Category: Education

For farmer, author and activist Leah Penniman, farming is not just about feeding the community, though it is what got her started. For Penniman, farming is about uprooting what she describes as systemic racism in the modern U.S. food system and training the next generation of activist farmers. 

Speaking to a standing-room only crowd at UVM last week, Penniman described the policies and practices that have led to more racial stratification in land ownership than ever before in the country’s history and what her organization, Soul Fire Farm, is doing to end food injustice.

“There was so much hope in Leah’s message, as well as the blueprint for how we remake society,” said Tatiana Abatemarco, a lecturer in the Environmental Program at UVM, who helped organize the talk in partnership with UVM’s Department of Plant and Soil Science and Mosaic Center for Students of Color. “The large turnout speaks to what Leah represents – a combination of social and activist work, utilizing the food system to create systemic change, and the value of transdisciplinary thought and action.”

Growing up as a mixed-race black child in a predominantly white community, Penniman struggled with her identity. She was drawn to the forests and natural beauty of the rural Northeast, but felt alone in the deep connection she felt with the earth. When she discovered her love for sustainable agriculture, a largely white-dominated industry, she worried she was betraying her ancestors who had worked hard to be free from the land.

“There’s a lot of trauma in our history related to the land. We started to imagine the land was also the source of oppression, when in fact it was the land that was sustaining us,” said Penniman.

As she began to connect with other farmers of color, she learned that many of the organic farming practices she was learning – raised beds, cover cropping, permaculture, polyculture – had roots in African indigenous cultures. In her new book, Farming While Black, Penniman celebrates her ancestors’ distinct, technical contributions to sustainable agriculture and aims to make that path accessible to more people of color.

Racial Stratification of the Land

In 1920, 14 percent of U.S. farmland was owned by black farmers. Today, that number has dropped to around 1 percent – a loss of over 14 million acres of land caused by racial terror and discrimination, said Penniman.

As black farmers moved North to escape the harsh segregationist laws and violence of the South, a new population of farmers came to fill their place. The Bracero Program, a series of bilateral agreements between Mexico and the U.S., allowed millions of Mexican men to come to the U.S. to work on short-term, primarily agricultural labor contracts between 1942 and 1964. Over 75 percent of farmworkers in the U.S. today were born outside the country and speak Spanish as their first language, according to the latest National Agricultural Workers survey from the U.S. Department of Labor. 

“The food system is working exactly how it was designed – to concentrate resources in the hands of a few,” said Penniman. “Even as our consciousness elevates and we become more understanding of each other, the structural racism deepens because those resources are not being distributed. It creates a totally stratified power structure in the food system.”

Discriminatory housing policies during the New Deal Era of the 1930s created a new system of land dispossession and has resulted in “food apartheid,” a term Penniman uses to describe communities’ inability to access fresh, healthy foods depending on their zip code. This lack of access leads to higher rates of diet-related illnesses like diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer, all of which disproportionately impact black and indigenous communities, said Penniman.

“We can’t let the bigness of problems ahead of us cause us paralysis, because then we’re just being complicit. There’s no such thing as passive anti-racism,” said Penniman. 

Cultivating a Movement

Penniman founded Soul Fire Farm as a way to feed her food apartheid neighborhood in the South End of Albany, NY. Every Wednesday during the growing season, her team packs up 100 boxes of fresh produce and brings it to the doorsteps of those who need it most in the community – newly arrived refugees, immigrants and people with incarcerated loved ones. Some neighbors pay more for their Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box so that others can get theirs for free. 

All of the food grown at Soul Fire is cultivated in a way to make the earth better using regenerative farming methods and requires treating the earth with respect, said Penniman.

“It’s not just the physical technologies, but also the spiritual technologies. We invite the life back into the soil, we give thanks and we celebrate our ancestry,” said Penniman.

The 80-acre farm provides fertile ground to train the next generation of farmer activists and strengthen the food justice movement through policy and advocacy work. The farm provides educational and immersive training programs designed for black, indigenous and people of color and has produced over 600 alumni, most of whom are farming.

