Tag: University of Vermont

Linda Schadler, currently the vice provost and dean of undergraduate education and the Russell Sage Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), has been appointed as dean of the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Vermont.

“We are fortunate to have attracted Dr. Schadler to our academic community,” said UVM President Tom Sullivan. “She is one of the world’s leading researchers in her field, she is well respected in the academic community, and she possesses valuable senior leadership experience. We look forward to working with Dr. Schadler as a member of the University’s academic leadership team.”

UVM Provost David Rosowsky lauded Schadler’s passion for innovation. “I look forward to working closely with Dr. Schadler to elevate the visibility and impact of the College, creating innovative new programs and opportunities for our students, and supporting the College faculty and their research. Linda is a proven leader and a steadfast advocate for academic quality and scholarly impact.”

Schadler is excited to be joining UVM and said, “It is clear that there is wonderful collegiality in the College community, and a commitment to excellence and integrity that is widely respected. I believe the college is well poised to achieve even higher levels of excellence in both pedagogy and research. I cannot wait to be part of that journey!” 

As vice provost and dean of undergraduate education, Schadler created the Teaching and Learning Collaboratory and Beta Classroom, an experimental space for testing new classroom technologies, as well as a rotating faculty board that shares best practices and awards pedagogy seed grants. She worked with the Faculty Senate to develop a new core curriculum for Rensselaer and has been an integral part of Rensselaer’s new curriculum initiative, the Arch at Rensselaer. Prior to her current position, she was the associate dean of academic affairs in the School of Engineering and led several strategic initiatives. She had oversight for the Manufacturing Innovation Learning Laboratory (MILL) and the Multidisciplinary Design Laboratory (MDL). Several of the new programs she developed in the School of Engineering at RPI have been implemented Institute-wide, including a new approach to first- and second-year advising (Advising Hubs).

Schadler’s research focuses on the nanodielectric, mechanical, and optical properties of polymer nanocomposites. Her work has impacted both fundamental understanding of polymer nanocomposite behavior and applications. She has also been an innovator in education including being one of the executive producers of the Molecularium (a planetarium show that takes a K-12 audience down into the world of atoms and molecules).

Schadler has received more than $13 million in research funding as principal investigator or co-principal investigator and also has been an active participant in two large centers: the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) for the Directed Assembly of Nanostructures, and an Engineering Research Center (ERC): Smart Lighting, both funded by the National Science Foundation. She was the Director of Education and Outreach for the NSEC and implemented a summer research program with specific partnerships with historically black colleges and universities and women’s colleges to provide a year-round research experience for those students.

She co-authored more than 160 refereed journal publications, 10 book chapters, she holds 12 patents, and has been invited to speak about her research around the world. She has supervised 33 Ph.D. students, 13 M.S. students and more than 50 undergraduate students in her laboratory.

Schadler graduated from Cornell University in 1985 with a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering and received a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in 1990 from the University of Pennsylvania. She is an associate editor for the Journal of Materials Research, as well as a Fellow of both the Materials Research Society and ASM International. Schadler is a former member of ASM International’s Board of Trustees and the National Materials Advisory Board. 

Source: UVM News

Everyone knows what a business pitch competition is. But what about a “reverse pitch”?

BTV Ignite – a local non-profit created to leverage Burlington’s world-class fiber optic gigabit network – just held one of those at UVM’s Larner College of Medicine on May 4.

In a traditional pitch competition, entrepreneurs present their ideas for a new product or service to a panel of judges, who pick winners and award prize money. 

A reverse pitch turns that process upside down. Rather than talking up their ideas, entrepreneurial app developers do the listening while end-users speak about the challenges they face. Developers are then tasked with devising apps that address them.

BTV Ignite’s reverse pitch centered on education and featured a group educators, some from UVM’s Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education, who laid out the issues teachers are encountering in the classroom today.

Also in the room were about 25 developers, who drank it all in. In a month they’ll come back with a set of apps that respond to what they heard. After a couple more rounds, they’ll be winnowed to two winners, each of whom will be awarded $10,000 to further develop their ideas.

A few hours before the reverse pitch, UVM Today sat down with two experts brought in to provide national context for the event – Miki Yarconi, director of business planning for Microsoft’s cloud and artificial intelligence group, and Scott Turnbull, national technology leader for U.S. Ignite, a National Science Foundation initiative that is BTV Ignite’s parent organization. Also joining in was Dennis Moynihan, executive director of BTV Ignite.

The conversation covered the coming golden age of tech, Burlington’s role in the future of technology development and the dramatic effect technology will have on education.

UVM Today: We hear a lot about how technology is on the cusp of transforming life as we know it. Integrating artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things will be a big part of this new world, right?

Scott: If AI is the artificial mind, then IoT – which means that all kinds of common devices will be connected to the internet and can be controlled through the network – is the artificial body. It’s the ears and eyes and the fingers to flip switches and turn things on. That extends AI to being a useful interactive environment.

