Category: Education

The University of Vermont unveiled a massive upgrade of its supercomputer, the Vermont Advanced Computing Core (VACC), on Wednesday morning that will increase its speed by a factor of over 200.   

Using a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the university added a cluster of 80 high performance graphics processing units, or GPUs, containing 460,000 processing cores to the VACC, housed in UVM’s primary datacenter in South Burlington, over the winter and spring.

The new computing cluster, dubbed DeepGreen, is now operational. It can achieve a speed of over 1 petaflop, or one thousand million million computations per second, the equivalent of 20,000 laptop computers working in tandem. 

“This is massive upgrade,” said Richard Galbraith, UVM’s vice president for research, “and a necessary one. In this age of big data, having a facility like this is absolutely essential for our faculty to stay at the cutting edge of their disciplines.”  

The upgrade positions the university well, said Adrian Del Maestro, associate professor of physics, director of the VACC and principal investigator on the NSF grant.

“It one of the fastest supercomputers in New England,” he said, “and one of the 100 fastest academic supercomputers in the country.”

According to Del Maestro, the increase in processing speed, combined with hyper-fast network connections within the cluster, will enable faculty to take on new types of research projects they did not have the computational power to explore in the past.

He cited three examples.

“Josh Bongard in Computer Science will use DeepGreen to analyze a gigantic crowd-sourced data set to produce safer human-robot interactions,” he said. “Hugh Garavan in Psychiatry will use the new machine learning cores on the cluster to determine the impact of substance use on developing adolescents using brain imaging. And Yolanda Chen in Plant and Soil Science can massively speed up the genome re-sequencing of the Colorado Potato Beetle to better combat emerging threats to our food supply in a changing climate.”

The upgraded VACC will also be a great asset in undergraduate education, said Safwan Wshah, an assistant professor in UVM’s Computer Science department who teaches machine learning and deep learning to about 80 students per year.

“Deep Green will enable them to take on more and bigger projects and put them at a distinct advantage as they enter a job market that is tightly focused on artificial intelligence,” he said. “They are very excited to be entering this new age of discovery.”

Source: UVM News

As Alma Ripps rides the Metro to work in downtown Washington, D.C., she might be thinking about drones, electric bicycles, battery-powered scooters, or vaping. No, not as a distraction from her job as the Chief of Policy for the National Park Service, but because of it.

Of course, she knows the story of how, in 1903, the famed conservationist John Muir and President Teddy Roosevelt went camping in Yosemite National Park. After three days of quiet solitude, the president said, “It was like lying in a great solemn cathedral”—and he went on to be perhaps the nation’s greatest champion for what became the National Park Service.

Ripps would like to protect and extend Roosevelt’s legacy, making what he called “the most glorious heritage a people ever received,”—the natural wonders within the national parks—available and well-managed for all the American people. “They’re our parks,” says Ripps, who graduated from UVM in 1988, “They belong to all of us.”

Which is why she spends time thinking about drones, e-bikes, scooters, and vaping.

Electrifying experiences?

A few year ago, Ripps got a report about a climber on El Capitan in Yosemite getting buzzed by a drone. “Very dangerous,” she says, “if you spent hours and hours scaling a wall, the last thing in the world you want is a buzzing drone near your head, right?” She heard about parks, such as Zion National Park, where people were flying them close to herds of Bighorn sheep, “spooking wildlife. We were having mothers leave behind their young,” she says. She was hearing from park managers:  what do we do about these things? So, Ripps and her team developed a policy memo that was issued by the director of the National Park Service: “recreational drones are not allowed in our national parks,” she says, “though we do use them internally for firefighting, for checking on invasive species, and other research.”

Ripps’ work stands at a crossroad where ancient natural features, untrammeled wilderness areas, and hallowed historic grounds—meet a rapidly changing American culture. “A lot of what we’re dealing with now are new technologies,” she says.  “Obviously we never had a drone policy up to a couple of years ago because they didn’t exist.”

Electric bikes present another new management challenge in the 419 different sites—more than 84 million acres—that make up the U.S. National Park System. “More and more people are using e-bikes for recreation. People with disabilities are using them to access remote areas. People are using them as an alternative to cars,” Ripps says. “There are a lot of benefits associated with them, but we don’t have a consistent policy on their use across the system.” So what’s a policy chief to do? Find the middle way. “In some areas of a park it’s a very appropriate use; but in some it’s not,” she says. “Right now I have on my desk a piece of policy we’ve been working on for e-bikes that we hope will be finalized soon.” Even an urgent policy memo can take a year or more to finalize—there are many stakeholders to hear from and details galore (e.g., there are numerous classes of e-bikes).

