Category: Education

On paper, Vermont’s 2019 Teacher of the Year is a math teacher, but at the heart of Tom Payeur’s work, he’s a persistence teacher. At Winooski High School, located in the state’s most diverse community, Payeur ’10 G’12 and his colleagues are leveling the education playing field by building and implementing a proficiency-based education model for the school.

“What we’re doing is we’re pulling out all of the inequities that are deeper than just getting students to pass the class. We’re getting at the root causes of what our students need in the moment,” he says.

When it comes to disparities in the classroom, Payeur uses math as an example. “Math just reeks of status. There are ‘math people’ and there are ‘not math people.’ There were honors classes and there were good college prep classes.” In Payeur’s school, the disparities grow further as students come from vastly different backgrounds — from refugees and non-English speakers to generational Vermonters — yet all must learn the same math.

“You’ve got to be on your game at all moments of the day and think to yourself: Am I saying this in a way that all students can understand? Am I providing access for all types of learners right now? That’s what’s on my mind every day,” he says.

A course that Payeur designed and teaches, Math Lab, addresses these issues by mimicking the real world. Math Lab integrates students from all mathematics levels into one class and encourages them to collaborate on realistic problems involving math together. This structure provides students individual, catered instruction as they practice math, but also ingrains in them what are called transferrable skills, like communication, creativity and persistence, that will help them succeed beyond the classroom. Specifically, Payeur views these transferrable skills as essential to solving complex problems like climate change with collaboration and innovation.

“We’re breaking down barriers and putting students who are on different levels of math with each other and actually creating a microcosm of the world they live in, where everybody’s got different understandings about everything.”

Student Becomes the Teacher

Payeur’s route to teaching started with a book he read for a wealth and poverty economics course he took during his senior year. “Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools” by Jonathan Kozol illuminates the grim realities of the education system and schools across the country in the late ’80s. “That book, it’s just disgusting. It’s disgusting what we put children through to get an education,” he says.

He became “totally immersed” in education and did a research project in the class about school funding and inequities in the school system. Payeur also secured an internship at a Montpelier think tank, where he was able to work alongside the individual who wrote Vermont’s tax code that made school funding more equitable. He knew then that he wanted to use policy to address challenges that prevent all students from receiving a quality education.

However, “It felt insincere to think that I could go in and start writing education public policy without having ever experienced public education,” he admits. Soon after graduating with bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and economics, Payeur returned to the University of Vermont for an accelerated master’s program in teaching.

Now, as the 2019 Vermont Teacher of the Year, Payeur will travel across the state to speak and collaborate with other teachers and school administrators. Later this spring, he will represent Vermont at the Teacher of the Year program in Washington, D.C. At just 30 years old, and with only seven years in the classroom, Payeur is honored to receive the award at this stage in his career.

“It just means so much to me and I hope that my message is heard, specifically around the need to teach students transferable skills if they’re to grapple with the issues of climate change.”

Source: UVM News

As the world’s cities grow, understanding underground infrastructure becomes more crucial than ever before.

Ground-penetrating radar technology being developed by the University of Vermont and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga aims to reveal what’s beneath our streets, reducing the risk & cost of construction and transforming the inspection process for urban development.

Read more about this transformational ground-penetrating radar technology.

Source: UVM News

Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, will be the University of Vermont’s 2019 commencement speaker.

Walker has served as president of the foundation, an internationally renowned philanthropic organization, since June 2013. Among many successes in his career, he chaired the philanthropy committee that brought a positive resolution to the city of Detroit’s historic bankruptcy and is co-founder and chair of the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance.

“I couldn’t be more pleased that Mr. Walker will be with us on Commencement Day 2019 to share his timely perspectives from his distinguished and storied career,” said UVM president Tom Sullivan. “His success in leading a large and complex organization that seeks to do good in the world and his experience in addressing a number of difficult societal challenges are inspiring achievements that will engage our 2019 graduates deeply as they embark on a new phase of life.”

