The outreach work of UVM Extension’s Heather Darby, who has worked with Vermont farmers to promote milkweed as a crop, is featured in a story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The story is the “A-Hed,” the humor feature the Journal publishes every day. Although farmers have long battled milkweed, a nuisance that threatens livestock and other crops, new uses for the plant has turned it into a lucrative commodity. Read the story.
Source: UVM News
The University of Vermont celebrated the completion of Phase I of its new $104 million science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, complex, the largest construction project in its history, with tours of the two new buildings that were recently completed – Discovery Hall, which opened in June after 23 months of construction, and Votey Hall, which opened in late August after an eight-month renovation.
About 150 people toured the new buildings late Thursday afternoon. A third component of the complex, Innovation Hall, will be completed in May 2019. When finished, the STEM complex will house UVM’s departments of Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Statistics, Computer Science, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical and Biomedical Engineering.
“We’re thrilled that the new STEM complex is on schedule and on budget, and that a significant portion of the project is already online promoting just the kind of engaged student learning and interdisciplinary faculty innovation that we envisioned,” said Tom Sullivan, UVM president.
While Innovation Hall will contain predominantly faculty offices, lecture halls and classrooms, Discovery Hall and Votey Hall, home base for the university’s College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, will house the majority of new teaching labs and faculty research labs in the STEM complex.
Discovery is home to 14 teaching labs and 22 faculty research labs. Votey adds 11 new teaching labs and three new faculty research labs to the complex.
Both the teaching and the research labs in the buildings mix the STEM disciplines, rather than giving each one dedicated space as is traditionally done, an intentional element of the project’s design, said UVM’s provost, David Rosowsky.
“The plan was to put people together to promote the kind of collaboration across disciplinary boundaries that can lead to truly innovative learning and discovery,” he said.
The first floor of Discovery Hall, which houses faculty research labs in chemistry, physics and engineering, is a case in point, he said, as is the third floor of Votey Hall, which houses a large physics laboratory near a cluster of engineering labs.
Teaching labs, too, are flexibly designed so they can accommodate students in several different STEM disciplines and be reconfigured for different pedagogical or research purposes.
The new STEM complex, a significant upgrade over the facilities it replaces, contains state-of-the-art features like the only open-research clean room in Vermont, giving students invaluable training that will prepare them for today’s high-tech job market and UVM the chance to recruit world-class faculty focused on nanoscience and nanotech research.
But its real significance lies beyond bricks and mortar.
“The STEM complex has given us the capabilities to bring to life innovative curricular programming that’s strategic for the university and attractive to our student body that we’ve long planned but didn’t have the facilities to implement,” Rosowsky said.
The new biomedical engineering undergraduate major, launched in September 2016, is an example. Planners were confident the major would succeed in part because the new STEM complex would include a large biomedical engineering teaching lab, the university’s first.
Similar new work spaces will help the university grow its new data science major, promote collaborations between UVM’s Larner College of Medicine and the university’s engineering departments, foster collaborations with industry and offer new graduate and certificate programs.
While the new complex is designed to engage and inspire UVM’s STEM majors, who make up about one-third of undergraduate enrollment and more than 60 percent of graduate enrollment, and to attract talented students interested in engineering and the sciences, it is also serves undergraduates in other majors, 90 percent of whom take two or more STEM courses during their college careers.
“The facility is meant to make STEM learning inspiring and accessible to all,” Rosowsky said, “so all UVM students, regardless of their major, graduate with math and science literacy, an appreciation for these disciplines and a commitment to become lifelong learners within our technological society.”
Rosowsky is also excited about the role the new STEM complex can play in education and outreach to Vermont’s K-12 population as a kind of “Exploratorium.”
Beginning this year, classes will be invited to visit the facility to learn about STEM, view research projects in action and meet with faculty and students.
Rosowsky sees this outreach as a natural fit for the university’s land grant mission.
“We want to give Vermont students the opportunity to learn about STEM and to be excited by it, at an early age,” he said, an opportunity young people routinely have in large metropolitan areas like Boston that offer a greater density of tech companies, research institutions and science museums.
“What better role for the state’s land-grant university to play?”
The architect for the STEM complex is a partnership of Freeman French Freeman of Burlington and Ellenzweig Architects, a Boston-based design firm specializing in STEM projects.
Source: UVM News
A University of Vermont-led study of 300,000 children in 35 nations says kids whose watersheds have greater tree cover are less likely to experience diarrheal disease, the second leading cause of death for children under the age of five.
Published in Nature Communications, the study is the first to quantify the connection between watershed quality and individual health outcomes of children at the global scale.
“Looking at all of these diverse households in all these different countries, we find the healthier your watershed upstream, the less likely your kids are to get this potentially fatal disease,” says Taylor Ricketts of UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment.
Surprisingly, the team predicts that a 30 per cent increase in upstream tree cover in rural watersheds would have a comparable effect to improved water sanitation, such as the addition of indoor plumbing or toilets.