Finding her path

Ripps grew up in a New York City family that did a lot of hiking and camping. “I always wanted to be a wildlife biologist,” she recalls, and at UVM she majored in environmental studies with a wildlife biology minor. Summer courses in botany and a stint tracking endangered ocelots in south Texas confirmed her love of natural places—and made her rethink her plans to be a field scientist. “You can’t go to UVM and go hiking in the fall and not fall in love with Vermont. I absolutely loved my four years there. But being in Texas, tramping through the thorny brush and heat, and being bitten by everything, well, I realized:  this isn’t who I am,” she recalls. “Still, I wanted to protect natural and cultural resources and developing the policies to do that seemed like a better fit for me,” she says.

Ripps has done just that for the federal government since 1992, starting as a Presidential Management Fellow at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She joined the National Park Service in 2000 working in the Office of Legislative and Congressional Affairs. She was appointed deputy chief of staff in 2010, and policy chief in 2013. “I’m on my fifth administration in DC and the wonderful thing is that national parks are a nonpartisan resource,” she says. “Some of the biggest park supporters are conservative Republicans, so it doesn’t track to any one political party. People just love our national parks.”

 Politics and potholes

Of course, politics affects her job. “Every administration will have different priorities; the current one is promoting expanded access and opportunities for outdoor recreation on public lands. They’re very pro-hunting and fishing,” she says. “There are some uses that may be appropriate in wildlife refuges or natural areas, but not in our parks.” And the popularity of national parks with the public hasn’t translated into federal appropriations sufficient to maintain them. “Our roads have huge holes and we have a deferred maintenance backlog of over $11 billion,” Ripps says. This reality affects the roughly twenty pieces of policy she has in motion at any one time—from seawall construction to protect buildings and historic sites against sea-level rise to new initiatives bringing national park rangers into inner-city schools.

A recent policy on vaping puts electronic nicotine delivery systems in the same category as cigarettes—banned in many park areas—but what about electric scooters in urban parks? “We have no policy yet,” Ripps says. “that’s one we will need to figure out at some point.” In the meantime, she’s recently returned from her own family camping trip to Yosemite with her husband, two sons, “and my siblings and their kids, 18 of us in all. All in tents,” she says—a happy outing to one of the nation’s natural sanctuaries without one drone in sight.

Source: UVM News

Agricultural insect pests seek out familiar scents to find their plant hosts. However, they can also be repelled by odors from other plant species.

A new study from the University of Vermont published in Scientific Reports offers a novel framework for exploiting plant odors to repel insect pests. The study is the first to show how the similarity of plant odors and phylogenetic relatedness can predict insect repellency.

The team applied this conceptual framework to swede midge, a tiny fly that is becoming a major problem for growers of broccoli, kale and other cabbage-family crops in Canada and the Northeastern U.S. They found that particular essential oils – garlic, spearmint, thyme, eucalyptus lemon and cinnamon bark – were most effective at repelling the midge. The findings come as good news to organic farmers who are without an effective solution for managing the pest.

While essential oils have long been used in pest management, determining which oils are effective has followed a “trial by error” approach, said senior author Yolanda Chen, associate professor in UVM’s Department of Plant and Soil Science.

“People often think more aromatic plant oils, like mint, basil and lavender will repel insects, but usually there is no rhyme or reason for choosing,” said Chen, who is also a fellow of UVM’s Gund Institute for the Environment. “It turns out that as we go along the family tree, plants that are more distantly related from the host plant are generally more repellent.”

Headless crops

Swede midge is a recent invader on vegetable farms in the Northeastern United States. Midge larvae must feed on the brassica plant family in order to survive, which includes many popular vegetables like broccoli, kale, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi and collards. Making a mistake and laying eggs on the wrong plant would result in the death of the midge’s offspring.

“Smell plays a major role in host location,” said Chase Stratton, the study’s lead author, who recently completed his PhD at UVM. “Just one landing of one fly is enough to cause marketable damage,” he said.

The larvae “hijack the plant’s control system” resulting in distorted growth, such as headless broccoli and cauliflower, puckered leaves, and brown scarring. Unfortunately for farmers, the damage is not observable until it’s too late and the midge have already dropped off the plant. In areas where the midge has become well established, including parts of Canada, New York, and Northern Vermont, the midge can cause 100 percent crop losses.

To manage the midge, conventional growers have turned to neonicotinoid insecticides, which have been implicated in honeybee decline. With no methods for killing the pest, some organic farmers have simply stopped growing vulnerable brassica crops. This led Chen and Stratton to explore new control options for organic farmers.

