Tag: University of Vermont

In honor of Black History Month, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best books with UVM ties that reflect on the black experience.

 

“One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life – A Story of Race and Family Secrets” by Bliss Broyard ’88

The alumna author received wide acclaim for this 2007 family memoir that explores their long-buried African-American heritage. Broyard’s father is the celebrated writer and New York Times literary critic Anatole Broyard.

 

“Lady Freedom Among Us” by Rita Dove

Special Collections is home to a large number of artists’ books, including the three-dimensional work (pictured above) published by Claire Van Vliet, proprietor of Vermont’s Janus Press. Van Vliet, who once taught at UVM, created the book’s images and designs; the poem is by Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia and the first African-American Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

You can see the book for yourself at UVM Special Collections; see their hours.

 

“Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism” by James Loewen

James Loewen, professor emeritus of sociology, is well known for his alternative history “Lies My Teacher Told Me.” “Sundown Towns,” published in 2005, is Loewen’s examination of American towns that persisted for years in remaining all-white communities.

 

“As Lie Is To Grin” by Simeon Marsalis ’13

The debut novel by UVM graduate Marsalis follows a protagonist named David on a nonlinear journey from his home in New York City to the University of Vermont, and back again. “It is about a freshman in college who questions the reasons why he has arrived at that particular university,” the author says, discussing the book’s plot. “He begins to research his own reasons for attending that university, and discovers an alumni ritual with a deeply personal resonance. The campus itself is its own character within the novel. I couldn’t have written this novel if I had not gone to UVM.”

 

“Discovering Black Vermont: African American Farmers in Hinesburgh, 1790-1890” by Elise Guyette ’71, G’82 ’92 ’07

This fascinating local history from alumna Elise Guyette uncovers the lives of a small community of African American settlers in early Vermont.

 

“The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont, 1777-1810” by Harvey Amani Whitfield

While Vermont is often thought of as a state that ended slavery with an early abolition clause, Harvey Amani Whitfield reveals a more complicated history. The professor of U.S. and Canadian history is also the author of “Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815-1860” and “North to Bondage: Loyalist Slavery in the Maritimes.”

 

“Kinship and Performance in the Black and Green Atlantic: Haptic Allegories” by Kathleen Gough

The associate professor of theatre and resident dramaturge plays out the cultural and political intersections of African-American and Irish performance in the 19th and 20th centuries in “Kinship and Performance”, winner of the Errol Hill Award for Outstanding Scholarship in African American Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies from the American Society for Theatre Research.

 

“Flavor and Soul” by John Gennari

In his 2017 book “Flavor and Soul,” associate professor of English and critical race & ethnic studies John Gennari illuminates the ways African American and Italian cultures have been intertwined in the U.S. for the last century, and explores the “cultural edge” between these two ethnic groups, a complicated place where identities overlap, intertwine, and clash.

 

“Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten” by Emily Bernard

A 2001 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, “Remember Me to Harlem” is a collection of letters between poet Langston Hughes and white critic Carl Van Vechten, whose friendship spanned 40 years. Bernard, a professor of English and critical race & ethnic studies, explores interracial friendship in another of her books, a collection of essays titled “Some of My Best Friends: Writers on Interracial Friendship.”

Read an excerpt of “Some of My Best Friends.”

 

“The Seeking” by Will Thomas

In 1946, father of three Bill Smith moved his family to Westford, Vermont, making them the first and only African-American family in town. He wrote about his life, and these years in Vermont, under the penname Bill Smith in “The Seeking,” originally published in 1953. Mark Madigan G’87, a professor of English at Nazareth College and former UVM lecturer, worked to bring the book back into print, calling it “arguably the first long-form book written by an African-American resident of Vermont.”

 

Writing for this piece contributed by Andrea Estey and Thomas Weaver.

Source: UVM News

The University of Vermont is ranked No. 7 among medium-sized schools on the Peace Corps 2018 list of top volunteer-producing colleges and universities.There are 28 UVM alumni currently serving worldwide.

This is the tenth consecutive year that UVM has ranked among the top 25 medium-sized schools.

“I’m very proud of UVM’s high rank, year in and year out, on the Peace Corp’s list of top volunteer-producing colleges,” said Tom Sullivan, president of the university. “It confirms what we know about our students and alumni—that they are highly motivated to make the world a better place and are engaged in helping to address pressing challenges facing communities around the globe.”