“This suggests that protecting watersheds, in the right circumstances, can double as a public health investment,” says Brendan Fisher of UVM’s Gund Institute and Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. “This shows, very clearly, how ‘natural infrastructure’ can directly support human health and welfare.”
The research is the first to use a massive new database that will enable “big data” approaches to study links between human health and the environment, globally. The database features 30 years of USAID demographic and health surveys, with 150 variables for 500,000 households, including spatial data on the environment.
“We are not saying trees are more important than toilets and indoor plumbing,” says Diego Herrera, who led the paper as a UVM postdoctoral researcher, and is now at Environmental Defense Fund. “But these findings clearly show that forests and other natural systems can complement traditional water sanitation systems, and help compensate for a lack of infrastructure.”
The researchers hope the findings help governments and development agencies to improve the health and environment of children around the world. They add that more research is needed to more fully understand exactly how watershed forests impact the risk of diseases like diarrhea, which has many causes, including waterborne pathogens.
The research covers 35 nations across Africa, Southeast Asia, South America and the Caribbean, including Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines, Nigeria, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The study was supported by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), Luc Hoffmann Institute and WWF, along with The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation as part of the Health & Ecosystems: Analysis of Linkages(HEAL) program (now Planetary Health Alliance).
The interdisciplinary research team was led by Brendan Fisher and Taylor Ricketts of the University of Vermont (who also led the database’s creation) and includes lead author Diego Herrera (Environmental Defense Fund/UVM), Alicia Ellis (UVM), Christopher Golden (Harvard University), Timothy Treuer (Princeton University), Alexander Pfaff (Duke University), Kiersten Johnson (USAID), and Mark Mulligan (King’s College London).
According to the World Health Organization (WHO):
Read the full study: http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00775-2
ADDITIONAL QUOTES
“The novelty is that this is a global study of individual people linking ecosystems and health around the world,” says Diego Herrera, a former postdoctoral researcher at UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment and Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, who is now at Environmental Defense Fund.
WWF
“This ground-breaking research shows the extent that our health and wellbeing can be influenced by the health of our forests and rivers,” says Dave Tickner, Chief Freshwater Adviser at WWF. “Many of these natural habitats are in critical condition. This is shown by the fact that, globally, there has been a 38 per cent fall in populations of land-dwelling animals, and a shocking 81 per cent decline in freshwater wildlife, between 1970 and 2012.”
“This new science indicates that investment in healthy forests and rivers can provide significant benefits for human health. WWF is now working with the University of Vermont research team to understand the implications of this evidence for the management of rivers and forests around the world. These are limited and precious natural resources. Our failure to look after them could have real consequences for human health.”
SESYNC
“The dataset put together by this team of researchers is essential to understanding the importance of environmental policies on human well-being,” said Margaret Palmer, Director of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) “This research demonstrates the powerful conclusions that can be made when we bring together social and environmental data from around the world.”
LUC HOFFMANN INSTITUTE
“For more than 40 years case studies around the world have suggested that ecosystem degradation has a disproportionate impact on the world’s poorest people,” says Jonathan Hutton, Director of the Luc Hoffmann Institute. “This study uses big data to demonstrate the strongest possible link between forest quality, water quality and human health. It is a significant piece of evidence in the case for better management of our river basins and other natural systems.”
Source: UVM News
It’s one of our newer traditions in our 226-year history: a day when we aim to capture all that happens within 24 hours at the University of Vermont. Tune in here as we stop by classrooms, check on labs, head out on the lake, swing by games and practices, go downtown and more.
Share a moment from your own day with #uvmditl.
5:55 a.m. Lake Champlain. Fisheries professor Ellen Marsden and Steve Cluett, captain of UVM research vessel Melosira, were on deck preparing for a pre-dawn trawl. The goal: lake trout. And, yes, they caught some big fish. But the biggest catch in the net this morning was an old wooden boat dragged off the bottom. “Wow. I’ve trawled through this stretch a hundred times, and you never know what will come up,” says Cluett, as he and his assistant, Brad Roy ’16, hauled a waterlogged mast onboard. As for the scientist, she, and her technician Jessica Griffin, were pleased to find four trout in the net—half of which were wild, meaning the ongoing surprising recovery of these favorite native sportfish continues. “And that’s way cool,” says Marsden.
6:10 a.m. University of Vermont Medical Center. Junior nursing student Kaitlyn Sutter makes her final weekly trek to the UVM Medical Center, where she is finishing a six-week clinical rotation in the mother-baby unit on Baird 7. The highlight of the experience: attending a live birth.
6:59 a.m. Gutterson Fieldhouse. Later today, women’s hockey will skate their home opener at The Gut. This morning, students make their way past the iconic field house on foot and on wheels, headed to the fitness center and fields for a morning workout.
7:17 a.m. Athletic Campus. Senior environmental science major Zoe Hutcher on her morning walk with golden retriever Charlie outside their apartment at Redstone Lofts.
7:35 a.m. UVM Morgan Horse Farm. Farm Manager Kimberly Demars (right) and Equine Specialist Sarah Fauver walk UVM Valencia and UVM Westerly to the outdoor paddock.