Before joining Ford, Mr. Walker was a vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation, overseeing global and domestic programs, including the Rebuild New Orleans initiative after Hurricane Katrina. In the 1990s, as chief operating officer of the Abyssinian Development Corporation—Harlem’s largest community development organization—he oversaw a comprehensive revitalization strategy, including building over 1,000 units of affordable housing, the first major commercial development in Harlem since the 1960s.

Mr. Walker is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the recipient of thirteen honorary degrees and university awards, including the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal from Harvard University. He serves on the boards of Carnegie Hall, the High Line and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Mr. Walker also co-chairs New York City’s Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers, and serves on the Commission on the Future of Riker’s Island Correctional Institution and the UN International Labor Organization Commission on the Future of Work.

Educated in public schools, Mr. Walker was a member of the first class of Head Start in 1965 and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, which in 2009 recognized him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award—its highest alumni honor. He later earned a degree in law from the University of Texas School of Law. He has been included on numerous annual media lists, including Time’s annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, Rolling Stone’s 25 People Shaping the Future, Fast Company’s 50 Most Innovative People, and OUT Magazine’s Power 50.

Walker will deliver his address on Sunday, May 19. The ceremony will begin at 8:20 a.m. that day. Read a complete schedule of UVM’s commencement activities.

Source: UVM News

University of Vermont president Tom Sullivan will be the 2019 annual honoree of the Vermont Council of World Affairs. Sullivan will be honored at the organization’s 2019 annual dinner on June 13.

According to the organization, Sullivan is being recognized for his academic work, including his many published scholarly articles, a number of which address international themes; his years of service at UVM; and his commitment to supporting international education and cultural exchange. 

“The Vermont Council of World Affairs serves a vital role in engaging our state with the today’s most pressing international themes and issues,” Sullivan said. “I’m honored to be recognized by this important group.” 

The Vermont Council on World Affairs, in cooperation with the public and private sectors, promotes an awareness and understanding of the world and its people through public forums, hosting international visitors and working with our educational institutions to develop programs for students, faculty, staff and community.

Past honorees include former Vermont governor Howard Dean, Congressman Peter Welch, Mary Powell, CEO of Green Mountain Power, Senator Patrick Leahy, former Vermont governor James Douglas and Madeleine Kunin, former ambassador to Switzerland and Vermont governor. 

Sullivan was named UVM president in 2012. He will step down from the position in June 2019 to teach and write.

Source: UVM News

Inside a police station in New Delhi sat a crying, beaten young boy, when UVM associate professor of anthropology Jonah Steinberg wandered in to ask for directions. The boy was difficult to miss, with blood on his face and hair. A police officer explained that the boy had run away from home and that an NGO worker had done this to him.

Throughout his time in India, Steinberg continually encountered children in trying circumstances or outright peril. “The presence of death was shocking to me,” he says. For more than a decade, Steinberg built relationships with many of these children and compiled their stories for an ethnographic exploration of the cultural, social and historical forces that draw them away from their rural Indian homes and into high-risk cities. His latest book, “A Garland of Bones: Child Runaways in India” serves as a meditation on the issues at play in such scenes and lives and illuminates this highly marginalized population.

Steinberg acknowledges that images of Indian street kids—which the runaways are commonly called—can be striking to Westerners as embodying something “markedly foreign” from the childhood that they themselves experienced and perceive to be “normal.” Under the spotlight of popular films like “Lion” and “Slumdog Millionaire,” Indian street kids have become associated with a loss of innocence, poverty, abandonment and peril. However, despite Euro-American assumptions, “those kids aren’t straightforward victims of pure poverty and abandonment,” explains Steinberg. The peril, however, is real.

The majority of street kids featured in Steinberg’s book are not abandoned, but often actively choose to leave troubling situations at home. They travel hundreds of miles, usually via train, to populated cities where they may ultimately acquire work. Many die, but nearly all face some degree of daily threat—getting struck by trains and cars, drug addiction, disease and illness, human trafficking and sexual exploitation, to name a few. Some kids return home, but most do not. Some, like the boy at the police station, are acquired by corrupt charities or NGOs and either sent home against their will or held in facilities against their will. Some of those facilities may even be abusive. So why would they choose to live this life?