“Peace Corps service is a profound expression of the idealism and civic engagement that colleges and universities across the country inspire in their alumni,” said Sheila Crowley, acting director of the Peace Corps. “As Peace Corps volunteers, recent college and university graduates foster capacity and self-reliance at the grassroots level, making an impact in communities around the world. When they return to the United States, they have new, highly sought-after skills and an enterprising spirit that further leverages their education and strengthens their communities back home.”

Alumni from more than 3,000 colleges and universities nationwide have served in the Peace Corps since the agency’s founding in 1961. A total of 909 UVM alumni have served in the Peace Corps since the agency was founded.

Carrie Harvey of Cabot, Vermont graduated from UVM in 2015 and is serving as a youth in development volunteer in the Philippines. “UVM is a caring community that inspires its alumni to become involved global citizens,” Harvey said.

The Peace Corps ranks its top volunteer-producing colleges and universities annually according to the size of the student body.

Vermont ranked No. 2 among Peace Corps’ top volunteer-producing states in 2017, while the Burlington-South Burlington metro area ranked No. 6 for the highest number of volunteers per capita.

Source: UVM News

The Office of the Provost will sponsor 14 workshops the week of March 5 designed to support faculty in the reappointment, promotion and tenure (RPT) process.

This year marks the first that the trainings will be consolidated in a week of professional development. In the past sessions were held periodically during the academic year. Many more topics will also be covered this year than in the past.  

“We hope that putting all the sessions together in one week will make it easier for faculty to schedule their time,” said Jim Vigoreaux, associate provost for faculty affairs. “The workshops are also meant to relate to one another and offer an integrated approach to faculty professional development.” 

View the full schedule of workshops.

Sessions are divided into two types, Vigoreaux said. Two panels, with two separate sessions each, will focus on the mechanics of the RPT process. One panel will be composed of faculty who have served on recent RPT committees. The other will be made up of faculty who have recently been through the process.

“The idea is to help faculty develop an RPT agenda,” Vigoreaux said, including “how to get documents together, who to talk with, how to pace yourself, how to schedule,” he said.

The panel of faculty reviewers will also share “what they look for – the good things, the red flags in a dossier.”

The second series of workshop address what Vigoreaux calls the “essence” of the RPT process, “those things that will enable faculty to be successful.”

Topic workshops include Open Access and Scholarly Publishing; The Scholarship of Engagement; Advising: Successful Strategies; The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning; Using Social Media to Advance Your Scholarly Agenda; and Strategies for Increasing Faculty Awards and Recognition.

Seeking faculty input on reoriented mentoring program

RPT week will include an open forum for faculty on expanding and re-orienting UVM’s faculty mentoring program.

In the past the mentoring program was designed to support new faculty only, Vigoreaux said. “We’d like to expand it to all faculty, no matter their rank or their length of time at UVM. The forum will give faculty a chance to describe what they’d like to see covered in the new program.” 

The week of expanded, consolidated RPT workshops is meant to address the challenges faculty face in the contemporary academy, Vigoreaux said.

“The demands of the job today are different and much more complex than in the past,” said Vigoreaux, who served as chair of the Biology Department before joining the administration.

“Being successful requires a lot more than just being good in your particular field of expertise,” he said. “You have to excel at teaching and advising, at being a contributing university citizen, at providing quality service – all these things that are not really part of people’s preparation in graduate school. They’re not only critical for the individual’s success, but for the success of the institution.”

Source: UVM News

A University of Vermont Extension professor has invented a $300 device that could save Vermont’s produce growers an average of $6,500 annually in improved storage conditions and its artisanal cheese and meat producers up to $10,000 a year in higher yields during processing.

The device, called a DewRight, modernizes 200-year old technology to more accurately measure temperature and relative humidity.

The savings come from reduced spoilage and increased yield, increased quality, improved recipe repeatability and labor savings, said its inventor, Chris Callahan, an assistant professor of agricultural engineering at UVM Extension. 

In the high humidity environment of a storage room, off-the-shelf equipment that is now used can be off by as much as plus-or-minus 6 percent relative humidity, Callahan said. The new device reduces that to plus-or-minus 2 percent relative humidity, a 67 percent improvement.  