7:43 a.m. Moulton-Winder Field. Irrigation system kicks on to keep field surface in top condition for the women’s field hockey team practice.
8:15 a.m. Main Campus. Balloon and tower rise over campus.
8:18 a.m. Main Street. Students make their way to the first class of the day.
9:02 a.m. Given Building. First-year medical students enter the gross anatomy lab for a Foundations of Clinical Science course review session.
9:38 a.m. George D. Aiken Forestry Sciences Laboratory. Environmental sciences major Kunal Palawat ’18 is sanitizing sampling materials in Dr. Carol Adair’s Terrestrial Biogeochemistry for a Changing World Lab in prep for field work later that day. Palawat and Adair are studying the role of microorganisms in forest decomposition within the larger context of ecological changes caused by global warming.
9:22 a.m. Edmunds Elementary School. “She really excels, is incredibly dedicated, always goes above and beyond and brings skills to support me,” says second grade teacher Janet Bellavance about senior Grace Colbert, who’s working with students today on their e-book reports about a recent trip to the forest.
10:05 a.m. University Heights North. Catching sparks from Columbus/Indigenous People’s Day events, students in Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio’s Honors College seminar “Art & Its Destruction” start off with a discussion of the proposed removal of a statue of Christopher Columbus in New York City. The class will then shift back to its planned focus on ISIS and art objects destroyed or used to fund their operations.
10:08 a.m. Morrill Hall. Speed is of the essence as student Emily von Weise conducts a two-minute Facebook Live interview with Bob Parsons, Extension professor. Two minutes, two questions on Vermont agriculture. Von Weise says she enjoys the challenge and has gotten comfortable with the medium after an inaugural-interview blooper, in which she introduced herself as “Emily Vermont.” Her work helps spread the word for the Center for Research on Vermont. Von Weise’s busy days also often include work in the Vermont Lieutenant Governor’s Office. Post-graduation, she envisions a career at the intersection of media and policy. “That connection is broken,” she says, “and I’d like to help fix it.”
10:13 a.m. Vermong Energy Investment Corporation. “At the end of the day, in economics, we’re talking about humans,” says Elizabeth Palchak, “how do humans actually make decisions?” “Yes,” says Dan Fredman, “economics has now become behavioral economics.” They’re both doctoral students at UVM — and they share one full-time job at the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation. “We’re behavioral scientists in the consulting department,” Palchak explains. She’s working on ways to help low-income residential customers reduce their energy bills. Fredman’s assignment: assist small businesses “using data science and algorithms for efficiency,” he says.
10:13 a.m. Kalkin Hall. Assistant Professor Akshay Mutha, Grossman School of Business, shows students how to solve a simple minimization problem in his Decision Analysis course.
10:20 a.m. Rowell Hall. Shira Habermehl, a junior in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, meets with Patty Prelock, who’s both dean of the college and is directing an autism research project Habermehl has been part of since her first semester at UVM. “I want students to know I’m not just a dean,” says Prelock, a nationally known autism expert. “I have an active research program I want them to be part of.”
10:27 a.m. Hills Building. “I’m a geek. I read reports,” says Tim Ashe, Vermont Senate President Pro Tempore. Ashe is visiting an “Introduction to Contemporary Public Affairs” course taught by Jason Duquette-Hoffman, lecturer in community development and applied economics. One contemporary issue informed by those reports and under discussion in the class today: the economic and societal ins and outs — “the balancing act” — of raising the minimum wage in Vermont. Ashe is a UVM alumnus, Class of 1999.
11:20 a.m. The Hub, Davis Center. Mitch Plummer ’19 is one of 10 undergrads at a workshop this morning in The Hub — they’re preparing for a job shadow. “I’ve done two job shadows before,” he tells the other students, “this is a really good program, so be ready to follow through on it.” With coaching from career councilor Amanda Chase, the students will spend a day or longer with a UVM alum in their workplace. “You’re not expected to have any prior experience,” Chase assures them. But she does want them to learn the dress code before they start. “Some places it’s a suit; some you need steel-toed boots.”
11:24 a.m. UVM Medical Center. Nursing student Candyce Avery prepares a medication for a pediatric patient at The Vermont Children’s Hospital under the supervision of UVM nursing instructor Kate Goodwin.
11:26 a.m. Pam’s Deli Truck. Decades before food trucks were cool—1982 to be precise—Pam and George Bissonnette started serving up hamburgers, hot dogs, Philly cheesesteaks, and strollers from their yellow truck parked along University Row. An era in campus food will come to a close soon; the Bissonnettes plan to retire at Thanksgiving. “We’re getting old. It’s time, it’s time,” Pam says. “We’ll miss the kids, they’re great. We love all the athletes who stop by. We’ve got a lot of regulars.”
11:35 a.m. Converse Hall. Construction scaffolding surrounding Converse Hall is reflected in the remnants of yesterday’s rain.
11:40 a.m. Williams Hall. Phylicia Hodges, art education major, at work in a “Painting, Observation, and Image” course taught by Coady Brown, lecturer.
