Category: Education

Thomas Payeur, a mathematics teacher at Winooski High School who earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees at UVM, has been named the 2019 Vermont Teacher of the Year by the Vermont Agency of Education.

Payeur, a math and economics major, earned a masters in Secondary Education from UVM’s College of Education and Social Services in 2012. He was honored October 1 at the Outstanding Teachers Day ceremony in UVM’s Davis Center. The event is hosted annually by UVM and the College of Education and Social Services.  

He will begin his tenure as Vermont Teacher of the Year on January 1, 2019.

Payeur has been teaching mathematics for six years, all at Winooski High School. He is an innovator in the field of proficiency-based education, leading school change efforts to develop best practices in teaching 21st century skills. His mathematics instruction is grounded in research-based methods. His students come from all around the world and constantly challenge him to rethink his assumptions and explore new ways of problem-solving. He strongly believes that all people are math people.

“Tom is both a leader and an innovator in proficiency-based education at Winooski and one of those teachers who is able to connect with and inspire students on a person-to-person level,” said Secretary of Education Daniel M. French. “Both qualities are perfect examples of the excellence and quality of Vermont educators. We need teachers like Tom who are stepping up and leading innovation and practice development if we are to build a world class, integrated 21st century education system.”

“This honor is an absolute validation of the struggle to reform education with a focus on 21st century skills, across the state of Vermont and the nation as a whole,” said Payeur. “When communities are given time and space to come to consensus on the skills their future generations will need to master, hope, possibility, and success bloom in tangible results. The work requires relentless persistence, artful communication, flexible problem solving, imaginative creativity, cultural competence and a focus on the well-being of all involved. The students, staff and larger community of Winooski regularly embody these skills, and as such, I dedicate this honor to them.”

As the 2019 Vermont Teacher of the Year, Payeur will travel statewide visiting schools and working with teachers. He is also Vermont’s candidate for the National Teacher of the Year award, sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers. Payeur will represent Vermont in Washington, D.C. next spring for the National Teacher of the Year program.

Also recognized were the 2019 Vermont Alternate Teacher of the Year, Beth Fraser, a mathematics teacher at Blue Mountain Union School in Wells River and Distinguished Finalist Shane Heath, a science teacher at Northfield Middle High School

Since 1964, the Agency of Education has recognized outstanding Vermont teachers. Now in its 38th Year, Outstanding Teacher Day recognizes outstanding teachers throughout the state through a ceremonial event that takes place in October. Each participating supervisory union or school district may nominate one teacher at the elementary/middle school level, one teacher at the secondary level and one technical center teacher.

Source: UVM News

A newly released report by the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center that measures how well public colleges and universities are serving African American students gives high marks to The University of Vermont. 

The report, “Black students at public colleges and universities: A 50-state report card” by Shaun R. Harper and Isaiah Simmons, assigns each school an A-F score based on four equity indicators:

• “Representation Equity”: The percentage of African American student enrollment relative to the 18-24 year-old African American population in the state.
• “Gender Equity”: How the percentage of female and male African American students compares to the national enrollment percentages across all racial/ethnic groups (56.3 percent women, 43.7 percent men).
• “Completion Equity”: Compares the graduation rates of African American students with those of the overall student population at the school they attend.
• “Black Student-to-Black Faculty Ratio”: Measures the ratio of full-time African American students to full-time African American faculty members.

The University of Vermont earned a “B” grade in the first three indicators and an “A” in the fourth. The grades resulted in a 3.25 “Equity Index” score for UVM, earning it a spot on the report’s list of 36 institutions with the highest “Equity Index” scores out of the 500 plus colleges and universities in the report.

UVM did particularly well in the “Completion Equity” indicator, registering a 70.5 percent graduation rate for its African American students compared to the university’s overall graduation rate of 75.6 percent. It also did well in the “Gender Equity” category, with a gender distribution among African American students of 52.5 percent female and 47.5 percent male, resulting in 3.8 percent variation from national figures. UVM earned its highest grade in the student-to-faculty ratio category with a ratio of 5 African American students per African American faculty member.

The report cautions that a campus that performs well in comparison to others is not necessarily a national model of excellence. 

That is a sentiment echoed by UVM’s Wanda Heading-Grant, vice president for human resources, diversity and multicultural affairs. “While it is important to recognize areas where we are doing well, it is even more important to keep working hard so that we can continue making progress toward providing greater diversity in a just, equitable and inclusive environment for our students,” Heading-Grant said. “We will review the report’s recommendations to see how we can improve on the steps we are already taking.”