Miki: Once those technologies are fully integrated, you’ll have ambient assistance, always listening, always ready to help. When you say “I’m cold,” your Google Home or Alexa or Siri will adjust the temperature. When you’re out, the small earbud you’re wearing will confirm the time of your doctor’s appointment, call an Uber to get you there, and schedule a business call for the ride back.

Dennis: The world around you will know what’s going on and then is able to help you. It’s really a remarkable opportunity.

UVM Today: This new order seems to be perpetually around the corner, though. When will it arrive?

Miki: We’re just at the edge. There’s still a lot of things that need to happen before this becomes everybody’s obvious knowledge, but we’re definitely on the way. Google is developing an AI-driven assistant, for intance, that can make hair appointments for you or book a dinner for four.

Dennis: There’s a saying in technology that sometimes innovations don’t go as quickly as you might expect within one year, but the world changes far more rapidly than you could possibly imagine in 10 years. These changes are coming, and the key for us is – how do we take advantage of them for our community?

UVM Today: Most people know that Burlington is one of just a few cities in the world with a high-speed gigabit network. What advantages does this capacity bring to the city?

Scott: The network breaks down every barrier you can possibly think of. You’re no longer a small isolated community. You’re a local community that’s part of a greater world. Entrepreneurs here have every technical advantage they’d have in San Francisco, New York or another city. It absolutely opens up every market that you can imagine.

UVM Today: What role does U.S. Ignite see for networked smaller cities like Burlington in the future of technology development?  

Scott: We think that’s where the growth is. The key is being able to take control of your own growth and get your viewpoint across to guide where that growth goes. Midsize and smaller cities, who don’t have 20 different city councils like big cities do, have the capacity to do that. That community-focused ethos is really attractive because it’s where the entrepreneurial drive of the future is going to come from. Cities like Burlington are going to be a strong voice in how the future is shaped.

Miki: For a very long time technology development has been centered in a few major hubs around the world, and specifically in the U.S. And I think is just time for it to go out and expand. We’re done with that earlier model. We can start moving out to everyone.

Dennis: Burlington is the tip of a trend that is happening across the nation. A shortcut phrase for it is “the rise of the rest.” That’s the name of a particular investment initiative, but it sums up the opportunity. If you’re living in San Francisco, there’s a lot of talk that it’s no longer the place you have to be as a startup. And in fact, costs are high, traffic is bad, and there’s a lot of competition. You see more and more companies relocating to places like Albuquerque, which is U.S. Ignite city.

UVM Today: How will these new technologies impact education?

Miki. To me the fascinating question is really, what should we teach kids today?

My 14-year-old daughter just had to learn all the state capitals. Do you know how she learned them? By asking Google Home. If that’s how you learn, why bother? Just ask the nearest device, and it will tell you the answer. Making distinctions between things the machine will know for us and the things that we need to know and employ in our lives is the hard question. I don’t think anybody has the answer.

Scott: I agree. I think the future of education is about learning judgment, and not just facts. I also think tech for education holds a great promise. It can make it much more experiential, especially when you get to virtual reality and augmented reality.

UVM Today: For those of us who aren’t techies, what is the difference between virtual and augmented reality.

Scott: Augmented reality is just that. It doesn’t take you out of your current reality; it just adds things to it – like bringing a person from another city into your environment that you can interact with. Virtual reality is an entirely encased environment, so everything is virtual. It doesn’t pull from the real world.

UVM Today: How could these technologies be used in the classroom?

Dennis: A partnership that Microsoft has with Case Western Reserve is a good example. A professor there has taken Gray’s Anatomy and put it into an augmented reality model. With a pair of augmented reality goggles – the Microsoft product is called a HoloLens – you can walk through a body and take it apart and look at it, something you just couldn’t do without that kind of technology.

Another application is telepresence. There’s more and more opportunity to allow a person who is remotely located to essentially come to a classroom and teach, an expert from another city or another state, for example. With a HoloLens or similar product, students would experience them as being physically there. This opens up a world of possibilities that we’re just beginning to imagine.

UVM Today: In addition to the HoloLens, what other technology is emerging that could be used in an education? 

Dennis: I was in Chattanooga recently, another U.S. Ignite city. Chattanooga has a large school system and – like many cities around the country – an unfortunate history of segregation. Educators there are keen on giving students from different communities a chance to learn together to break down historic barriers. In the example I saw, dance teachers at two different schools used a technology called Low Latency, or LoLa, so the students could take a group dance lesson and dance together, even though they were physically separate. And what this particular technology allows them to do is to have essentially a no-delay, real-time engagement, which is what you need if you’re going to dance together. So that’s another example of something that has a practical value in education – and in larger society.

UVM Today: Any final thoughts on the future of technology in education?

Scott: Technology is going to fade into the background and just be about the things that specific students need to learn and the additional experiences that they can have. It won’t be about memorization or about the same experience for 30 students. The learning will be individualized and often virtual with someone who could be across the world.  

Miki: I think it’s similar to earlier education revolutions, when we moved from writing on a chalk board to PowerPoint presentations and students sitting down and using computers to take notes. This is going to be the next step. It will be things like: if all the kids are wearing devices like Apple watches that monitor your heart rate and the teacher actually has a view of the entire classroom, he can see which students feel anxious and walk over and help them. That’s one element of the kind of future were looking at.