Reflecting on Penniman’s talk, sophomore environmental studies major Erin Joseph said, “I realized how little knowledge I had about our farming history and diversity within the industry. We are all involved in our food system as consumers or producers – or both – and we have the ability to influence each part of that system.”

Source: UVM News

The U.S. Army Cadet Command announced this week that the University of Vermont is one of eight winners of the MacArthur Awards for the school year 2017-2018. The award recognizes the eight schools, selected from among the 275 senior Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) units nationwide, as the top programs in the country.



The awards, presented by Cadet Command and the Gen. Douglas MacArthur Foundation, recognize the ideals of “duty, honor and country” as advocated by MacArthur.

The award is based on a combination of the achievement of the school’s commissioning mission, its cadets’ performance and standing on the command’s National Order of Merit List and its cadet retention rate.



Cadet Command and the MacArthur Foundation have given the awards each year since 1989.


The 2017-2018 awardees of the General Douglas MacArthur Award, selected by their brigade commanders as the top performing program, are:



• Virginia Military Institute, which represents Cadet Command’s 1st Brigade.
• University of Vermont, which represents 2nd Brigade.
• Saint John’s University, which represents 3rd Brigade.
• University of Virginia, which represents 4th Brigade.
• University of Texas at Austin, which represents 5th Brigade.
• Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, which represents 6th Brigade.
• Ohio State University, which represents 7th Brigade.
• Pacific Lutheran University, which represents for 8th Brigade.

Source: UVM News

Source: UVM News

UVM Film and Television Studies Professor Sarah Nilsen took a dozen UVM students to Los Angeles for four jam-packed days over the winter break as a capstone experience for a course on the movie industry. Nilsen was the chief instructor, but she had at least a dozen unofficial “adjuncts” in LA, all UVM alumni who work in the film industry as actors, producers, directors and marketing executives.

The course examines the Hollywood studio system which has dominated the global film market since the 1920s, and the social and cultural impacts of film on American society.

“We study the history of the studios which includes the Hollywood style of filmmaking and the industry structure,” Nilsen explained. “Then we travel to LA and meet some of the people who make it all work. And there’s a tremendous amount of UVM talent there.”

For Chloe Chaobal ’20, the trip dispelled many preconceived notions about “La-La Land.” 

“We all hear negative things about LA—the pollution, the smog. When I got there I was honestly surprised at how beautiful it was. Instead of being self-absorbed, the people we met were really open and generous.”

Chaobal is an anthropology major interested in writing and media studies—she produces podcasts for UVM’s student newspaper the Vermont Cynic and worked as an intern for author and UVM alumna Gail Sheehy last summer. 

She was especially impressed by a meeting with Katie Elmore Mota ’04, founder and executive producer of Wise Entertainment.

“I loved how she was creating her own niche, doing work that’s really cutting-edge and socially relevant,” Chaobal said. 

Mota and her husband Mauricio produced “East Los High,” a drama series that debuted on Hulu in 2013. The series has earned five Emmy nominations for its portrayal of inner-city Latino high school students—it was the first English-language television show with all-Latino cast members, creators, and writers. 

“Our goal is to create things that people love and that make them say, ‘I’m seeing myself for the first time on TV,’” Mota said recently in an interview with UVM’s Vermont Quarterly magazine. 

Career Connections

Students also met with Mike Ridgewell, vice-president of creative media and digital marketing for Fandango, the online movie ticketing company. Ridgewell, a father of a current UVM student, arranged for a tour of Fandango offices and hosted a two-hour sit down that included several Fandango employees.

There’s a big career outreach component to the course, and Nilsen advised the students to thoroughly research the people they would be visiting and the companies they represented. She encouraged them to create a LinkedIn page if they hadn’t already done do, and connect with their hosts online.

“Mike came up to me right after the meeting and gave me a list of names of students who had done their homework and really impressed him with their questions,” Nilsen said. “It was great experience for students looking for opportunities in the industry. Having connections is vital to getting your foot in the door.”