A Sustainable Solution

“It’s hard to get away from using insecticides because they’re good at killing insects,” said Stratton, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. “But plants have been naturally defending against insect herbivores for millions of years. Why are we so arrogant to think we can do it better than plants?”

Fascinated by the complexity of plant odors and species interactions, Stratton identified essential oils from 18 different plants that vary in their degree of relatedness to brassica host crops. He and Chen hypothesized that oils from plants that are more distantly related to brassicas would have more diverse odors and be more repellent. Comparing the chemical structures of the odors might hold clues for predicting repellency, they thought.

To test the theory, the researchers observed how female midges behaved when presented with broccoli plants that had been sprayed with each of the essential oils. They found the midges were less likely to lay their eggs on broccoli plants that had been treated with essential oils, compared to the untreated plants, and avoided flying towards certain oils more than others. In general, oils from plants that were more distantly related to brassicas on the plant family tree were more likely to repel the midge. They also found that odors that were more chemically different were also more likely to be repellent. However, the oil that was most repellent – spearmint – actually had odors more similar to the brassica crop.

“Biologically, it makes sense that midges would be able to detect and avoid these plants because the similar odors would make it easier for them to misinterpret these plants as hosts, which would be deadly for their offspring,” said Stratton. “For swede midge, garlic appears to be one of the most promising repellents, particularly because certified organic products using garlic are already available for growers.”

The study suggests a new sustainable solution for this new invasive pest and provides a novel framework for testing pest management strategies in other species.

Source: UVM News

When it comes to special education funding and the policies surrounding it, Tammy Kolbe is an expert — or at least she thought she was. While preparing a recent policy brief, she found herself wondering whether or not anyone could truly be an expert on such a complex topic.

“I’ve always understood how complicated it is, but I think digging into the real details of it reaffirmed for me that this is way too complex and incoherent,” says the professor of educational leadership and policy studies at UVM. “The de facto system muddles along, but we’re not doing a good job on this front. We have to fix this.”

One of the most pressing problems is that it’s nearly impossible to estimate the current costs of special education. “We don’t actually know how much we spend on special education for children with disabilities in this country. Taxpayers should find that really disturbing,” Kolbe says. According to her research, the most reliable estimate of special education funding is nearly 20 years old and outdated by current classroom practices and technologies. 

But to understand what special education costs — let alone how to ensure there is sufficient and fair funding for special education programs and practices  — policymakers, families and practitioners first need to understand the complicated litany of laws and legislations that ensure students with disabilities have access to a free and appropriate public education (FAPE).

As an expert on public finance, resource equity and efficiency in education, Kolbe was tapped by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) to pen a report that helps establish a new framework for understanding and evaluating the current policy landscape that shapes who pays for special education for students with disabilities. Her brief for NEPC, “Funding Special Education: Charting a Path that Confronts Complexity and Crafts Coherence,” also lays out next steps for building a better policy. 

Federal law compels “state and local education agencies to provide educational opportunities to students with disabilities comparable to those offered to children without disabilities,” Kolbe explains in the brief. However, the federal government does little to fund the special education that students with disabilities receive — covering just about 15 percent of total special education funding — and it does not set clear guidelines for who should pay the remaining share. The result is a hodgepodge of state policies, each with different assumptions about how much they should pay for special education. This leaves local school districts responsible for whatever costs federal and state governments do not fund, with the extent of this burden varying considerably across and within states.

“Yet, we know not all districts have the same ability to raise money. How do we do a better job being effective and fair with the dollars so that certain districts aren’t burdened with costs and potentially jeopardize whether students with disabilities have access to the services they need?” Kolbe asks.

The short answer: “This brief is a place to start.”

Her real goal with the policy brief was to help policymakers, practitioners and families with disabled children understand how we pay for special education. “It’s poorly understood and, frankly, it’s really broken.” While the brief calls out serious challenges — like not knowing how much special education costs and the fact that access to funds to pay for special education differs from state-to-state, and even school-to-school — it concludes by pointing to specific places that policymakers can begin moving the system in a better direction immediately. 

First and foremost, Kolbe calls for a new data source that monitors special education spending and provides periodic benchmarks of the costs. She also suggests establishing new practices and policies that divide special education costs fairly across federal, state and local agencies, and for new, flexible funding streams that allow special and general education systems to collaborate on early intervention services for at-risk students.

Source: UVM News

Wanda Heading-Grant, vice president for human resources, diversity and multicultural affairs at the University of Vermont, has been named one of 166 winners of the 18^th annual Women Worth Watching Award by Profiles in Diversity Journal.