Dennis:  Sometimes when technologists talk, it all sounds wonderful but also expensive, and we all know that educators are always struggling with resource levels. This technology has real value in letting school systems and teachers do more with what they have. Suddenly you can give students remote field trips or connect with people across the nation with nothing more than a virtual connection. For example, students in U.S. Ignite cities can access a very high quality microscope that’s at a university on the West Coast. And that’s a hugely expensive piece of equipment, but students have access to it at next to no cost. That’s the kind of thing we’ll be able to do, 100 times over.

Source: UVM News

CA Technologies, a global software firm, has made a gift of $300,000 to the University of Vermont to establish and fund doctoral fellowships in complex systems and data science. The fellowships will provide a competitive tuition and stipend package for up to two Ph.D. students per year for a minimum of three years.

The gift coincides with the launch, in fall 2018, of a new Ph.D. program in Complex Systems and Data Science at the university.

“We’re thrilled to receive this generous gift from CA Technologies, which could not come at a more important time,” said David Rosowsky, University of Vermont provost. “In field after field, there is a tremendous need to structure the glut of raw information the computer age has ushered in and extract meaning from it. These doctoral fellows, and the new doctoral program of which they’ll be an active part, are perfectly positioned to do just that.”

“We’re grateful to CA Technologies for their generosity in funding these positions,” said Peter Dodds, director of the Complex Systems Center. “In addition to the important research the gift will make possible, the funded positions give real momentum to the launch of our innovative doctoral program.”

The doctoral fellows will focus their research on areas of mutual interest to CA Technologies and the Complex Systems Center, with topics ranging from privacy preserving analytics and interpretable machine learning to reply and supply crowdsourcing.

“Because the focus of CA Technologies is broad, and because data scientists are always looking for large data sets they have access to, it will be easy to find areas of overlapping interest,” Dodds said.

CA Technologies has specified that the appointment of the fellows should demonstrate a commitment to women and girls in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). “We hope these fellowships will provide exciting opportunities for women in this field, supporting the next generation of diverse leadership for companies like ours,” said Otto Berkes, executive vice president and chief technology officer at CA Technologies, who also serves on the university’s Board of Trustees.

The pan-disciplinary Ph.D. in Complex Systems and Data Science will be housed in UVM’s College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, providing strong computational and theoretical training that will vary with each student’s chosen area of focus. 

Students will work within research groups across campus. With core courses such as Data Science, Principles of Complex Systems and Modeling Complex Systems and electives such as Machine Learning, Complex Networks, Evolutionary Computation, Human Computer Interaction and Data Mining, students will receive training in empirical, computational and theoretical methods for describing and understanding complex systems and predicting, controlling, managing and creating such systems.

UVM has a prior relationship with CA Technologies. James Bagrow, an assistant professor in UVM’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics, is working with the company to develop a data-driven analysis of the effectiveness of teams and team members working together on a project.  

UVM also offers a Bachelor of Science degree in Data Science and a master’s degree in Complex Systems and Data Science.  

Source: UVM News

As undergraduate history majors, David Brandt and Louis Augeri expected to study the Vietnam War. Researching declassified documents from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and private correspondence of Sen. George Aiken to help write a book on the iconic senator’s influence on the Vietnam War far exceeded their greatest expectations.

For the past year, Brandt and Augeri have been embedded in UVM Special Collections – the official government repository of the Aiken Papers – poring over 600 boxes of rarely seen memos, speeches and private letters to constituents. Of particular interest were those declassified executive sessions from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Aiken served as ranking Republican from 1960 to 1975.

“It has been an incredible experience to see all of these historical documents, especially as you get into the later sixties when Aiken had gained a national profile for his foreign policy thought,” says Brandt, winner of the 2018 Elliot Brown Award, given to the top graduating senior in political science. “He doesn’t speak frequently, but when he does there is a lot of deference to him.”

Brandt and Augeri are among dozens of students conducting research for local and state government, non-profits, local businesses and other organizations through UVM’s Center for Research on Vermont. Founded in 1974 to support research conducted in the Vermont “laboratory,” the center is an interdisciplinary network of scholars and community members dedicated to examining the state’s social, economic, cultural and physical environment.

Author and UVM alumnus Steve Terry, a former legislative assistant to Sen. Aiken and longtime managing editor of the Rutland Herald, has been guiding Brandt and Augeri through the daunting research process and providing critical historical context.

“I would not be anywhere near where we are today without the help of these students,” says Terry, co-editor of “The Essential Aiken: A Life in Public Service (2003)” with Professor Emeritus Samuel B. Hand, a preeminent historian who passed away in 2012. “I worked for Aiken, but that was so long ago. These guys are looking at it with fresh eyes and offering a new perspective. They have found some absolute gems that captures Aiken’s thinking in the context of Southeast Asia.”