Source: UVM News

If you know Professor Kevin McKenna, you know that he gave it his best effort, ardent and true. 1989, McKenna spearheaded a UVM-hosted national conference on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s work. With the Nobel laureate author living just a two-hour drive away in Cavendish, Vermont, the professor of Russian extended an invitation to speak at Ira Allen Chapel.

McKenna knew the odds were long. A curt letter from Solzhenitsyn’s personal secretary sealed it: “Aleksandr Isaaevich no longer gives lectures on American college campuses. Yours will not be an exception.” 

Recounting the story nearly thirty years later, McKenna says, “I wasn’t at all surprised.” Widespread misunderstanding of comments the author made at a 1978 commencement address at Harvard had soured him on such campus appearances.

As December 18, 2018, marks the centennial of Solzhenitsyn’s birth, his life and legacy are reflected upon from Moscow to Cavendish. This summer, McKenna re-read his well-worn copy of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich for, perhaps, the thirtieth time, preparing to teach a fall semester world literature class focused exclusively on Solzhenitsyn.

Centennial events have also taken McKenna, and colleague Professor Wolfgang Mieder, to Russia to deliver lectures to the Russian Academy of Sciences and research future work. In Vermont, McKenna helped to organize an exhibit at the Vermont Historical Society and participated in a conference at Northern Vermont University on the topic of Solzhenitsyn’s fiction. He also recently received an invitation from the Academy of Science and Solzhenitsyn Archives in Moscow to deliver a lecture at their international conference in December celebrating the centennial of the author’s birth.

Living in exile in Switzerland in the mid-1970s, Solzhenitsyn found it too busy, too paparazzi-accessible. Friends in Ontario told him about this place to the south. McKenna lists the aspects of Vermont that appealed to the writer—climate and landscape that felt like home; isolation but not too far from the libraries and archives at Harvard and Dartmouth; a solid place to raise his and his wife’s three children; and, most importantly, neighbors who would respect, even protect, his privacy.

With his bearded and brooding looks, a writer at work in the woods, it’s tempting to label Solzhenitsyn a hermit during his Vermont years, 1976 to 1993. McKenna says no. “He was an unbelievably dedicated writer and researcher, regularly working eighteen hours a day,” McKenna says. “Yes, he wasn’t the kind of person who would attend numerous barbecues, go bowling and things like that, not an overly social kind of person, but definitely not a hermit. He was an avid tennis-player, for example.”

Solzhenitsyn and his wife, Natalia, did attend Town Meeting in Cavendish in 1993 to thank the town and friends there for the welcoming safe harbor of their Vermont years. A sign in the Cavendish general store had long read, “No directions to Solzhenitsyn’s home.”

As McKenna guides students through Solzhenitsyn’s oeuvre this semester, he reflects on what we can learn about twenty-first century Russia from this giant of twentieth-century literature. From outside the country’s borders, McKenna says there is an abiding message to be wary of the Kremlin. Within Russia, Solzhenitsyn’s once-banned books are now seen as mandatory reading by Vladimir Putin’s government. McKenna says, “In the same way as Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, he is viewed as a Russian prophet, a writer who has something essential to say to and about the Russian people.”

Source: UVM News

Residents and property owners are more likely to adopt some green stormwater infrastructure practices if they have experienced flooding or erosion on their property or in their neighborhoods, according to new research from the University of Vermont.

With the number of extreme precipitation events on the rise, the research, published in Landscape and Urban Planning, suggests more households will turn to ecologically friendly practices to manage and direct stormwater.

Importantly, successful adoption of these practices cannot depend on a one size fits all approach, said the study’s lead author Sarah Coleman. Rather, efforts to improve stormwater management should consider the specific needs and motivations of households in the context of their social, physical, and ecological landscape.

“We tend to think of stormwater management as a separate thing, when really it’s baked into our entire landscape. If our natural habitat is altered, it changes how the water moves and we necessarily have to manage that water,” said Coleman. “As we understand more about the impact of climate change on water quality, we need residents and landowners to steward water management practices to address different types of runoff, erosion, and flooding challenges.”

Coleman, who recently completed her PhD in ecological landscape design and environmental governance in the UVM Department of Plant and Soil Science, was interested in better understanding landowners’ likelihood to adopt solutions like green stormwater infrastructure across different landscapes using spatial analysis. While at UVM, she was a graduate fellow of UVM’s Gund Institute and her research was supported by Vermont EPSCoR with funds from the National Science Foundation.