Over the course of his work, which was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, Steinberg says many of the children he came to know cited familial abuse and poverty in their villages as reasons for running away. Yet, Steinberg notes, those children had the autonomy and resources to physically leave. “On one hand, it appears to be a choice to run away, but on the other, it’s also a lack of choice. There are large historical forces at work that make rural livelihoods more difficult and stressful,” he says.

As an anthropologist, Steinberg strives to connect swaths of history to contemporary life. In “A Garland of Bones,” he makes the case that runaway children are pushed by centuries of history to leave their rural lands. For example, Indian indigo farming during British colonialism in the 1800s indebted families, devastated once-fertile lands and resulted in massive agrarian exploitation at the time. Two hundred years later, villagers on those same lands still suffer from depleted soils and inescapable poverty, which causes high stress and preventable illness among families. Today, Steinberg says those lands yield high numbers of runaway children, who might flee after a family member dies or abuses them.

“That’s not something that can absolutely be proven,” Steinberg says, “but the book is more of a meditation on that process. It looks to disrupt what we think of as normal. Poverty is directly related to vast systems of history, of which we’re a part.”

Source: UVM News

Highlights of the UVM Board of Trustees meeting held January 31 through February 2, 2019 included the following:

President Tom Sullivan brought board members up to date on the once every-10-year accreditation process the university is currently undergoing, conducted by the New England Commission on Higher Education (NECHE). More than 100 faculty and staff have been working on the effort over the past two years, creating a self-study report to submit to NECHE. The process will culminate with a visit from March 24-27 by a five-member team of accreditors that will feature meetings with faculty, staff and students and several open forums. Accreditors will deliver an oral report at the of the visit and a written report later in the year.    

UVM Foundation president and CEO Shane Jacobson gave the board an update on the university’ comprehensive fundraising campaign, which has exceeded its $500 million goal by nearly $50 million dollars. The Foundation will celebrate the success of the campaign on May 17 and officially close it on June 30. 

In a report on grants and contracts, Board chair David Daigle said the university has already secured nearly $73 million, which would put it on pace to exceed last year’s total of $136 million.

A capital projects update from Robert Vaughan and Paula Carlaccini featured a slide show showing the construction progress of Innovation Hall, the last portion of the STEM complex to be built, from groundbreaking to the present. The project will be completed in May. This summer all the fences that have enclosed the UVM central campus construction district for the past several years will be eliminated, Vaughn said, and next fall bus service will be restored to the area. 

In the Educational Policy and Institutional Resources (EPIR) Committee meeting, a number of new majors, minors and certificate programs were approve, including a Bachelor of Arts in Dance; Certificate in Community Music: Organ; Bachelor of Science in Anthropology; Undergraduate Certificate in Religious Literacy in the Professions; Minor in Reporting and Documentary Storytelling, all in the College of Arts and Sciences; and an Undergraduate Certificate and a Continuing Education Academic Certificate in Integrated Health & Wellness Coaching in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences and Continuing and Distance Education.

During the Budget, Finance and Investment (BFI) Committee meeting, the committee approved $4 million to be spent on deferred maintenance in 2019/2020. The committee also set maximum rates for 2020 comprehensive, SGA and IRA fees. Those details are available in the consent agenda. 

See the full consent agenda.

Source: UVM News

Last summer Matt Schildkamp ’18 travelled to the Florida Everglades to spend a week collecting nature film clips as part of a project by his advisor Sarah Nilsen, associate professor of film & television studies. The inspiration for his field activity was a 1953 Walt Disney True-Life Adventure film Prowlers of the Everglades. 