Among those gems: “I have always felt we could do more with food than bullets,” said Aiken. In regard to his growing distrust of President Lyndon Johnson: “I wish the American people would be told the facts – or at least the Congress should be told the truth. We are not kept adequately informed.” From a 1967 letter from Aiken addressing a constituent’s accusation that he was not supporting the troops: “If, however, you feel that my opposition to spreading war around the world is not supporting our fighting men, you are, of course, entitled to your own opinion.”

“This experience has been invaluable,” says Augeri, winner of a $4,000 Green Mountain Summer Research Award to continue research for the Aiken book. “We know about this stuff as general knowledge of history, but when we examine these letters and executive sessions and then share it with Steve, he contextualizes it for us. He worked for Aiken and lived through it, so it’s very helpful to have that dual perspective.”

Brandt and Augeri’s experience with the Aiken papers is one example among the many ways students get involved with research and the broader state community through the Center for Research on Vermont. Across the past academic year, students have made an impact—often working directly with state lawmakers and officials—on environmental policy, education funding, healthcare, renewable energy, and other issues and initiatives.

Snapshots of additional student projects through the Center for Research on Vermont:

• Marcie Gallagher worked as a legislative intern at the Department of Environmental Conservation with a particular focus on the Vermont Climate Action Commission.
• Owen Gomory worked with Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, a 1995 UVM graduate. “Owen has become a valuable addition to our staff and brought energy, enthusiasm, and a youth-focused perspective to our office,” Zuckerman says.
• Olivia Harris, a public communications and political science major, conducted issues research and distilled it into tweets while managing former Governor Peter Shumlin’s Twitter account.
• Kahlia Livingston, a senior sociology and political science major, researched misdemeanor cases for the Chittenden County Public Defender’s Office. “It has definitely been an eye-opening experience. I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer and the research and internships that I’ve done have definitely solidified my desire to be a criminal lawyer in the public sector,” Livingston says.

Source: UVM News

The University of Vermont announced today that it has reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement with its faculty union, United Academics. The agreement is subject to approval by the UVM Board of Trustees and ratification by the union’s membership.

“The University is pleased that we have reached a tentative agreement with United Academics,” said Wanda Heading-Grant, vice president for Human Resources, Diversity and Multi-Cultural Affairs. “UVM faculty are a highly valued resource who are essential to UVM’s success. We also have a strong commitment to students and their families to provide a high quality educational experience that is financially accessible and affordable, while also respecting UVM’s commitment to providing competitive salary and benefits for its employees.”

Specific terms of the tentative three-year agreement will be released after the approval/ratification process is completed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: UVM News

It’s been a whirlwind few months for Packetized Energy, the energy sector start-up spun off from a large Department of Energy project in 2016 by three UVM electrical engineering faculty, Paul Hines, Jeff Frolik and Mads Almassalkhi.

After completing a pilot with Burlington Electric Department at the end of 2017, the company launched ambitious demonstration projects in January with Green Mountain Power and the Vermont Electric Cooperative that put its innovative technology to the test under real market conditions.

That same month, no less a figure than Scott Johnstone, former CEO at the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation, a global leader in the energy efficiency field, took the helm at the company.

Later in the spring, Packetized Energy added a software engineer, hardware engineer and business project manager to its roster, bringing the fledgling firm’s total full-time staff, not including the three faculty founders, to six.  

In March, the faculty founders completed a month-long stint at the new energy accelerator, Accel-VT, rubbing shoulders with some of the top energy entrepreneurs in the country and earning the company acclaim as one of the most promising firms in its cohort. 

In April, UVM licensed the founder’s technology to the company, a critical step in the commercialization process.

And in a fitting symbol that capped its momentum, on May 1 the company left the co-working Inspire space at Green Mountain Power’s headquarters it has occupied for the past year-and-a-half  and moved into its very own offices in Burlington’s trendy Chace Mill.

A Vermont Unicorn?

What’s behind the impressive series of breakout moves?

Packetized Energy, it turns out, is the hottest of hot commodities in electric utility circles, the creator of a set of clever algorithms with products to match that could go a long way toward addressing the great challenge facing the energy sector and the planet: how to harness the increasingly abundant, but fickle, power of renewables like wind and solar when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

If the company delivers on its promise, it could be a very big deal indeed, says private equity guru and serial entrepreneur Bob Zulkoski, chairman of the Vermont-focused investment firm Vermont Works, an early investor in Packetized Energy.

As the founder of a successful company “also in the energy resource field, I’m very familiar with this space,” he says. “Packetized is one of the few companies I’ve seen in Vermont that could become what’s called a unicorn,” a company whose assets are valued at $1 billion or more. “They are in the right place at the right time with a very innovative approach.”

Speaking “Packetized”

In describing how Packetized Energy’s products manage energy supply and demand compared with the current system, Almassalkhi sounds like a Vermont progressive.

“We’re bottom up; the traditional system is top down,” he says.

The change is indeed radical.

Currently utilities are “sucking data from devices, creating models of how everyone uses energy, and then basically pushing out schedules to the devices,” Frolik says. “It’s very data intensive both in terms of communications and computations.”