Jay Roth ’68, who recently retired as national executive director of the Directors Guild of America, gave the class a tour of guild headquarters on Sunset Boulevard. After a career in labor law, Roth was hired for the top SGA job in 1995 and has led the guild’s collective bargaining agreements ever since—Daily Vanity called Roth the “showbiz point person on making a deal to ensure Hollywood’s labor peace.”

Students met several alumni on the creative end of the business, including actor Tim Griffin. He played Ronny O’Malley on Grey’s Anatomy and his lengthy list of film credits include roles in The Bourne Supremacy, Leatherheads, The Men Who Stare at Goats, A Better Life and American Sniper. Griffin’s friend and UVM alumnus Josh Stroberg, a director and writer (he directed the award-winning film Life Coach), dropped by for what turned into a two-and-a-half hour discussion and dinner.

Another highlight was meeting with Patrick Starr ‘98, senior vice president of creative advertising at Universal Pictures. Starr, who studied English at UVM, took time to meet with the students in his building’s jaw-dropping conference room, and included several of his Universal colleagues. One of them was Sean Zabik ‘16, now a creative coordinator for Universal who creates movie trailers, produces digital content, and develops TV spots and movie posters—”just about everything involved in promotion of big productions,” he said.

Zabik worked as a research assistant for Nilsen, and with the help of UVM faculty he landed summer internship at Sharp Entertainment in New York City. That led to a gig job shadowing for Starr, and Zabic was hired full-time at Universal in 2017.

Film student Jordan Mitchell ’21 felt grateful for the time these busy professionals gave the group. 

“They were really generous with their advice—not just about how the business works but basic things like ‘how do you move to a new city? Where’s the best place to live? Do you need a car?’”

She believes the four-day experience not only oriented her to the city, but set expectation levels for being successful in the industry. Ridgewell told the group that skills and commitment are important, but that working respectfully and collaboratively are essential. When he makes a hire, he makes it a practice to check with the garage attendant and office receptionist about how they were treated by each candidate during the interview process. 

Nilsen is gratified the students met many young UVM alumni like Zabik and Sadie Holliday ’14, who worked at UVM’s radio station WRUV as a student, and now works as manager of the Montreal-based band Homeshake.  

“Our students can begin to imagine themselves in these positions, doing these jobs. And it also makes me proud to think our school here on the opposite coast has produced all these successful people in the industry.”

 

 

 

Source: UVM News

If you want to lose weight, research shows, the single best predictor of success is monitoring and recording your calorie and fat intake throughout the day — to “write it when you bite it.”

But dietary self-monitoring is commonly viewed as so unpleasant and time-consuming, many would-be weight-losers can’t muster the will power to do it.

New research to be published in the March issue of Obesity suggests that the reality of dietary self-monitoring may be far less disagreeable than the perception.

After six months of monitoring their dietary intake, the most successful participants in an online behavioral weight-loss program spent an average of just 14.6 minutes per day on the activity. Program participants recorded the calories and fat for all foods and beverages they consumed, as well as the portion sizes and the preparation methods.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Vermont and the University of South Carolina, is the first to quantify the amount of time that dietary self-monitoring actually takes for those who successfully lose weight.

“People hate it; they think it’s onerous and awful, but the question we had was: How much time does dietary self-monitoring really take?” said Jean Harvey, chair of the Nutrition and Food Sciences Department at the University of Vermont and the lead author of the study. “The answer is, not very much.” 

Harvey and her colleagues looked at the dietary self-monitoring habits of 142 participants in an online behavioral weight control intervention. For 24 weeks, participants met weekly for an online group session led by a trained dietician.

They also logged their daily food intake online, in the process leaving behind a record of how much time they spent on the activity and how often they logged in – information the researchers mined for the new study.

Participants who lost 10 percent of their body weight – the most successful members of the cohort – spent an average of 23.2 minutes per day on self-monitoring in the first month of the program. By the sixth month, the time had dropped to 14.6 minutes.

Brief but frequent

What was most predictive of weight-loss success was not the time spent monitoring – those who took more time and included more detail did not have better outcomes – but the frequency of log-ins, confirming the conclusions of earlier studies.