11:50 a.m. Central Campus Dining Hall. Alex Weingard ’19 makes his own stir fry at the new dining hall
11:56 a.m. Outside Davis Center. Student Lejla Mahmuljin leads an admission tour. One mom gives her an enthusiastic thumbs up as a guide: “Awesome.” Mahmuljin, a nutrition and food science major, laughs and says, “I’ve mastered walking and talking at the same time.”
12 p.m. Fleming Museum. Junior anthropology and religion major Abra Clawson takes notes during a visit to the current Fleming exhibition, “Spirited Things: Sacred Arts of the Black Atlantic.”
12:01 p.m. Jeffords Hall. “What’s your family name? Where does it come from? What originally brought your family to Vermont?” Students in Kevin Richmond’s ASL 3 Class pair-up to sign and learn about one anothers’ family history.
12:14 p.m. Redstone Campus. “I like doing my homework out here when it’s nice. I’m just happier outside, and I study longer,” says first-year business major Mark Puglisi from his hammock in the woods near Redstone campus.
12:15 p.m. Southwick. Carolyn Bittner, a sophomore environmental science major from Farmington, Connecticut, is practicing the cello part to Franz Liszt’s “Hungarian Battle March” for an upcoming UVM Symphony Orchestra concert. The concert isn’t until November 11, so she “still has a little time.”
12:43 p.m. Davis Center. Kira Wallensak and Jane Baker feed their hunger with pesto maple and Bella sandwiches from the FeelGood cart. One hundred percent of proceeds go to the 2030 Fund, aimed at ending extreme poverty. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., everyone can feel good savoring grilled cheese ordered up at the organization’s cart by the Davis Center tunnel entrance.
12:38 a.m. Athletic Campus. Traveling pillow? Check. Sophomore Greg Ginsberg and UVM men’s soccer teammates board a bus bound for Long Island for an America East Conference showdown with Stony Brook.
1 p.m. Davis Center Green. Daniel Cortez and Amanda Martinez do a brisk business selling homemade empanadas, bread pudding and rice pudding, a fundraiser for the Alianza Latina student organization. While buying an empanada is nice, Cortez makes a pitch for students to get more involved. The group meets Thursdays at 7 p.m. in the Mosaic Center. Open to all.
1:19 p.m. Davis Center. Hailey Reilly and Emily MacDonald are at the Dairy Bar for motivation and reward. A strawberry banana smoothie is fuel for an essay Hailey has to write. Emily just wrapped up Tuesday classes – reason enough for a Triple Berry treat. DB staff say smoothies rule the day, but ice cream takes over at night. Most popular flavors? Make it Green and Proctor Maple Cream.
1:35 p.m. Morrill Hall. Nine hours a week, student Mallory Curtis helps resolve consumer complaints through her internship in the Vermont Attorney General’s Office’s Consumer Assistance Program. Today, it might be auto sales; another day, a defective refrigerator. Curtis, a public communications major, says she appreciates the opportunity to “see real-world change” due to her efforts.
1:45 p.m. Discovery Hall. With a laser scanning microscope, doctoral students Kim Hua and Libin Liang can measure atoms at the micron scale — about 0.000039 inch. In the laboratory of professor Madalina Furis, director of UVM’s Material Science program, these students explore an increasingly important family of materials called organic semiconductors. “They can be good for solar cells or wearable electronics,” Furis says. “There are some you can now wear like a band-aid.”
1:55 p.m. Outside Discovery Hall. Burning M&M’s. In the name of science. “I have the best job on campus,” says Travis Verret, the lab coordinator for the Chemistry Department. He’s working with two work-study students—first-year biochemistry major Anne Stetson and transfer student Jesse Birkett ’19 — applying a blowtorch to a test tube with a fuel in the bottom. Once it’s hot, they drop a single M&M into the bottom. Smoke! Fire! Light! And what’s with the tie-died lab coats? “We’re making a web video series,” Verret explains. “It’s called Stuff We Can’t Do in the Lecture Hall.”
2:08 p.m. Larner Classroom, Larner Medical Education Center. Class of 2020 medical students Lauren Donnelly, Kirsten Martin, Patricia Wong and Rachael Munoz work together to determine a diagnosis based on a series of lab results during an active learning workshop on the kidney led by pathologist Pamela Gibson, M.D., for the Cardiovascular, Renal and Respiratory course.
2:40 p.m. Carpenter Auditorium, Given Building. Heads up when you walk into Dr. Jim Hudziak’s “Healthy Brains, Healthy Bodies” (HB/HB) class. From the front of the lecture hall, the professor fires away with the rubber brain/football that has become something like a Wellness Environment mascot. No Hail Mary lobs; he throws ropes. Then, after some taking-care-of-business discussion, and with a “good old-fashioned HB/HB cleansing breath,” Hudziak says, “Let’s get our mindfulness on.”