Unlike off-the-shelf versions, it also functions accurately at lower temperatures that food storage and processing facilities often require and does not fail in the continuous high humidity environment, as conventional versions do over time.

A better way to measure relative humidity

The device makes use of “wet bulb” psychrometry, where an ordinary thermometer and one that is enclosed by a wet wick are spun in the air by the user. The difference in temperature between the two – the wet one will show a lower temperature as the evaporating water cools it – indicates the amount of moisture in the air, its relative humidity.

Callahan’s innovation was to make a electronic version of the mechanical device with improved accuracy in temperature measurement. The DewRight also automates the measurements, removing human error.

An earlier, on-farm research project of Callahan’s – a experimental system that allowed farmers to remotely monitor temperature and relative humidity in storage facilities – led Callahan to the need to better measure relative humidity.

“The monitoring and communication electronics in that application did what they were supposed to do, but we were using off-the-shelf sensors to measure relative humidity. They weren’t accurate and eventually failed completely in the high humidity, low temperature conditions,” he said.

The new technology could also have application for other fields where measuring relative humidity accurately is important, in art museums and conservation spaces for examples, or in semiconductor manufacturing.

For now, though, Callahan said he plans to focus on growers and artisanal food producers.

“This is a market we know, and the space we know that has an immediate need,” he said. 

A growing market

Callahan is optimistic that the product will find success. His analysis also shows both strong and sustained growth of cold storage space for produce in the region and nation (by at least 25 percent per year for both) and increasing production of artisanal products – both of which require careful control of temperature and humidity.

“There is pent-up demand for a device like this,” he said. 

The new technology has been licensed and is being commercially developed, with assistance from UVM Ventures and the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development, by Vermont Energy Control Systems of North Ferrisburgh, Vt, which has added monitoring, data logging, and control technology to Callahan’s device that will automate operation and allow  remote access .

“Right now, there is no cost-effective solution for small farms and artisanal cheese producers who need to accurately measure temperature and humidity in their storage and production facilities,” said Bill Kuhns, director of product development at Vermont Energy Control Systems. “We’re very enthusiastic about this new product. It’s a natural fit with our existing data logging and control products. There’s an international need for this capability, especially for the smaller operations that the farm-to-table movement is supporting.”

About UVM Extension

UVM Extension integrates higher education, research and outreach to help Vermonters put knowledge to work in their families and homes, farms and businesses, towns and the natural environment. Faculty and staff, located in offices around the state, help improve the quality of life of Vermonters through research-based educational programs and practical information.

About Vermont Energy Control Systems

Vermont Energy Control Systems LLC designs and builds energy management systems in Addison county, Vermont. The company uses local resources for its sheet metal work, printing, and other subcontract work. Its circuit boards are designed and built in the United States.

 

Source: UVM News

Jane Kent is well-practiced in connecting her visual art with the written word. A printmaker, painter, and professor in UVM’s Department of Art and Art History since 2004, Kent has also created artist’s books, collaborating with writers Richard Ford, Susan Orlean, and currently focused on a work-in-progress with UVM English Department professor and poet Major Jackson.

Those projects involved taking a finished piece of writing and reacting to it independently with her own work. In the case of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, that morphed into The Orchid Thief Reimagined—eight unbound screen-printed pages, combining Kent’s art with Orlean’s words, all nestled in a silk-covered box. An edition of thirty-five, number six of which is at home in UVM Library Special Collections, was co-published by Grenfell Press and the Rhode Island School of Design.

One of Kent’s most recent projects is featured in a work that is more collective than collaborative, the 2017 book It Occurs to Me That I Am America, which brings together more than fifty contemporary writers and artists to consider “the fundamental ideals of a free, just, and compassionate democracy.” Published in celebration and support of the American Civil Liberties Union, the book is fiercely relevant and timely as the headlines unfold a battle for our identity as a nation and as individual citizens. 

The collection, published by Simon & Schuster imprint Touchstone, was conceived and edited by artist/writer Jonathan Santlofer. The impressive list of contributors includes Russell Banks, Eric Fischl, Louise Erdrich, Roz Chast, Neil Gaiman, Joyce Carol Oates, Art Spiegelman, Alice Walker, Marilyn Minter, and UVM alumna Bliss Broyard ’88. It’s a handsome publication with heft, both literal and moral. Picture your American civics text with a hip makeover, Jasper Johns’ “Three Flags” on the cover.