“Those who self-monitored three or more time per day, and were consistent day after day, were the most successful,” Harvey said.  “It seems to be the act of self-monitoring itself that makes the difference – not the time spent or the details included.”

Harvey attributes the decrease in time needed for self-monitoring to participants’ increasing efficiency in recording data and to the web program’s progressive ability to complete words and phrases automatically after just a few letters were entered.

The study’s most important contribution, Harvey said, may be in helping prospective weight-losers set behavioral targets.

“We know people do better when they have the right expectations,” Harvey said. “We’ve been able to tell them that they should exercise 200 minutes per week. But when we asked them to write down all their foods, we could never say how long it would take. Now we can.”

With online dietary monitoring apps like LoseIt, Calorie King and My Fitness Pal widely available, Harvey hopes the study results motivate more people to adopt dietary self-monitoring as a weight-loss strategy.

“It’s highly effective, and it’s not as hard as people think,” she said.

The stakes are high. The latest federal data show that nearly 40 percent of American adults were obese in 2015–16, up from 34 percent in 2007–08.  Obesity is linked to chronic diseases including type 2 diabetes, hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and cancer and accounts for 18 percent of deaths among Americans ages 40 to 85, according to a 2013 study.

Source: UVM News

When UVM Assistant Professor of History Sarah Osten decided to spend a week in October volunteering as a translator for families seeking asylum in the U.S., she got a useful piece of advice: load your laptop with kid’s movies and bring an extra set of headphones.

The advice hit home when Osten began interpreting for families that had recently arrived at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, the largest immigration detention center for women and children in the U.S. 

The stories they told detailed the underlying reasons for their flight—rape, extortion or threats of violence. 

“The preparation for their ‘credible fear’ interviews with immigration officials could take anywhere from 90 minutes to four hours, and women were understandably anxious about being separated from their kids for that long,” Osten explained. “How can you talk with them candidly about these things with their children present? So I cued up a movie and handed the kids headphones.”

The kids squealed in delight to the movie Cars while Osten went to work for the Dilley Pro Bono Project.

The non-profit is an offshoot of the Immigration Justice Campaign, a nationwide initiative that aims to ensure due process for detained immigrants by providing free legal counsel. Osten and her fellow volunteers received preparation that included online videos, conference calls, and a four-hour training session after arrival.

Osten is fluent in Spanish and she spent five 12-hour days interpreting detainee stories for volunteer attorneys versed in immigration law. Then she dispensed legal advice back to the detainees, most of them from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

The trick to these conversations, Osten discovered, was establishing a connection between the detainee’s experience and the strict legal definition of “credible fear.” Detainees had to demonstrate that a return to their native counties would put them at risk of violence their governments could not protect them from.

“People experienced terrible things that you and I would agree were very good reasons to flee, but they might not be legally relevant as parts of an asylum claim,” Osten said. “Part of our work was explaining the law and the asylum process to clients.”

The Dilley Pro Bono Projecthas a 99% success rate of helping detainees get past the credible fear interview, the first hurdle in the asylum process (nationally about 76% percent pass the interview) but the math is against detainees requesting asylum. Even when the “reasonable fear” standard is established, only 10% of asylum requests are successful, and the process can take years to complete. 

Deeper Lessons

“I’m a historian of modern Latin America and have read extensively about Central America and the historical roots of the ongoing violence there,” Osten says. “I also teach about Central America, and drug trafficking, and gangs. I thought I understood it all pretty well.”

Criminal gangs like the oft-cited Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13) are involved in the drug trade, Osten said, but members are essentially contractors for large drug trafficking organizations, working as low-level warehouse guards or smugglers. Gangs make most of their money through extortion, and their targets are not the rich and famous. 

At risk are the most vulnerable people in society like single mothers trying to make a living by running a small enterprise—perhaps a grocery store or a laundry business. If the business generates any kind of profit, gang members inevitably show up demanding payoffs. Failure to comply can mean death.

“After the first day I phoned my husband and said ‘Central American gangs are so much worse than I thought,’” Osten said. 