3:10 p.m. Rowell Hall. Glioblastoma is the most aggressive form of brain cancer. For his senior thesis, Honors College student Tyler Hogan has been working alongside professor Paula Deming — the chair of the department of Medical Laboratory & Radiation Sciences — hunting for why. “We’re studying the mechanisms in the cell that might allow that invasive potential — with hopes of identifying a target for therapy,” Deming says. Over the summer and into this year, Hogan has been exploring two proteins in glioblastoma cells, “PKA and FYN,” he says, looking for the role they play in this cancer. He’s going to graduate in December and start an accelerated nursing program at U. Conn. Doing research, “gives me a better appreciation of what professors do, and the scientific studies I read,” Hogan says, “it’s not as easy as it might look.”
3:12 p.m., Hoehl Gallery, Health Science Research Facility. Medical alumni Mark Pasanen, M.D.’92, associate professor of medicine, and Betsy Sussman, M.D.’81, professor of radiology, assist with inserting personalized notecards written by Larner College of Medicine alumni into the pockets of each of the Class of 2021’s white coats in preparation for the White Coat Ceremony, which takes place Friday, October 13, at 2:30 p.m. in Ira Allen Chapel.
3:21 p.m. Central Campus Dining Hall. In the sleek new Discovery Kitchen, students learn hands-on the art and science of making vegetable sushi, led by master-trained chef Matt Lawrence. Classes are offered every Tuesday and Wednesday and are open to all students. Health, culture, and sustainability guide each session, but the culinary feature changes weekly. Apples and pickles preceded sushi, next up is Kale, then sweet potatoes roll in as “Harvest of the Month.”
3:23 p.m. Vaccine Testing Center. Ian McHale ’17 pulls frozen samples from a liquid nitrogen tank. McHale has interned in the Vaccine Testing Center since his undergrad days; now he’s pursuing an accelerated master’s degree in public health.
3:23 p.m. Athletic Medicine Training Room, Patrick Gym. Sophomore athletic training major Kagan Beachum stretches the hip of first-year men’s basketball player Stef Smith during her first semester-long clinical rotation. “I’ve really enjoyed my clinical rotation with the men’s basketball team. The hands-on experience has been invaluable.”
3:36 p.m. Outside Votey Hall. After yesterday’s downpour, Elle Mountain ’18, Alicia Tanneberger ’20, and Sam Marano ’20, attend to a rain garden near Votey Hall. They’re all members of a student chapter of Engineers With Borders that provides service as far away Nicaragua and as close as Colchester Avenue. “These plants were under more than a foot of water,” Mountain explains. “The garden does a good job of controlling runoff.”
4:02 p.m. North End, Burlington. Holly Juliet Danger, right, of Burlington, purchases eggplant from UVM Farmer Training Student Casey McNeel at the Farmers’ Market in the Old North End, where Farmer Training students sell everything from kale and pumpkin to garlic and beets grown at UVM Catamount Farm.
4:19 p.m. Living Well, Davis Center. Briana Martin leads a monthly Yoga for Womxn of Color class offered each by Living Well in the Davis Center. Living Well offers several classes for UVM students, including a 7-session series “Exploring the Chakras,” also taught by Martin.
4:56 p.m. Alumni House. President Tom Sullivan, Vice Provost for Student Affairs Annie Stevens and Center for Health and Wellbeing Director Jon Porter accept the prestigious Prevention Excellence Award on behalf of UVM from EVERFI, a leading technology education company, creator of the AlcoholEdu program. UVM was honored by EVERFI for its institution-wide efforts to promote wellness and prevent alcohol abuse among students. Presenting the award are Kimberley Timpf and Rob Buelow of EVERFI.
5:04 p.m. Fleming Museum. Students in Helen Scott’s “The Works of Edwidge Danticat” (ENGS 281) class receive a private tour of the exhibition Spirited Things: Sacred Arts of the Black Atlantic by the exhibition’s curator, Andrea Rosen.
5:23 p.m. Uncommon Grounds. Sophomores Ivana Djidda, left, and Tau Le, take advantage of the caffeine and wifi at the Church Street coffee shop to do some homework.
6:01 p.m. Votey Hall. The Alternative Energy Racing Organization (AERO) is a student-run club at the University of Vermont that designs and builds electric and hybrid vehicles to compete at Formula Hybrid, an international collegiate competition. AERO members work to change a tire on one of their vehicles.
Source: UVM News
If oceans warm at a rate predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nation-sponsored group that assesses climate change research and issues periodic reports, expected financial losses caused by hurricanes could increase more than 70 percent by 2100, according to a study just published in the journal Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure.
The finding is based on the panel’s most severe potential climate change – and resulting increased sea surface temperature – scenario and is predicted at an 80 percent confidence level.
The results of the study, which focused on 13 coastal counties in South Carolina located within 50 miles of the coastline, including the most populous county, Charleston, are drawn from a model simulating hurricane size, intensity, track and landfall locations under two scenarios: if ocean temperatures remain unchanged from 2005 to 2100 and if they warm at a rate predicted by the IPCC’s worst-case scenario.
Under the 2005 climate scenario, the study estimates that the expected loss in the region due to a severe hurricane — one with a 2 percent chance of occurring in 50 years — would be $7 billion. Under the warming oceans scenario, the intensity and size of the hurricane at the same risk level is likely to be much greater, and the expected loss figure climbs to $12 billion.