When Santlofer, a longtime friend of Kent’s, asked her to contribute to the project, she was quick to sign on. She was also quick to find the direction she wanted to take with her work for the book.

Kent had been working on making prints that blacked out text in documents, probing the concept of redaction. She says she was intrigued by the patterns of black and white and the visual examination of secrecy. “To me, the whole idea of redacting gets at, ‘What does secrecy look like?’ I’m always asking myself that question,” Kent says. Until Santlofer came calling on this project, her explorations of redaction had gone back in a drawer in her studio. The concept had found its moment. 

Kent’s piece in It Occurs to Me That I Am America, titled “Blackout,” is the first visual image in the book, placed midway through a short story by Russell Banks. Kent’s rough rectangles of etching obscure many of the words in a reproduction of the United States Constitution.

Discussing the broad premise of the book, Kent says, “The whole point is what it is to make art and write in this contemporary moment—what it means to respond, to act, to do, and how important that actually is. To be able to do this in this small, quiet way is very, very gratifying.”

Source: UVM News

Growing up in the Indian city of Chennai, “poverty is something that you see all around,” says Srinivas Venugopal, an assistant professor of marketing in the Grossman School of Business.

He began thinking about social entrepreneurship, or using business for social change, and now immerses himself in communities around the world to study the transformative affect running a business can have on a person’s life.

 

About Faculty Feature:

What makes our faculty members tick? In this video series, get up close and personal with our professors. Hear them talk about their passions, their paths to UVM and why they love what they study, from the mysteries of Lake Champlain’s sculpin to the stories of homeless children in Pakistan. 

Source: UVM News

The Ecological Society of America (ESA) announced today that professor Nathan J. Sanders, Director of the Environmental Program in the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, has been elected a fellow in the organization.

In giving this lifetime award, the ESA noted that Sanders was elected for his remarkable contributions to “increasing understanding about causes and consequences of biodiversity change in terrestrial ecosystems by linking community, ecosystem, and macroecological approaches using observations and experiments from local to global scales.”

The “fellowship program recognizes the many ways in which its members contribute to ecological research and discovery, communication, education and pedagogy, and management and policy,” the society said in a release. “Fellows are members who have made outstanding contributions to a wide range of fields served by ESA, including, but not restricted to, those that advance or apply ecological knowledge in academics, government, non-profit organizations, and the broader society.”

Sanders was part of a distinguished group of twenty-eight ESA fellows elected this year that included scientists from Duke, Cornell, UC Berkeley, the EPA, Purdue, the National Science Foundation, and other leading institutions. 

“My students, collaborators, and I work at the intersection of community ecology, ecosystem ecology, and macroecology, with an explicit focus on the consequences of global change,” Sanders notes in his profile. “Specific areas of inquiry focus on the effects of climate change in mountain ecosystems around the world, the cascading consequences of sodium limitation in terrestrial ecosystems, and many aspects of the ecology of ants.”

The Ecological Society of America was founded in 1915 and is the world’s largest community of professional ecologists.

Source: UVM News

For the second year in a row, the University of Vermont has won a Workplace Wellness Award from the Vermont Department of Health.  

The award recognizes Vermont organizations demonstrating an established wellness strategy that promotes healthy environments and supports the well-being of their employees.

“It’s an honor to be included among a group of Vermont organizations who’ve made it a priority to promote employee wellness,” said Wanda Heading-Grant, vice president of UVM’s Division of Human Resources, Diversity and Multicultural Affairs.  

“We’ve always offered a wide range of wellness programing at UVM,” she said. “But in the last two years we’ve put strong emphasis on increasing employee awareness of these many options and making them easy to access. Both last year’s and this year’s award are affirmation that we’re on the right track.”

Last year the university was honored for launching its wellness program by establishing a Wellness Council and creating a centralized inventory of the many disparate wellness initiatives that exist across campus.

The award this year recognizes the steps the university has taken to increase employee awareness of the UVM’s wellness programming and to facilitate enrollment in the various initiatives and events.

Over the past year, UVM developed and launched a comprehensive Employee Wellness website, hired its first dedicated wellness staff person, Lauren Cartwright, and put in place a Wellness Ambassadors program. The over 70 staff and faculty ambassadors are charged with keeping their departments informed of new and existing wellness initiatives.