And it doesn’t work very well. Consumer demand for energy often exceeds supply, forcing energy companies to buy expensive, dirty power from thermal energy plants to close the gap, and renewables often aren’t available when the utilities need them.   

Packetized’s bottom up approach couldn’t be more different. The company produces smart controllers for the big energy hogs in the home: hot water heaters, batteries (both for charging electric vehicles and for power back-ups like the Tesla Powerwall) and HVAC systems.

The controllers sidestep the complexity of trying to predict consumer behavior by asking a simple question: How much energy does my device need right now? If the water in the water heater is too cool, for instance, it asks Packetized’s cloud-based server if it can have a small “packet” of energy from the grid to warm the water.

The cloud, equipped with software that allows it to speak “packetized” and a demand model from the utility that provides data on when it would like to supply power – including when renewable energy supplies are likely to be available – gives a variable answer.

“Instead of the water heater turning on right away,” says Almassalkhi, “it basically says, ‘Can I turn on’? And our cloud service says, ‘Okay, yeah, it looks like all is good, go ahead and turn on.’ And another device may come up and say, ‘Okay, I want to turn on, and they say, well, not right now. Come back later.’”

If the hot water heater really needs energy, it will nag the server more frequently.  If it’s still turned down, it will take matters in its own hands and start warming the water, so consumers aren’t left in the lurch.

By heating the water in short bursts spread throughout the day and by staggering consumers’ mini-power requests so they don’t happen all at once – a similar process applies to energy request from HVAC, batteries, and electric vehicle chargers – Packetized Energy helps power consumers and power producers achieve a Zen-like state of balance.

“It’s like having a pile of sand shaped into a peak,” says Almassalkhi, who has won two grants from the U.S. Department of Energy totalling nearly $4 million to support the research underlying the company’s products. Hines also has an NSF grant that has supported basic research the company’s products tap into.

“What we do is shake the pile so it flattens out.”

Trial run

Packetized’s pilot with BED showed that the company’s controllers, installed on eight hot water heaters in Chittenden County, could successfully exchange packetized information with the cloud service and heat water in small, distributed increments.

The new demonstration projects with GMP and VEC are both larger, with smart controllers in the process of being installed on 450 hot water heaters around Vermont between the two, and ripe with market significance. 

“It’s setting things up to show that this technology is for real,” Frolik says.

Academic articles and industry consultants have guessed at how much money utilities would save if they used renewable energy more consistently and avoided paying top dollar for supplementary power when demand exceeds supply.

But the Packetized trial will be the first to get a real-world data on cost-savings.  

“We’ll be seeing what the real financial benefit is to the utility of installing our devices in the field and interacting with the grid in this new way,” Frolik says.

If the project is successful, and utilities save up to what the company projects, about $150 per water heater, it’s easy to imagine all heck breaking loose.

“I would say about half the utilities in the country know who we are,” says Almassalkhi. There would be keen interest, to say the least, he says, if the demonstration project pays off.

“They’re hitting the market at the right time with an innovative product,” says Corine Farewell, director of UVM’s Office of Technology Commercialization, which has worked closely with Packetized’s faculty founders as the company got off the ground. “They have a strong team, including a very strong CEO in Scott Johnstone. They have great partners in GMP and VEC. And they have customers. They’re hitting all the right notes.”

 Johnstone couldn’t be happier about his new digs.  

 “If we’re going to have clean, affordable and easy-to-use energy, the real focus of the next wave is dealing with demand-side management and optimizing the grid,” he says.    

“That’s what Packetized Energy is here to do and create, and that’s what is so exciting about the work we’re doing. When you consider all the grid-edge devices that will be interacting with the grid as the Internet of Things comes online, the potential of this company is really limitless.”

 

Source: UVM News

The University of Vermont will celebrate its 217th commencement exercises on Saturday, May 19, and Sunday, May 20.

President Tom Sullivan will confer degrees on an estimated 3,055 graduates, including 2,443 bachelors, 387 masters, 112 doctoral and 113 medical degree recipients. Among expected degree recipients are students from 43 states and 204 international students from 35 foreign countries. Approximately 1,021 graduates are from Vermont. The graduating class includes an expected 354 students of color.

The University Commencement Main Ceremony, where the president will confer baccalaureate degrees, will take place on Sunday, May 20 on the University Green. The ceremony begins with a procession at 8:20 a.m. Tickets are not required if the event is outdoors.

The Graduate College Commencement Ceremony, where master and doctoral students will be hooded and presented with their diploma, will take place on Saturday, May 19, in the Multipurpose Facility in the Athletic Complex at 12:30 p.m. Tickets are not required for this ceremony.

The Larner College of Medicine Commencement Ceremony, where graduates will take their professional oath, will take place on Sunday, May 20 in Ira Allen Chapel at 3 p.m. This ceremony is ticketed.

A recognition ceremony for Honors College Scholars will take place on Saturday, May 19 at 3:00 p.m. in Ira Allen Chapel.