Together with UVM co-authors Stephanie Hurley, Christopher Koliba and Asim Zia from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Donna Rizzo from the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, she conducted a statewide survey of Vermont residents to evaluate how different factors, including past experience with stormwater and flooding problems, location within different towns and watersheds, and perceived barriers to adoption, impacted their likelihood to implement specific stormwater management practices, such as rain gardens, infiltration trenches, or diverting roof runoff. 

Of the 577 survey respondents, 65 percent had either adopted or intended to adopt at least one of the seven green stormwater infrastructure practices identified in the survey. Residents and property owners’ motivation for adopting individual green stormwater infrastructure practices varied with their residence type and location, as well as household demographics, barriers, and social norms.

Households that had experienced stormwater and flooding problems and perceived stormwater to be a problem in their neighborhood were significantly more likely to have adopted or expressed the intention to adopt at least one green stormwater infrastructure practice. Additionally, living in a more densely populated or urban area increased the likelihood of adoption, or having the intent to adopt. 

Christopher Koliba, co-author of the study, added, “The research suggests that as extreme events like floods increase, more and more households will be interested in implementing stormwater management practices. We also hope it raises awareness about the role individual citizens can play in protecting our water resources – before a storm hits.” 

Koliba, Coleman and their co-authors conducted this research as part of a larger, interdisciplinary Vermont EPSCoR research team, including faculty, postdoctoral, and graduate student researchers from both the social and natural sciences, who study complex questions surrounding adaptation to climate change in the Lake Champlain Basin.

Over the past century, heavy rainfall has increased in intensity and frequency across the U.S., with the largest observed changes occurring in the Northeast, according the Climate Science Special Report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In August 2011, Vermont was hit by Tropical Storm Irene, which caused historic flooding and destroyed or damaged more than 2,400 roads and 800 homes and businesses across the state.

“Understanding factors that influence residents’ motivations to adopt different stormwater management strategies is critical to help policymakers, municipalities and watershed organizations encourage and support effective stewardship of these practices,” said Coleman. “We need a flexible, adaptive approach to help tailor outreach and education strategies across diverse populations and landscapes.”

Source: UVM News

There are many reasons why a young person might dream of becoming a doctor. In 2011, Haya and Yara Alshaabi—both UVM class of 2019—were Syrian kids going to high school in Damascus. Their father was a dentist for the United Nations, their mother taught English. “But then—the war,” says Haya. As the fighting grew fiercer, they were in danger. The family went to the U.S. embassy in Lebanon, and in October 2013, they got a visa to move to the United States.

“It was not scary. It was lonely,” says Haya, now twenty-two.

“We had to leave our friends. We were starting a new life,” says Yara, twenty-one.

Cellular sense

The two sisters excelled at Burlington High School, were admitted to the UVM Honors College, and both have pursued independent research projects in biological science, “with the drive and resilience of full-blown graduate students,” says scientist Brian Cunniff, a professor in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. This past summer—with a $5,000 Honors College summer research fellowship—Haya continued her work in Cunniff’s lab to better understand how the positioning of mitochondria influences the migration and signaling of cells. It’s basic science that aims toward new treatments to block the spread of cancer and other diseases.

In the nearby UVM Center for Biomedical Imaging, Yara Alshaabi points into the low light of a room with a large MRI machine. “The volunteers will be in here, and we’ll be asking them to do challenging tasks while we scan their brains,” she explains. She’s developing an independent study—supervised by professor Julie Dumas in the Department of Psychiatry, and with funding from the UVM Office of Fellowships, Opportunities, and Undergraduate Research—of two groups of older women who have survived breast cancer. One group completed their treatment within the last three years; the other group is about a decade past treatment. “I’m studying how age and time since cancer treatment influence the function and structure of the brain,” she says. “Chemotherapy and hormone therapy are working very well to help women survive, but we know the treatments can have side effects on brains and memory.”

Help and hope

In April, after years of effort and waiting, the Alshaabi family (including Haya and Yara’s older brother, Thayer, a graduate student in data science and complex systems at UVM) received permanent U.S. residency. Now the sisters are free to apply to medical school.

“I hope to do research and be a surgeon,” says Haya.