The winners join more than 2,000 past award recipients. Past winners have included CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, including Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors; Lynne Doughtie, CEO of KPMG; Marillyn Hewson, CEO of Lockheed Martin; Michele Buck, CEO of Hershey’s; and Beth Mooney CEO of Key Bank. Countless others have moved forward to lead new business units, drive new markets, launch new ventures, and help develop the next generation of women leaders.

Heading-Grant is the only recipient to work in higher education in the United States. One other winner works for a Canadian university. “I am delighted to be a part of such a prestigious group of women influencers being honored, and I am particularly grateful to be acknowledged for the excellent work being done in to create more diverse and inclusive spaces within higher education,” said Heading-Grant.

According to James Rector, Profiles in Diversity Journal publisher, “The collaboration between organizations and the magazine over the past 18 years in identifying and selecting deserving candidates for the annual Women Worth Watching Award is a testament to a collaborative and very productive relationship that energizes, inspires, and recognizes women who have demonstrated high levels of leadership.”

In her three decades of service to the University of Vermont, Heading Grant has served in a broad range of academic and administrative roles including executive director, associate dean, associate provost, chief diversity officer and vice president. Her wealth of professional experience and volunteer service on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations and civil rights advisory committees have earned her a reputation as a cultural architect able to build and sustain real and lasting change.

Each Women Worth Watching Award recipient, whose commitment and achievements will be recognized in Profiles in Diversity Journal’s summer edition, will share words of wisdom with women in the pipeline. The nomination of candidates for this award demonstrates C-suite support of women in leadership, and the inclusion of the Award winners in the magazine publicly enhances the visibility and reputations of the companies and organizations that employ, support, and empower these outstanding women. The 2019 Women Worth Watching edition will be available to the public in August.

Source: UVM News

The University of Vermont will launch the 2019  season of its popular historic tours on July 6. Led by UVM emeritus professor William Averyt, the free, weekly tours take place Saturdays from 10 a.m. to noon through Oct. 12. There will be no tour on Sept. 28.

The tour begins at the statue of Ira Allen, just to the south of the fountain on the UVM green. A PDF map of the tour is available here.

UVM was founded in 1791, the fifth oldest university in New England, and it features both an array of historic buildings, including more than a dozen on the National Register of Historic Places, and a collection of larger-than-life personalities.

The architectural highlights of the tour include the Old Mill, completed in 1829, whose cornerstone was laid by the Marquis de Lafayette; the Billings Library, completed in 1885, which leading 19th century architect H.H. Richardson considered among his finest buildings; and Grasse Mount, a brick Federal style mansion built in 1804 by a local merchant, which later served as the residence of Vermont governor Cornelius P. Van Ness.

Tour guide Averyt also brings to life the personalities who animate UVM’s long history. Founder Ira Allen, for instance, was both a revolutionary war hero and sometimes slippery real estate speculator. UVM’s third president, James Marsh, introduced Coleridge’s philosophical work to America, influenced Emerson and other transcendentalists, and made innovations leading to the modern university curriculum.

Royall Tyler, a member of Vermont’s Supreme Court in the early 19^th century, taught jurisprudence at the university and is said to be one of the models for the villain of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables, Judge Pyncheon. And 1879 alumnus John Dewey, whose grave is on campus, is considered one of America’s greatest philosophers.

“UVM’s history is a great story, to be sure, but it also resonates with significance,” said Averyt. “Through figures like Marsh and Dewey, the university played an important role in shaping modern America.”

Learn more about the tour and register. 

Source: UVM News

On his first day on the job, new UVM president Suresh Garimella took time to meet with local and regional media during a late Monday morning session.

In brief opening remarks, Garimella said he was thrilled to take the helm at UVM, which he described as being in a “great place on an upward trajectory” that has benefitted from years of “stable leadership and great stewardship from the board.” He committed to “working tirelessly” to take the university to even greater heights.  

Garimella cited student success, academic quality and affordability as among his top priorities.

While UVM faces a competitive landscape in higher education, especially in the Northeast, Garimella said the university’s many assets would enable it to remain competitive and thrive. Among those assets — in addition to its “impressive students, faculty and staff” — he cited first rate programs in the liberal arts, STEM, medicine and health, agriculture and the environment, and in UVM’s professional schools.

He said he was drawn to UVM because of its academic reputation and the mystique of Vermont, but especially because of its status as a land grant institution.  

Garimella said he is himself a product of a land grant university and benefited from gaining access to higher education at a price he and his family could afford. 

“The fact that I am here – everyone should have that chance,” he said. 

Source: UVM News