Individual college/school undergraduate ceremonies, where degree candidates will receive their diplomas, will take place throughout the day on Sunday, May 20. View the full Commencement weekend schedule: https://www.uvm.edu/commencement/2018-commencement-schedule

Noted scholar of American art and UVM alum, Alexander Nemerov, professor and chair of the Art and Art History Department at Stanford University, will give the commencement address at the University Main Ceremony on May 20. He brings an explorer’s mind and an imaginative, perceptive voice to his close readings of American visual art and cultural history, opening pathways of personal understanding and meaning for his students, colleagues, and readers. Drawing analogies between visual, literary, and historic source material, Professor Nemerov engages art as a springboard for asking questions about democracy, ethics, culture, identity, and humanity. Chair of the Art and Art History Department at Stanford University and the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities, he kindles great passion among students for the study of art history in his enormously popular classes. He received a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa during University of Vermont’s 2017 commencement ceremonies.

Four honorary degrees will be awarded at the ceremony to John E. Abele, Frank A. Bolden, J. Brooks Buxton and Karen Nystrom Meyer. Learn more about these recipients: https://www.uvm.edu/commencement/honorary-degree-recipients

In the event of severe weather

In the event of severe weather, the University Commencement Main Ceremony and College of Arts and Sciences Ceremony will be held in the Multipurpose Facility of the Athletic Complex, and tickets will be required for each ceremony. Guests without tickets may view the ceremonies on large screen displays in the Dudley H. Davis Center. Visit the UVM homepage, www.uvm.edu, or call (802) 656-3309 or toll-free (800) 903-6601, beginning at 1 p.m. Saturday, May 19, for an announcement regarding this possible change of venue. 

Tickets are required for the Larner College of Medicine Ceremony, Grossman School of Business, College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, and the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources ceremonies regardless of weather.  Learn more about ticketing for each of the ceremonies, including for the main ceremony in the event of inclement weather: https://www.uvm.edu/commencement/tickets

The main ceremony and each college’s ceremony will be webcast live here: http://live.vpt.org/uvm/.

Street closing information

The following street closings are planned in conjunction with Commencement: from Friday, May 18, at 7 p.m. through Sunday, May 20, at 8 p.m., University Place will be closed from Colchester Avenue to Main Street, and South Prospect Street will be closed from College Street to the University Health Center entrance. In addition, on Sunday, May 20 from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m., South Prospect Street will be closed from Colchester Avenue to Main Street, and College Street will be closed from South Prospect Street to South Williams Street.  In addition, the northernmost west-bound lane on Main Street from University Heights to South Prospect Street will be closed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Shuttle buses will run between ceremony sites and parking areas. A parking map is available on the Commencement 2018 website at https://www.uvm.edu/commencement/parking-and-shuttle-bus-service. Guests are encouraged to carpool when possible and take shuttles from hotels when provided. Parking on residential streets is prohibited. 

More information about commencement weekend is available on the Commencement 2018 website: www.uvm.edu/commencement.

Source: UVM News

On a cool May morning, spring showers passing through Burlington, graduates, family, friends and faculty gathered on the University Green for Commencement 2018, the University of Vermont’s 217th edition of education’s rite of passage. UVM’s Class of 2018 includes an estimated 3,072 graduates, degree recipients hailing from 44 states and 36 countries.

The graduates heard from one of their own, alumnus Alexander Nemerov, UVM Class of 1985, in a lyrical, visually evocative, and highly personal commencement address befitting one of the nation’s leading art historians and scholars of cultural history. Nemerov, the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University, earned his UVM bachelor’s degree in art history and English. In his scholarship, teaching, and guest lectures, Nemerov is celebrated for his skill in developing a rich understanding of American culture through intuitive analysis and appreciation of aesthetic expressions across a wide range of art forms.

At the outset, Nemerov anchored his words to the graduates in his own time at UVM and, more specifically, with recollected moments grounded in the setting where he spoke from the stage today — facing Williams Hall, Waterman Building at his back. Nemerov recalled studying on the fourth floor of Williams, gazing out across the lake at a particular farm with “a red barn, a copper roof, a green field.” He described the Waterman classroom where he watched the movie of “Henry V” for a Shakespeare course, becoming entranced by the reflections of the film, medieval knights on horseback, playing across the classroom windows. 

These moments, and others from throughout Nemerov’s life, were united by his sense that they are “private illuminations” that “allow us—carefully, tentatively, but sometimes with great power and purpose—to move through the world.” 

At their essence, Nemerov said, they speak to the truth of goodness, beauty, and unity in the world. “These moments of good, of calm, which I believe we’ve all had in some form, are delicate. They are the moments when the world does not devour you, does not drown you, but instead raises you up, keeps you afloat, buoyant, in some strange awareness of the fragile balance of being alive. The moments are delicate, yes, but I’ve also noticed that they’re indestructible. Maybe they are even the most indestructible part of us.” 

Nemerov warned that too often society tells us, and we tell ourselves, that such moments are worthless, an affront to our mutual agreement as a culture “that we not ask big questions, that we not marvel at the very fact of being alive.” Instead, he encouraged the graduates to honor this “quality we all possess, all the time. It is this quality of goodness in ourselves and the world, manifest in just these fragile but indestructible moments we all experience.” 