The model drew on hurricane data for the last 150 years gathered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, then created simulated hurricanes under the two scenarios over 100,000 years and estimated the damage from every storm that made landfall in the study area.
Researchers then overlaid information from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s HAZUS database, a zip-code-by-zip-code inventory of building types and occupancy. HAZUS sets out loss estimates according to wind speed for costs of repair, replacement, content and inventory, as well as costs resulting from loss of use, such rental income loss, business interruption and daily production output loss.
The researchers did not find that warming oceans will lead to more frequent hurricanes, only that warmer seas will lead to higher wind speeds and storms that are greater in size and therefore cover a larger area.
The losses are calculated based only on wind and wind-driven rain and do not include the large financial impacts of storm surge or flooding.
“The study shows that a significant increase in damage and loss is likely to occur in coastal Carolina, and by implication other coastal communities, as a result of climate change,” said one of the authors of the paper, David Rosowky, a civil engineer at the University of Vermont and the university’s provost.
“To be prepared, we need to build, design, zone, renovate and retrofit structures in vulnerable communities to accommodate that future,” he said.
The study was based on the IPPC’s Fifth Assessment, issued in 2013 and 2014. The worst-case ocean warming scenario the loss study is based on was not anticipated or included in the prior report, published in 2007.
“That suggests that these scenarios are evolving,” Rosowsky said. “What is today’s worst case scenario will likely become more probable in the IPCC’s future reports if little action is taken to slow the effects of climate change.”
The increasing severity of hurricanes will also affect hurricane modeling, Rosowsky said, and consequent predictions of damage and financial loss. In a postscript to the paper, which will also be published as a chapter in a forthcoming book, Rosowsky cites the three catastrophic storms of the current hurricane season, Harvey, Irma and Maria, as examples of events so severe they will shift the assumptions about the likelihood that such severe hurricanes will occur in the future.
The paper was co-authored by Yue Wang, a former postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Vermont.
Source: UVM News
The most persuasive testimony that UVM Rescue’s new $1.4 million headquarters is sorely needed came not from the cast of university leaders and alumni who spoke eloquently of its importance at the building’s Saturday dedication but from the commotion that periodically drowned them out.
Four times during the proceedings speakers were interrupted – by crackling radio calls to the group’s dispatch center and by two transport helicopters that landed on a nearby helipad, pressing both UVM Rescue ambulances into service – and could only stare helplessly at the audience over the din.
Even on this day of celebration, UVM Rescue was hard at work.
Thanks to the newly finished facility, planned for five years and under construction since May, that work will soon be made easier.
UVM Rescue’s old digs, located in a boxy, cramped addition to UVM Police Services headquarters on East Avenue built in 1975, had become inadequate in innumerable ways.
Its one ambulance bay was too small to accommodate modern ambulance design, so UVM Rescue had to custom order its vehicles, adding to their cost. Its second ambulance was parked outside, no picnic for students during the winter months. Training sessions, near continuous in the rescue field, were held in any open space – even the laundry room. And students slept wherever there was room, “sometimes on a stretcher,” said senior microbiology major Kelly Baillargeon, the group’s director.
The new headquarters, located a stone’s throw from the old facility on the south end of the 284 East Avenue parking lot, is a vast improvement. It boasts two large ambulance bays in a heated garage, two bunk rooms with four beds each, a common room where volunteers can train, wait for calls and eat, a large kitchen with modern appliances, two bathrooms with showers, a conference/study room, a work-out area, and laundry and supply storage space.
“The new building will provide students more opportunity to train, prepare for emergencies and finally have a facility that reflects the organization,” said Zach Borst, UVM’s emergency manager and the group’s advisor.
“It will also be a huge recruiting tool,” he said. The squad recently begun staffing its second truck during major emergencies on campus or in the greater Burlington area. “They can now keep both ambulances stocked and ready inside the station, something they have never been able to do in the past,” Borst said.
No ordinary student club
If a million-dollar plus building with decent amenities seems extravagant for a student club, that’s a basic misunderstanding of who UVM Rescue is.
In its early years, the group’s mission was important but circumscribed; it largely served only the campus.
But over the years, “the importance of UVM Rescue to the greater Burlington community has grown, and the size of the squad group grew,” said UVM’s associate vice president for administrative and facilities services Bill Ballard, an alumnus of UVM and UVM Rescue and the club’s advisor for 25 years.
Today UVM Rescue remains the first-response unit for the UVM campus but serves as back-up for many other communities. It responded to 1,600 calls last year and made 1,200 transports, making it one of the busiest ambulance squads in the state.
The group “is absolutely an integral part of Emergency Medical Service” in Chittenden County, said Phil Holt, a member of Richmond Rescue who attended the dedication. “They respond to our service area when we’re out of service call and need coverage. They know their stuff, and they work really hard.”
“The citizens of Burlington rely on them,” added Burlington fire chief Steve Locke, another attendee. “We couldn’t do it without them.”