After checking into a Travel Lodge in Homestead, Schildkamp walked into the sawgrass marsh and determined where the videographers for the original Disney film, Alfred and Elma Milotte, gathered their footage in the early 1950’s. It was a short stretch of trail called the Anhinga, now covered by a boardwalk. He set up his tripod and waited. 

What he saw was similar to what the Milottes saw: long-legged egrets wading slowly through the wetlands seeking fish in the shallows; alligators cruising through the waters or sunning themselves in clearings. But he was troubled by what he didn’t see.

“A big theme of the Disney film was this big circle of life, how mammals like racoons sustained themselves on alligator eggs and hatchlings,” he said. “I saw alligators, but I never saw any mammals.”

When he asked where the raccoons had gone, a park ranger told him he hadn’t seen a mammal of any kind in ten years—unless it was roadkill.

Schildkamp was in Florida for just a few days, while his predecessors spent nearly a year filming through the wet and dry seasons in the Everglades. But he was there long enough to witness how quickly the ecosystem had changed, and there was no mystery regarding one of the root causes.

“Snakes are a big problem there, and iguanas are a big problem,” Schildkamp said. “They were introduced accidently through the pet trade. Not that that’s the sole reason for the changes there, but the non-native snakes have no natural predators. So they reproduce fast and eat the mammals.” 

Florida naturalists have watched in recent decades as fauna in the Everglades have been invaded by exotic frogs, lizards and snakes. The Burmese python may have already supplanted the alligator as the apex predator in the region. 

The Disney Connection

Nilsen admires the Disney True-Life Adventure films not just for their technical craft—many outdoor filming innovations were developed by naturalists who recorded the original footage—but also for the vantage point they provide for the state of wildlife in 1950’s America. 

Disney Studios created 13 of these short films between 1948 and 1960 and they became staples for school audiences and television programs like Walt Disney’s Disneyland and Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. Most of the films featured wildlife in North America. Eight of them won academy awards. 

“Walt Disney was enormously interested in animals and the environment, and he was very invested in these films,” Nilsen said. “When you look at histories of nature documentaries, almost all cite the Disney films as a central part of the story, but very little scholarship has been done on their impact.”  

The films were “Disneyfied” in ways that might seem hokey to today’s viewers of Animal Planetor National Geographic Wild. For instance a scene featuring a pair of dueling scorpions in the desert southwest is set to square dance music. In another film, two bighorn sheep lock horns with Verdi’s “Anvil Chorus” playing in the background. But Nilsen notes that the films had an enormous impact on the environmental movement at the time. 

“Many people who went into the park service or wildlife rehabilitation or some form of environmental protection say they were inspired by these films, she said.

An outdoor enthusiast and animal lover herself—she teaches an animals in films and television at UVM—Nilsen sees the True-Life canon as a baseline to measure how the environment and wildlife populations have changed in the intervening years. Schildkamp’s foray, funded by a College of Arts and Sciences internship grant, was the first of several faculty-student collaborations she envisions. 

Next Steps

Schildkamp, who graduated in December with a degree in film & television studies, spent much of the past few months helping Nilsen edit footage. He sees himself as a trailblazer for other students working in the Everglades or other remote locations.  

“I did a ton of research before my trip, learning about the Everglades and the Disney films,” he says. “Honestly, this was the most relevant internship work I could possibly hope to be engaged in.”

Nilsen has applied for a research grant that will fund trips to Alaska and Seattle to explore archives left behind by the Milottes and another couple, Herb and Lois Cristler, who also filmed wildlife scenes for the Disney series. On the way, she hopes to visit Olympic National Park to research elk migration, another Disney True-Life theme. Plans include a book on the historical significance of the Disney films.

“If we could go back to the original filming locations and re-create the documentaries, what would they reveal about our environment policies and the effects of global warming? I’d love to send students to these locations (reshoot) like the southwest, where the living Desert was filmed, or the Badlands where Vanishing Prairie was filmed.”