In his closing thoughts, Nemerov brought his focus back to Vermont with words more suggestive of American poet Walt Whitman’s verse than the standard platitudes of many graduation talks: “Like on a brilliant day here in Vermont, when the lake is blue or silver or gray. I sense all the boats that have ever floated on it, the schooners and sailboats and dories and side-wheelers; I feel all the times that have been. And I am down among the fishes, some hundreds of feet deep, there with the blips on the fisherman’s sonar screen that are the schools, the living creatures that for a while remain living still. And I am in some Adirondack valley, where a fox eats a mouse, the fox tilting its head back, the better to bring the back teeth into play. And I am at our near shore, looking at the moonlight glinting off the leaves in the trees, off the faces of the lovers as they kiss. I am all of these things. You are too.”  

In addition to Alexander Nemerov, the university presented honorary degrees to: 

John E. Abele, retired founding chairman of Boston Scientific, a firm responsible for developing some of the first-to-market devices to treat life-damaging conditions of the heart, brain, lungs, and body systems. 

Frank A. Bolden, UVM Class of 1963 and member of the university’s Athletic Hall of Fame, is an alumnus exemplar of UVM’s student-athlete model. Bolden was an attorney at Johnson & Johnson and also helped lead the corporation in other executive roles, including Vice President, Diversity Worldwide. 

J. Brooks Buxton, UVM Class of 1956, retired from Conoco Phillips in 2003 as president of Conoco Arabia Inc., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and director of Conoco Middle East Ltd., London and Dubai. Passion and deep knowledge inform Buxton’s collection of art and historic artifacts, experience he brings to his years of service on the Fleming Museum’s Board of Advisors. 

Karen Nystrom Meyer, UVM Class of 1970, has devoted her decades-long career to advancing policy and practice in essential matters from affordable housing to healthcare to higher education. She is a past vice president for state, federal, and community relations at the university.

UVM senior awards were presented at Commencement 2018 to the following graduates: 

Ashley Archangelo and Sonya Buglion Gluck, Mary Jean Simpson Award; Kunal Palawat, Kidder Medal; Caitlin Beaudet and Christopher Petrillo, Class of ’67 Award; Frankie Jacob Lyon and Valeria Pinzon-Mendez, Keith M. Miser Leadership Award; Warrick Sahene, William Subday and Ivonne Headley, Elmer Nicholson Achievement Prize.

Source: UVM News

“How do you talk about the arts?” UVM’s vice president for research, Richard Galbraith, asked in introducing the third in a series of academic presentations to the UVM Board of Trustees on the university’s teacher scholar model, this one highlighting the creative arts. Teacher-scholar presentations at earlier board meetings – on science, technology and medicine and social sciences and humanities – were engaging but traditional testimonials to the power of the model from faculty and students seated at a table facing board members.

The answer, he told the board during an interlude at last Friday’s meeting, is that you don’t. “If you’re going to showcase the arts, you need to experience them, see them.”

See and experience the arts the board did, who, along with a large audience of UVM faculty, students and staff, sat spellbound during an ambitious, 45-minute series of performances, three months in the making, featuring a small army of faculty and students artists performing jazz and classical music, displaying paintings, dancing, reading poetry and prose, acting and screening short films — to intoxicating effect.

The extravaganza, titled The Voice That Is Great Within, took place in the Sugar Maple ballroom adjoining the Silver Maple Ballroom in the Davis Center, where the board meeting took place. It was produced by Theatre Department chair Gregory Ramos.

The event underscored the “essentialness of the liberal arts” at UVM and in higher education as a whole, UVM president Tom Sullivan said in remarks that followed the performances.

“If you look at the words in the title of the show, the most important one is ‘within,’” he said. The liberal arts and the arts can help us understand “the nature, the purpose and the meaning of life. The within. The physical, the emotional and the aesthetic. That’s very, very powerful.”

Comprehensive Campaign Update, Arts & Sciences/IBB Discussion

Earlier in the day, at the Committee of the Whole meeting, UVM Foundation CEO Shane Jacobson gave an upbeat presentation on the progress of the university’s $500 million comprehensive campaign. The university has come within about $17 million of its goal, a full year ahead of schedule, he said.

There was more good news. Gifts that are moving through the pipeline from prospects who are in different stages of the giving cycle, Jacobson said, have grown nearly six-fold since the campaign began in 2011 to over $340 million.

“That’s a very positive signal to me that we continue to have great capacity as we move forward,” he said.  

The board also heard a discussion – within the context of  UVM’s Incentive-based Budgeting model, under which the university has operated for three years – of the financial challenges facing the College of Arts & Sciences.

A leadership team that included President Sullivan, Provost David Rosowsky, Bill Falls, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Alberto Citerella, university budget director, Stacey Kostell, enrollment management vice president, and Alex Yin, director of the Office of Institutional Research, provided context and outlined the challenge, which Citerella demonstrated is independent of the widely used budget model: that declining enrollments in the arts and humanities – a national trend – are responsible for the college’s financial position.