UVM president Tom Sullivan, one of the speakers at the event and an advocate for the new facility from the first days of his presidency, had an inside track on the contribution UVM Rescue makes, not only to the community, but to the students who serve in it. His nephew was a member of the group.
“He speaks so highly of UVM Rescue,” Sullivan said. “Every time he comes back to Burlington, the first place he comes is right here. My wife Leslie and I had drunk the Kool-Aid before I got here.”
Alumni of UVM Rescue have stellar track records, Ballard said. Many have gone on to careers in the health professions.
Charm — to a point
The old facility had its charms, according to UVM Rescue veterans, but only to a point.
“There was a lot of camaraderie,” said Ned Rimer, ’83, a professor in Boston University’s business school, who served in UVM Rescue all four of his years at UVM. “We made meals for each other and we got to know each other really well.”
“But having an adequate place to sleep and study and train? That would have been huge. I’ve been dreaming of this day for 37 years.”
For Baillargeon, move-in – scheduled for over next two weeks as furniture arrives – can’t come too soon.
“The whole squad is just so ready,” she said. “As one of the speakers said, we would all sleep on the floor just because everyone is so ecstatic to have this kind of structure here.”
UVM Rescue is self-funding through payments made for its services. The new building will be paid for through a combination of private gifts and both past and future revenues generated by the service.
Source: UVM News
The University of Vermont is ranked #4 on Princeton Review’s just released “Top 50 Green Colleges” list. The top 50 schools were drawn from the 375 colleges listed in the publication’s Green College Guide which, in turn, were selected from a list of 2,000 schools Princeton Review considered.
“We strongly recommend these schools to environmentally-minded students who seek to study and live at green colleges,” said Robert Franek, the Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief.
“UVM’s commitment to the environment, in academics and research and in our sustainable practices, is a core part of the university’s identity and a key element of our appeal for current and prospective students,” said UVM president Tom Sullivan. “We’re pleased and proud that the Princeton Review has recognized this commitment by ranking us among an elite list of the greenest schools in the country.”
The Princeton Review selected the schools on the top 50 list based on their “Green Rating” score, tallied from institutional data the publication obtained from school administrators and from surveys emailed to students at colleges across the country on issues such as how sustainability issues influenced their education and life on campus; administration and student support for environmental awareness and conservation efforts; the visibility and impact of student environmental groups; whether students have a quality of life on campus that is both healthy and sustainable; how well a school is preparing students for employment in an increasingly green economy; and how environmentally responsible a school’s policies are.
UVM’s Green Rating score was 98 of a possible 99 points.
For many high school students, a college’s commitment to the environment can be a deciding factor in the college they eventually choose. According to the more than 10,000 prospective students and parents who participated in the Princeton Review’s 2017 College Hopes & Worries Survey, 64 percent said that having information about a school’s commitment to the environment would influence their decision to apply to or attend the college.
Earlier this year, the University of Vermont received a STARS gold rating for its sustainability efforts from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. The university’s score of 70.87 placed it among the top 12 percent of all rated institutions.
Source: UVM News
UVM’s Wellness Environment has again attracted national news attention. An Associated Press story on the program was picked up widely around the country this week.
Stories were published in media that included ABC News, The Washington Post, US News & World Report, The Boston Globe, Fox News, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Houston Chronicle, USA Today, MSN and Yahoo News.
“Pledges by college students to eschew drugs and alcohol are old hat,” the story opens. “Now they’re meditating, working out, practicing yoga, eating healthfully, and at least one school, the University of Vermont, it has become a bona fide lifestyle.
In UVM’s Wellness Environment, known as WE, students live in a substance-free dorm, take a required neuroscience course taught by Larner College Medicine faculty and are given incentives to stay healthy, such as access to a free gym membership, nutrition and fitness coaches and an app that tracks their activities.
WE’s enrollment has grown from 120 when the program launched in 2015 to over 1,200 today. With WE’s grownth, nearly one-quarter of UVM’s undergraduate on-campus population live in substance-free housing.
WE has also been featured in a front page story in the Boston Globe, on CBS News and on National Public Radio.
Source: UVM News
Officials from EVERFI, a leading education technology innovator, presented the University of Vermont with the group’s prestigious Prevention Excellence Award at a special ceremony held on the UVM campus Tuesday. The award recognizes UVM’s commitment to adopting the highest standards in alcohol abuse prevention.
Colleges and universities that have joined the Campus Prevention Network are eligible for consideration to receive the award through completing either the Sexual Assault Diagnostic Inventory (SADI) or the Alcohol Diagnostic Inventory (ADI) – comprehensive research-based assessments of a school’s prevention programs and practices grounded in a decade of peer-reviewed literature on best practices in prevention.
UVM, a member of the Campus Prevention Network, received the award based on its ADI score, Campus Prevention Network staff interviews with campus professionals at UVM and a careful review of the university’s effort.
“It’s a great honor to receive this important award from such a respected national group,” said Tom Sullivan, president of the University of Vermont. “While there is more work to do, the clear progress we’ve made in reducing high risk drinking at UVM, an issue that challenges all of higher education, is cause for celebration. I want to thank our staff, faculty and students for their hard work in bringing this important and prestigious award to our campus.”