Osten was also struck by how much violence in Central America is a woman’s issue. Almost every woman she interviewed at Dilley was sexually assaulted or raped. Human traffickers offer an avenue for escape, but at a steep price—they can demand $10,000-$15,000 to escort a person to the U.S. border. 

Women with relations in the U.S. or elsewhere may be able to scrape together the cash, but still may face the heartbreaking choice of which child to take with them and which to leave behind in the care of relatives. The last resort for women who cannot afford transport is the caravan. There is strength in numbers, and the society of a caravan offers more protection than local police, who are often in the pocket of local gangs.

On the Border 

As a volunteer, Osten paid for her own accommodations and meals while in Dilley. She stayed in a local hotel and drove in each day to the detention center with her volunteer cohorts. The facility accommodated up to 2,400 people at the time (there were about 1,900 the week Osten was there) but she only had access to one trailer of the compound where she met with clients. 

A neighboring trailer served as a makeshift courtroom—immigrants who did not pass the credible fear litmus test could appeal the decision to a judge who was not on the premises but teleconferenced into the facility.

Osten still felt the sense of desperation immigrants brought with them. After being detained at the border, immigrants stayed in cages so cold they were commonly referred to as “iceboxes.” Women who cross the border with children and plan to petition for asylum are the relocated to the Dilley facility. Due to close contact with fellow travelers and the stress of the long journey, many women and children arrived with upper respiratory infections.  

Water was a problem. Between widespread fracking in the region and the proximity of the immigration facility and a Texas state prison, the local sewer system was overwhelmed. Osten and fellow volunteers were instructed not to drink the water—immigrants had to take their chances. As they awaited their hearings, arrivals were fed twice a day and a clinic was available for medical treatment. But the lines to see a doctor were long, and those who waited for treatment risked missing a meal. One toddler, Mairee Juarez, died shortly after being released from the Dilley facility, a few months before Osten was there. 

Responses

After signing up as a volunteer for the Dilley Pro Bono Project, Osten didn’t know what week she would travel to Texas.

“Coincidentally, I left during the week I was planning on covering Central America in my History of Drugs in Latin America class,” she said. “The week I was gone I had students do independent research projects on gangs and drug trafficking while I was working with asylum seekers in Dilley.”

She couldn’t have constructed a more relevant lesson plan. It was during Osten’s stay in Texas that the migrant caravan approaching the border became big news.

“I got home to 40 fired-up students really passionate about this subject and really well informed—because they had done these projects in my absence,” she said.

Osten gave students in the class the option of writing a final paper covering the historical background on gangs, drugs and migration out of Central America. She’ll use their work for a website containing historical background briefs for attorneys representing asylum seekers. Senior David Smith is working with Osten this semester to piece the site together, which will include research of his own.

“As a historian working with this volunteer team, I had many people asking questions like: ‘What is the origin of Mara Salvatrucha?,’ and ‘Why are they so many gangs in El Salvador?’ I think making this resource available will help provide attorneys with important context for their work.”

 

 

Source: UVM News

For a student who loves science, sports and helping people, Rehabilitation and Movement Science provides an excellent career path. And if that path leads to an opportunity to accompany alpine ski racing champion Mikaela Shiffrin to slopes in Austria, Switzerland, Croatia, Italy and France, it’s a dream come true.

It’s reality for Regan Dewhirst, Exercise Science ’13, Doctor of Physical Therapy ’15. She travels with Team USA in Shiffrin’s entourage, serving as personal physical therapist and athletic trainer to the three-time Olympic medalist and reigning World Cup champion.

Dewhirst’s mission is to keep Shiffrin injury-free and prepared for arduous training with her coaches. She develops daily exercise regimens and guides Shiffrin through gym routines. On the race course, Dewhirst leads Shiffrin through warm up moves, balance drills, deep breathing and visualization. In each new training or race location, she creates a medical plan that includes local hospital access and ski patrol contact details. She stays on the hill with Shiffrin, observing the skier’s movement patterns and remaining vigilant to act quickly if the skier requires physical assistance.