Source: UVM News

Jon Torrey, a UVM Class of 2011 graduate, is giving a tour of Dealer.com’s Burlington headquarters, where he works as a digital advertising product manager for the leading-edge tech company. It’s a vast, open space with staff clustered in work pods and mini-conference rooms, brightly painted corridor “streets” named for Vermont towns, a regulation-size basketball court and gym, and a farm-to-table eatery called the Dot-Calm Café.

The place has all the trappings of a Silicon Valley success story. It’s a truth also illustrated by the fact that the company—which creates web sites for car dealerships and helps them create strategic digital advertising plans using a variety of software products—was recently acquired for a second time, for $4.2 billion.

Torrey says that “Dealer,” as it’s known around town, is representative of an emergent Burlington, a technology hub that might surprise outsiders. And he’s not alone in that estimate. The New York Times noted that the city has “lower unemployment than Silicon Valley, spawning a wave of technology pioneers.” Business Insider ranked Burlington as one of the “15 hottest American cities of the future,” and the city also made a Verizon list of the top ten most innovative metro areas in the nation.

For college students attending local schools like UVM, Burlington’s growing prowess as a tech hub is very good news, Torrey says. The city’s thriving network of start-ups, growing mid-stage companies and, increasingly, big league firms like Dealer, offer a wealth of opportunities for students to explore internships during college and career-launching jobs after graduation.

“If you look at what’s happening here right now, if you’re someone who is motivated, and you get out there and you start networking,” he says, “you’re going to crush it.”

Torrey is a case in point. As a sophomore, the economics major landed internships first at the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies, a tech incubator with an office on the UVM campus, then at Hear Forward, a small firm that developed online social advertising strategies for clients like Seventh Generation and Dealer.com, at that point a relative newcomer.

Torrey and his colleagues were so successful at driving engagement and sales on Facebook for their clients – a relatively rare skill set at the time – Dealer.com bought the company. Torrey, who’d been hired by Hear Forward after graduation, suddenly found himself “on the rocket ship,” working at a company of 600 just beginning warp speed growth that would see employees more than double over the next five years.

As Torrey’s career has quickly taken hold, he’s considered options to leave Vermont and relocate to some of the nation’s tech strongholds. But when he went looking, to his surprise his experience at Dealer left him unimpressed by the better-known firms.

The emphasis the company put on health – with its gym and locally sourced food – was part of it. So was the intellectual challenge of the work. But it was the company’s culture that really set it apart. “The group of people who did it here, they had fun. They were a family; life is just a lot brighter when you’re around them,” he says.

A job promotion at Dealer, coupled with all the things he loves about Burlington — four-season recreation to the food scene to a friendly network of young professionals — convinced Torrey to stay put.

The success of Dealer.com has had a powerful ripple effect on the broader Burlington tech industry. In 2014, the company was acquired for the first time, for $1 billion, creating a windfall not only for Dealers’ five founders but for a large group of innovators who’d joined the company in its early days.

While they could have gone anywhere, Dealer’s newly minted millionaires were as enamored of Burlington as Torrey was. They decided to stick around, founding new companies, joining existing ones and investing in others.

That’s a very good sign, says Lee Bouyea, who manages technology investments for FreshTracks Capital, a local venture capital firm. “When successful entrepreneurs reinvest in the local economy, it’s a signal of an ecosystem that is self-sustaining and growing.”

With rapidly growing Dealer-linked companies like Fluency, E-Block, Social Sentinel, Widewail and Dealer Policy joining an anchor in Dealer and a host of other local tech firms, Burlington was becoming a tech mecca.

That’s how Carly Caswell, 2018 UVM Grossman School of Business alumna, sees it. Caswell landed a job at Widget Brain, a Netherlands-based company that helps clients use artificial intelligence and machine learning to solve business problems. The company, which will double in size this year, chose to base its U.S. operation in Burlington.

“There are so many different tech companies here,” Caswell says. “I feel like I can network with all these other people, whether they’re coming from Dealer or somewhere else. It’s a very engaged community.”

Source: UVM News