“Maybe I’ll be a psychiatrist,” says Yara. “Medicine is my passion. I love helping people.”

“I lost hope when I was in Syria during the war,” she says. “I’d like to help people who lose hope.”

Some college students are proud of having two skateboards. “I have two cell lines of my own,” says Haya of the cells she maintains for experiments at the UVM lab. And some college students see moving away from their hometown and siblings as freedom. But the Alshaabi sisters keep in close contact with friends in Syria and love living together in their hard-earned Vermont home.

“She’s been my roommate since I was one,” says Haya.

“I love living with my parents, more than living in a dorm,” says Yara. “You feel safe with your family.” But they do squabble sometimes. “Over t-shirts,” says Haya. 

“She’s kind of messy,” says Yara, “She has piles of books everywhere.”

Source: UVM News

U.S. News & World Report has again ranked the University of Vermont a top-50 public university in its 2019 College Guide. UVM was ranked 42th among 132 public universities in the guide.

The university was ranked 96th among 312 national universities. Last year it was ranked 97th.

“We’re very pleased to be again ranked among the top public universities in the nation by U.S. News and in the top 30 percent of all national universities,” said Stacey Kostell, vice president for enrollment management. “Our mission at UVM is to provide a high caliber academic and student life experience. It’s rewarding when the work we do to achieve those goals is validated with a national ranking like this one.”

For the fourth year in a row, UVM’s incoming class has achieved the highest academic credentials in the university’s history. The class of 2022, an estimated 2,500 students, has earned an average SAT score of 1264 and an average ACT of 28.1, record highs for any incoming class.

Source: UVM News

The University of Vermont’s supercomputer is about to get faster. A lot faster.

The National Science Foundation has awarded the university a $1 million grant to significantly upgrade its Vermont Advanced Computing Core (VACC).

Over the next few months, 72 high performance graphics processing units, or GPUs, will be added to the current VACC, housed in UVM’s primary datacenter in South Burlington, to create a new high performance cluster.

Working together in a “massively parallel” system, the new cluster – dubbed DeepGreen – will be up to 3,000 times faster than the current VACC. At its peak, DeepGreen will be able to 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. 

Research advances today are increasingly dependent on finding meaning and patterns within massive amounts of information, or big data, Del Maestro said.

“The new processing power will allow us to take all that data and find the things that are important in it – the needles in the haystack,” Del Maestro said.

“We’re in a new scientific era that’s mainly about two things: data and computational power,” said Safwan Wshah, an assistant professor in UVM’s Computer Science department who studies computer vision, a research area that will benefit greatly from the VACC’s enhanced capability.

The upgraded VACC is a “major leap and a necessary leap,” he said.

The increase in processing speed, combined with a “big pipe,” a hyper-fast connection the university will install from campus to the VACC, will enable faculty to take on new types of research projects they did not have the computational power to explore in the past, Del Maestro said.  

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 adolescent brains 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.”

A competitive process

UVM won the competitive grant – NSF awards between 10 and 15 like it every two years – because the grant application demonstrated that faculty use of the upgraded VACC would be widespread and multi-disciplinary and showed that the center could be a regional resource for schools like Middlebury College and Norwich University.

NSF was also swayed by the UVM administration’s support of the project.   

“UVM faculty scholars across the university, in all of our colleges and schools, are engaged in research and discovery that today requires extremely powerful computational tools,” said David V. Rosowsky, UVM provost and senior vice president. “Immense data sets, computationally-intensive modeling and analysis, predictive analytics, and advanced visualization all require our faculty and students to have access to state-of-the-art, high-performance computing. The Office of the Provost was very happy to support this important initiative for our campus and our state.”

The new graphics processing units in the VACC upgrade will augment more conventional CPU’s, or central processing units, in the current cluster.

Known by computer gamers for their ability to quickly render data-heavy graphics, GPU’s are also “excellent for AI and machine learning,” whose algorithms need high performance computing to function and “learn,” Del Maestro said.

The upgraded VACC will also be a great asset in undergraduate education, said Wshah, who teaches machine learning and deep learning to about 80 students a year.

“The upgrade will enable them to take on more and bigger projects,” he said. “They are very excited to be entering this new age of discovery.”

The DeepGreen cluster at the VACC will be in place by early 2019. Training sessions, geared to faculty with varying levels of experience with high performance computing, will be held in the spring. 

UVM’s Enterprise Technology Services group will be doing the design, construction and support for the new cluster.

Source: UVM News