“As the ‘physio,’ I get to do a little bit of everything. I am constantly problem-solving and modifying the ‘off-hill’ plan so that she will be prepared for the next discipline and able to work towards her goals in all events.” Dewhirst said. “I assess her daily posture and movement patterns to develop a plan for maintaining mobility, motor control, balance, strength and agility. I communicate her physical and medical needs with each member of the team.”

By “team,” Dewhirst means Team Shiffrin: Two dedicated coaches, a service technician to manage Shiffrin’s equipment, a publicist, Shiffrin’s mother and Dewhirst. The Team USA women’s head coach also checks in regularly. Dewhirst appreciates the interprofessional collaboration.

“Working with Mikaela’s coaches is fun. I go to all of her strength and conditioning sessions and observe her movements. The coaches rely on me to control how much physical stress we put on her and plan appropriately for weight load and volume,” she said. “I feel lucky to be part of this traveling ‘family’ and there’s nothing more satisfying than everyone coming together on race day and watching her perform at her best.”

Making Connections

This is Dewhirst’s first season with the team. She was working full-time at VASTA Physical Therapy and Sports Performance in South Burlington, Vermont, when the opportunity arose via email from Team Shiffrin, shortly after the 2018 Winter Olympics at which Shiffrin won two medals. The message cited Dewhirst’s education in the Doctor of Physical Therapy program at UVM and her advanced orthopedic residency at VASTA. Dewhirst speculates that Shiffrin encouraged her team to contact her.

Shiffrin’s parents and siblings know Dewhirst’s, and the children skied, played tennis and went sledding together in New Hampshire when they were in elementary school. The girls raced for the same club in Lebanon, New Hampshire, before Shiffrin moved to Burke Mountain Academy in northeastern Vermont. As Shiffrin’s ski career took off, and Dewhirst got more involved in soccer, ice hockey and tennis, the girls went their separate ways.

Although she admits to feeling nervous initially about taking on this new adventure, Dewhirst felt prepared for the job, thanks to her experience and education at UVM. She refers to her books and notes from classes in neuroscience, human performance and ergogenic aids and fondly recalls her experience studying abroad in Australia, where she honed skills in manual therapy and clinical decision-making. She also relies heavily on knowledge gained in a sports psychology course she took with Professor Jeremy Sibold, now the Associate Dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences.

“On race days, I use more sports psychology than any other skills. I look back on those notes often,” Dewhirst said. “I have to determine how to get Mikaela in the right mindset. As I’ve gotten to know her better, I’ve learned to use sport psychology principles and tailor my communication to help her find the optimal mental state.”

Transferrable Skills

While at UVM, Dewhirst played four years on the UVM Women’s Soccer team and worked as a part-time assistant coach with the Green Mountain Valley School Ski Club at nearby Sugarbush Resort. These experiences shaped her understanding of competitive athletes’ needs.

“I’ve always loved science and sports, and I knew early on that I wanted to go into health care,” Dewhirst said. Throughout high school and college I spent a lot of time in the gym working to improve my strength and foot speed and I had a few strength coaches who became mentors for my career. I hoped that I could someday help athletes reach their goals just as they did for me.”

Last summer, Team Shiffrin invited Dewhirst to a 10-day ski training camp in Mammoth, California, to meet the team and become familiar with what her new job would entail.

“It’s so different than working in a clinic” Dewhirst said. “Instead of working with many patients on a rehab level, I now work with one person, scanning her body movements all day and constantly changing what to tweak for injury prevention.”

The post is seasonal, tracking 90 Alpine Skiing World Cup races on three continents. Dewhirst started in October with Giant Slalom race in Austria, and she’ll finish in March in Andorra. The itinerary included stops in Bulgaria, Norway, Canada and Killington, Vermont. She plans to return to VASTA when the season ends.

“There are days when I miss home, but every place I go I make connections with alpine skiing and medical professionals. I’ve met physical therapists from all over the world. It’s fun to see how physios from different countries prescribe exercise and see how it relates to my own patient management,” she said. “The biggest dream come true is getting to work with an athlete who is so focused and motivated, but also kind, funny, and super fun to be around. It’s been a wild ride and an amazing experience.”

Source: UVM News