“With so much recent emphasis on the shortcomings in campus prevention and response efforts, EVERFI aims to shift the narrative by highlighting campuses doing exemplary work,” said Rob Buelow, EVERFI vice president of prevention education, who presented the award to UVM with Kimberley Timpf, the group’s senior director of prevention education.
“The Prevention Excellence Awards give us the opportunity to share and celebrate the tremendous commitment these institutions are making and continue to make in comprehensive, data-driven, evidence-based, and researched informed prevention efforts to build communities that encourage students to thrive,” he said.
The University of Vermont seeks to create a safe, respectful and healthy campus for all students through a systems-oriented public health model and a commitment to measuring both successes and setbacks. UVM administrators credit their success to the collaboration and hard work of both campus and community colleagues and partners, most notably, the willingness of senior leadership to name the issue as a risk to the health and successful engagement of students.
UVM’s notable recent accomplishment include the following:
“We’ve seen that a combination of factors – including transparency in naming the impact of high risk drinking on the safety, health and successful engagement of our students; determination; and using interventions grounded in science – can result in real progress on this issue,” said Dr. Jon Porter, director of UVM’s Center for Health and Wellbeing.
“While it’s gratifying to see this progress, we’re also clear about the importance of continued focus and hard work over the long term,” Porter said.
Of the eighty-nine colleges and universities that have completed the SADI and the eighty-five that have completed the ADI, fewer than ten percent earned the distinction of being a Prevention Excellence Award honoree. Buelow further noted, “The Prevention Excellence Awards are particularly special because we do not ask schools to compete against each other, but rather to commit to doing the best work possible in the core areas of institutionalization, critical processes, policies, and programming, and to measure themselves against the highest standards in the field.”
The Campus Prevention Network, is a nationwide initiative of over 1,700 institutions dedicated to creating safer, healthier campus communities. Any college or university may join CPN free of charge by agreeing to take a pledge to adopt the highest standards of prevention related to critical health and safety challenges, including sexual assault and alcohol abuse, and to assess the progress and impact of their efforts. Through the Campus Prevention Network, colleges and universities will have access to prevention best practices, regulatory compliance expertise, ongoing professional development, and groundbreaking prevention research. Campuses can join the network and take the pledge here.
EVERFI, Inc. is the education technology innovator that empowers K-12, higher education, and adult learners with the skills needed to be successful in life. The company teams with major corporations and foundations to provide the programs at no cost to K-12 schools. Some of America’s leading CEOs and venture capital firms are EVERFI investors including Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Twitter founder Evan Williams, and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. Learn more at everfi.com.
Source: UVM News
Raul Hilberg, a towering figure in the field of Holocaust Studies who taught political science at the University of Vermont for 36 years, will be the subject of a three-day academic conference October 18-20 in Berlin on the tenth anniversary of his death.
UVM’s Miller Center for Holocaust Studies is one of conference’s sponsors, with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and several high-profile German research institutes. The conference is being hosted by the Center for Research in Contemporary History of Potsdam, Germany.
The conference, which has attracted nearly 40 of the world’s foremost Holocaust scholar from seven countries, will examine the personal and intellectual influences that shaped Hilberg’s scholarship and explore its continuing influence, especially the impact of his most important work, The Destruction of the European Jews, still a fundamental text six decades after its publication in 1961.
“The Miller Center is proud and honored to have this opportunity to co-sponsor and participate in this important international meeting of Holocaust scholars dedicated to UVM’s own Raul Hilberg, who remains the single indispensable scholar of the Holocaust,” said Alan Steinweis, director of the Miller Center for Holocaust Studies.
“Ten years after the death of Raul Hilberg, the conference aims to explore his influence on the history of Holocaust scholarship and analyze his legacy for the future of the field,” said René Schlott, a scholar at the Center for Research in Contemporary History. “Young researchers, eminent scholars, friends and colleagues will explore the life and work of this pioneering scholar, who launched an entire discipline. The intention of this unique encounter of international scholars will be to rediscover Hilberg’s magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, and to explore the impulse behind the historiography of the Holocaust.”
Hilberg’s masterwork was the first to show the methodical, bureaucratic nature of the program of genocide against the Jews, Steinweis said.
“He showed that it was a kind of national program of the German Reich and, in so doing, demonstrated the breadth of institutions and individuals in Germany who were involved, including a large number of people who were not hands-on killers but who were participants in a process of destruction.”
Hilberg joined the University of Vermont Political Science Department in 1955, eventually serving as chair. He was appointed emeritus professor when he retired in 1991. In 2006, the university established the Raul Hilberg Distinguished Professorship of Holocaust Studies. Each year the Miller Center for Holocaust Studies hosts the Raul Hilberg Memorial Lecture.
This year’s lecture – Getting It Right, Getting It Wrong: Recent Holocaust Scholarship in Light of the Work of Raul Hilberg – will be presented on October 24 from 7 to 9 by Dan Michman from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. The event will take place in Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building 338, on the University of Vermont campus.
Source: UVM News