The new website organizes the university’s offerings into seven types of wellness programs: emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, physical, social and spiritual. 

The website lists UVM programming in each category and itemizes community partners where services are available to UVM employees at a discount.     

“Making wellness a priority is a true win-win for UVM,” said Heading-Grant. “Research shows that employees who participate in wellness programs are happier, healthier and more productive. That’s a benefit to both the employee and the university.”

Workplace Wellness Awards are given in a variety of categories based on an organization’s size. Last year, UVM was one of 10 winners among organizations with 1,000 or more employees.

This year’s awards will be presented on March 21 at the annual Worksite Wellness Conference to be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Burlington.

Source: UVM News

Caroline Beer has spent her career researching comparative data between Latin American countries and the United States that often debunks false stereotypes. Her latest study showing Mexico as more progressive than the U.S. when it comes to LGBT rights, especially in the recognition of same-sex relationships, is no exception. 

The study in the journal State Politics and Policy Quarterly measures the effects of religion, LGBT organizations and left-leaning governors on LGBT rights in both countries. Results show that religion suppresses the extension of LGBT rights in the U.S., but not in Mexico where 80 percent of the population identifies as Catholic. Higher percentages of Evangelical Protestants in areas of the U.S. decreased the odds that legal recognition of same-sex relationships would be extended.

The study also shows that the number of LGBT organizations in a state was predictive of whether same-sex relationship rights were implemented in both countries, though more prominently in Mexico. Having one additional LGBT organization in a Mexican State increases the odds of legal rights for LGBT people by more than 70 percent, compared to just 10 percent in a U.S. state.

Beer based her analysis on national and state-level LGBT legislative activity in the U.S. and Mexico between 2000-2014; data from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association to measure the impact of LGBT organizations on legislation; and U.S. and Mexican Census figures to capture the levels of religiosity by state. 

“Given that LGBT social movements are stronger in the U.S., Mexicans are more religious, and a conservative religious party has governed Mexico for the better half of two decades, we would expect to find far greater legal equality for LGBT people in the US,” says Beer, a political science professor at the University of Vermont. “In fact, like a lot of misconceptions about Mexico, that is not the case. Mexico is often perceived as a backwater country that follows the lead of the US, but in reality is very forward-thinking with progressive ideas.”

Left-leaning states like Vermont legislatively on par with Mexican states  

The article, “Extending Rights to Marginalized Minorities: Same-Sex Relationship Recognition in Mexico and the United States,” also showed that U.S. and Mexican states with liberal-leaning governors corresponded with an increase in legal recognition of same same-sex relationships. Liberal states like Vermont – the first in the nation to legalize civil unions – were on par with similarly liberal states in Mexico in terms of their advancement of same-sex legislation.

“I spend half my life in Mexico City and the other half in Vermont and although they are completely different in many ways, both are very progressive and known as policy innovators,” says Beer. “Vermont totally outplays its size in terms of policy innovation and like Mexico City, which has 20 million people, has created policies that were eventually replicated nationwide.”

Interestingly, the finding that liberal states with left-leaning governors positively increased LGBT-friendly laws on the state-level in both countries did not translate to the national level. Beer points to the fact that the National Action Party (PAN) – a rightist Catholic party – was in power when Mexico passed its national LGBT antidiscrimination policies and constitutional reforms. No such initiatives were even in play when the Democratic Party controlled the U.S. presidency from 1992-2000 and 2008-2016. The U.S. also trails Mexico in the election of openly LGBT politicians.

Historically, Beer says her latest findings should come as no surprise given that Mexico overturned anti-sodomy laws criminalizing gay sex in 1871, more than 100 years before the U.S.. In 2002 and 2005, Mexico passed a national anti-discrimination law, making it illegal to discriminate against sexual minorities; added an explicit protection for sexual minorities to its constitution; and created an anti-discrimination agency that launched a national anti-homophobia campaign.

“The U.S. hasn’t seen anything close to these reforms in terms of fighting homophobia and promoting gay rights at the national level,” she says. “Gay rights activists would say that they are protected by the U.S. Constitution, which I would agree with, but a lot of people don’t agree with that, and it’s not explicit like it is in Mexico.”

Source: UVM News