefers quantitative research to qualitative. He has teamed with a number of colleagues around UVM to produce cutting edge research in a variety of subject areas. Full story here.

The Rise of the Mind (up^)
When and where did the cognitive abilities of modern humans arise? It's a big question -- one debated by anthropologists for decades. It's an even bigger question for an undergraduate thesis, but senior Logan Bartram has a leg up on this ambitious project: he helped unearth artifacts that are playing a critical role in shaping our knowledge about human origins. Ochre found in a cave at the tip of Pinnacle Point in South Africa has offered up key evidence that early humans were engaging in symbolic behavior long before anthropologists previously surmised. Full story here.

Service Learning Here to Stay (up^)
Increasingly, UVM students are feeling an immediate connection to the outside community, thanks to the rising number of service-learning opportunities available at UVM. Built into curriculum and branching out to as far as Honduras, Bangladesh, and India, service learning is changing the way UVM interacts with its neighbors while reconfirming a historic symbiotic relationship between the university and its environs. Students get dirty (sometimes) and get career connections. Community members get help. And professors get a new kind of dynamic, malleable text for the twenty first century; thirty years in the making, service learning is here to stay at UVM. Read more here.

UVM’s Every Morning Quarterback (up^)
In many ways, the sports talk show co-hosted by junior Anthony Spagnolo and his friends on ESPN Radio is a continuation of the discussions they had every day in high school. Emulating those lively, comedic conversations about sports has attracted thousands of listeners to the aptly named "EveryMorning Quarterback" to hear the crew talk about sports, pop culture, crack jokes, and interview some of the biggest names in sports. Read more and watch a video here.

Kotsopoulos Named America East Women's Basketball Scholar-Athlete (up^)
UVM's May Kotsopoulos (Waterloo, Ontario) has been named the America East Women's Basketball Scholar-Athlete for the third straight year. Kotsopoulos, the America East Fans' Choice Player of the Year, carries a 3.66 grade-point average as a business administration major with a minor in marketing. She led the Catamounts to their second straight America East title and the team's first-ever win in the NCAA Tournament this season. UVM earned its second straight automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament after defeating top-seeded and No. 21 ranked Hartford, 55-50, in the America East Championship game. Kotsopoulos earned an invitation to the Connecticut Sun training camp. She is the first Catamount to earn an invitation to a WNBA training camp in the program's history. Full story here.

Blakely Competes in Portsmouth Invitational Tournament (up^)
UVM men's basketball senior Marqus Blakely (Metuchen, N.J.) recently wrapped up the 2010 Portsmouth Invitational Tournament in Portsmouth, Virginia, by helping his team, K&D Rounds, win the championship with a perfect 3-0 mark. Blakely posted perhaps his best performance of the weekend in the championship game with a double-double. He went 5-for-8 from the floor for 11 points and grabbed 10 rebounds to go with three steals and two blocks, as K&D defeated Roger Brown's 86-78. In the opening game of the tournament Blakely came off the bench to score six points, pull down eight rebounds and added four blocks in 19 minutes of action. For the three-game tournament he finished third overall in blocks (2.0 per game) and fourth in rebounding (8.7 pg), while averaging 6.3 points per contest and shooting 52.9 percent from the floor. For the past 57 years the P.I.T has invited 64 of the best college basketball players (seniors) from across the nation to participate in a four-day, twelve game tournament in front of representatives from every NBA team. Blakely also won the 22nd annual State Farm College Slam Dunk Competition at the Indiana Convention Center. He became the first Catamount to win the dunk contest, after he defeated Bradley's Chris Roberts in the final on ESPN. Read more here and here.

UVM’s Brayden Irwin Makes NHL Debut (up^)
UVM senior Brayden Irwin (Toronto, Ontario) made his National Hockey League recently with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Toronto picked up a 4-2 victory against the Buffalo Sabres at the Air Canada Centre. Irwin played 10:23 and had one shot on goal and took one penalty. Irwin was reunited with former Catamount teammate Viktor Stalberg, who scored his eighth goal of the season in the win. Stalberg leads all Toronto rookies in goals this season. Irwin is the seventh former Catamount to play in the NHL this season along with Torrey Mitchell (San Jose), Martin St. Louis (Tampa Bay), Patrick Sharp (Chicago), Viktor Stalberg (Toronto), Jaime Sifers (Minnesota) and Tim Thomas (Boston). Joe Fallon (St. Louis) dressed for one game with the Chicago Blackhawks before being traded to the St. Louis Blues this winter. Read more here.

In Memoriam (up^)

Professor Emeritus Robert V. Daniels, a longtime leader on the UVM faculty and in the Vermont community, passed away on Sunday, March 28. Bill Daniels, as he was known to friends and colleagues, was a distinguished scholar in the field of Slavic Studies who earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. Though he began his academic career at Indiana University, Daniels soon returned to his native New England and a position on the faculty of the UVM History Department in 1956. Services in memory of Professor Daniels are planned for early June. Read more here.

Campus Kudos (up^)

Saleem Ali, associate professor of environmental studies, is the author of the new book Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and a Sustainable Future. He spoke at a Congressional Briefing before the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe on April 15 as part of a three-person panel discussion on "Natural Resources, A National Responsibility."

Bill Ballard, associate vice president of administrative and facilities services and long-standing advisor of UVM Rescue, was named the National Collegiate EMS Foundation Outstanding Collegiate EMS Advisor of the Year. Ballard has been the advisor for UVM Rescue for 17 years, overseeing many changes, including the acquisition of several new ambulances, the addition of billing for service, and the redistricting of UVM Rescue's primary service area.

The Davis H. Davis Center was recognized by the National Association of College Auxiliary Services as a leader in the area of environmental stewardship. Read more in "Walking the Walk" in the NACAS College Services publication.

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