As at other schools, UVM’s College of Arts and Sciences is “facing head winds – or gale winds,” Falls said. Incentive Based Budgeting isn’t a solution, he said, but it does provide a “challenge to create new ideas.”

The college needs to “innovate toward what students are going after,” Falls said, citing as an example the new interdisciplinary major, Health and Society, that will be offered by the college beginning in the fall. 

“We need to find those experiences where students want to be involved, especially when they are interdisciplinary,” he said.

Update on Proposed LCOM, Psychological Sciences Facility; 2.9 tuition increase; Torrey Hall Renovation

In the afternoon, the full board also heard an update on the proposed Larner College of Medicine and College of Arts & Sciences Department of Psychological Science Biomedical Research Complex, encompassing both a total renovation of the Given Building and the construction of an integrated new research facility nearby.

Schematic design is underway for the approximately $90 million project and should be complete by the October meeting, when the board will also see a detailed budget for the project.

If fundraising goes as expected, the project could receive board approval in February 2019, break ground as early as a year later and be completed over the next four-and-a-half years.

The board also approved the FY 2019 general fund budget totaling just over $370 million. The budget includes tuition increases of 2.7 percent for out-of-state students and 2.8 percent for Vermonters – the sixth year in a row tuition increase have been held to 3 percent or lower – bringing the total cost of tuition to $40,176 and $15,936, respectively.       The total cost of attendance (including tuition, fees, room and board) will be $55,008 for out-of-state students and $30,768 for in-state students. However, the average net price students pay after all gift financial aid is factored in is about $16,600 lower for out-of-state students and $11,500 lower for Vermonters.

The budget also includes a 1.0 percent base budget reduction for administrative units and a 2.0 percent salary increase for non-represented staff.

Both the Educational Policy and Institutional Resources and the Budget, Finance and Investment committees heard an update on the renovation of Torrey Hall from Bob Vaughan, director of capital planning and management. A fire severely damaged the building in August 2017, while miraculously leaving internationally significant collections of plant, insect and animal specimens housed in the building nearly untouched. The collections are being housed elsewhere on campus while the building is refurbished.  

Vaughan said that insurance money would be used to renovate Torrey’s electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems, and to add a sprinkler system, but that $6.3 million total would be needed to rebuild the interior, which was destroyed – a “black hole,” Vaughan called it — and to build an adjoining stair and elevator tower. The full board approved the project on Saturday. The work will occur in two phases. Work on the building’s systems will begin next spring. The second phase will start after the first phase is completed and a combination of gifts and grants is secured to fund it.

In other news:

Educational Policy and Institutional Resources Committee

• Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning Brian Reed, Vice Provost for Student Affairs Annie Stevens, and UVM Internship Coordinator Amanda Chase gave a presentation on UVM’s student internship program, which has grown dramatically in response to student demand in recent years. Stevens described the many ways in which the university has worked to standardize internship offerings across academic units, which has led to a more consistent, high quality student experience, and to integrate internships into students’ academic experiences. But the internship program still faces a number of challenges, the group said. One of the primary ones is finding the funding to support students in unpaid internships, which less affluent families have difficulty affording. The university has raised $300,000 in funds to support students in these internships, a great success, but student demand for these funds has increased 40 percent this year, creating a shortfall. Provost David Rosowsky said the administration will look for ways to fill the gap. UVM’s internship record compares favorably to national figures, Chase said. Sixty-seven percent of UVM students have at least one internship experience before graduating, compared with 48 percent nationally, and 67 percent have paid internships compared with 65 percent nationally.  The university will continue to build its internship program, she said, given national figures showing the positive impact of these experiences. Students who have internships, she said, are hired faster than students who don’t and received job offers 28 percent higher on average. 

• Creative Communications Director Amanda Waite presented a range of updates about progress on UVM’s communications goals, as well as updates on a number of new initiatives. These included:  newly created print pieces that showcase academic offerings at the university; a family of logo templates to be utilized campus-wide for consistency; a new online video series (“Live at 5”) that spotlights faculty for prospective undergraduates; an international marketing campaign on behalf of the Graduate College; success in national media reach and an opportunity for researchers to learn from and network with a top science reporter, Tim Appenzeller, news editor of Science magazine; and a new online campus map that creates the opportunity to showcase the university in novel ways.

Budget, Finance and Investment Committee

• A renovation of 439 College Street (Phi Delta Theta Fraternity), which will provide housing for students, will be funded entirely with $2.4 million in gifts. Committee members also approved $2.0 million in gifts to complete the Multipurpose Center project for costs associated with design, development and permitting.
• Shane Jacobson, president and CEO of the UVM Foundation, told committee members that $8.6 million of $11 million needed in non-debt funding for the Ifshin Hall project has been raised. As of May 17, 2018, the UVM Foundation had received commitments and receipts totaling $10.8 million for the STEM facility with a remaining debt goal at $15.2 million, he said.
• The Investment Subcommittee reported that as of March 31, 2018 the university’s endowment had reached $524.5 million.

The consent agenda for the board meeting is available here.

Source: UVM News