Tag: University of Vermont

This week, UVM professor of classics Jacques Bailly assumes his post as official pronouncer of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Bailly, who was bee champion in 1980, is in his 16th year as pronouncer after having served 12 years as associate pronouncer.

You can catch Bailly and the bee live on national television Tuesday, May 29, Wednesday, May 30 and Thursday, May 31.

• Preliminary Round 2: Tuesday, 9:15 a.m. – 5:20 p.m. (ESPN3)
• Preliminary Round 3: Wednesday, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. (ESPN3)
• Finals, Part 1: Thursday, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.  (ESPN2)
• Finals, Part 2: Thursday 8:30 – 10:30 p.m. (ESPN)

Source: UVM News

University of Vermont President Tom Sullivan today announced the appointment of Richard L. Page, M.D., as the 18th dean of the Larner College of Medicine at UVM, effective October 1, 2018. Page is currently the George R. and Elaine Love Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Page will succeed Frederick Morin, M.D., who has served as dean of the Larner College of Medicine since August 2007.

A nationally-recognized specialist in cardiac arrhythmias with interest in treatment of atrial fibrillation and sudden cardiac arrest, Page has led a department at the University of Wisconsin that is committed to professionalism in the pursuit of patient-centered care, transformational research, and innovative educational programs.

Page grew up in Storrs, Connecticut. He graduated from Duke University in 1980 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology, and received his medical degree from Duke in 1984, serving as a Stanley J. Sarnoff Fellow in the Department of Pharmacology at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons from 1982-1983. He completed a residency in Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, followed by research and clinical fellowships in Cardiology and Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. From 1990 to 1992, he served as Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at Duke University Medical Center. He then joined the faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas as Director of Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology in 1992, rising there to tenured Professor of Internal Medicine and Dallas Heart Ball Chair in Cardiac Arrhythmia Research. From 2002 to 2009, he served as the Robert A. Bruce Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Research and Head of the Division of Cardiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, where he also earned a Certificate in Medical Management in 2007.

In 2009, he assumed his current position at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. At the University of Wisconsin, he serves, ex-officio, on the Executive Committee of the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Authority Board of Directors, and on the Board of Directors of the UW Medical Foundation. He is a member of the Madison Town and Gown Club, an academic/civic organization that dates to 1878.

“Rick Page has a demonstrated track record as a strong advocate and champion for promoting the value of a medical school to the community and developing partnerships with affiliated health systems,” said UVM President Tom Sullivan. “His breadth of experience in academic medicine and core values – including honesty, integrity, diversity and inclusion, accountability, and respect – align well with the UVM and Larner College of Medicine mission and values. We very much look forward to working with him as a member of the university’s academic leadership team.”

With more than 200 publications, articles, and book chapters, Page has served on numerous national committees, including the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Guidelines Task Force; he will soon complete a four-year appointment as Chair of the Circulatory Devices Panel of the US Food and Drug Administration. He is a Fellow of the American Heart Association, having chaired their Council on Clinical Cardiology, and is a Fellow of the Heart Rhythm Society, where he served on the board from 2001 to 2012 and was President from 2009-2010. He is past-President of the Association of Professors of Cardiology and is a Councilor of the Association of Professors of Medicine. Page is an elected member of the Association of University Cardiologists, the American Clinical and Climatological Association, and the Association of American Physicians.

“I am tremendously honored to be joining the Larner College of Medicine and the University of Vermont,” said Page. “The commitment to excellence in education, research and patient care has shown through in all of my interactions with students, staff, faculty and leaders. Building on Dean Morin’s successful tenure, I hope to further our missions with impact throughout the region and beyond. Jeannie and I look forward to joining the Burlington community and exploring this wonderful part of the country.”

Page was selected after a national search co-led by UVM College of Nursing and Health Sciences Dean Dr. Patty Prelock and Larner College of Medicine Chair of Medicine Dr. Polly Parsons.

Page is married to novelist Jean Reynolds Page and they have three adult children. He and his family will relocate to Vermont this fall.

Source: UVM News

Since the 1960s, scientists at the University of Vermont have been documenting the decline of red spruce trees, casualties of the damage caused by acid rain on northeastern forests.

But now, surprising new research shows that red spruce are making a comeback—and that a combination of reduced pollution mandated by the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act and changing climate are behind the resurgence.

The new study was led by Alexandra Kosiba of the University of Vermont with co-authors Paul Schaberg of the USDA Forest Service and University of Vermont researchers Shelly Rayback and Gary Hawley.

The scientists examined data from 658 trees in 52 plots spanning five states—and found that more than 75 percent of red spruce trees and 90 percent of the plots exhibited increasing growth since 2001.

“Our evidence suggests that the Clean Air Act is working to enhance conditions for red spruce,” says Kosiba, a staff scientist for the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative at UVM. “This is a surprising and positive story.”

 The team’s study was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Recovery, for now

The research team assessed the relationship between red spruce growth and factors that may influence growth such as tree age and diameter, elevation, slope, geographical position, and environmental variables including temperature, precipitation, a suite of climate measures—and the sulfur and nitrogen pollution that cause acid to be deposited in falling rain and snow.

The results show a clear signal that “acid rain decline has helped red spruce recover, as well as higher temperatures in the fall, winter, and spring,” says Paul Schaberg, a researcher in the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station and adjunct professor at UVM. “Higher temperatures help some species and hurt others—right now, red spruce are benefiting, but they could be vulnerable to change in the future.”

Red spruce have unique characteristics that make them particularly susceptible to acid rain. For example, they have little genetic variation and they have only moderate tolerance to the cold. But they are also able to “wake up” and photosynthesize during warm interludes of the dormant season, a characteristic that may better position the species to take advantage of recent climate shifts that extend the functional growing season. Yet the study notes that future changes in habitat suitability may not be as favorable to red spruce as those already experienced—it will likely depend on how extreme future changes are.

“Red spruce are adapted to a certain range of climate conditions. Our work shows that reduced acid rain, warmer winter temperatures, and a lengthening growing season have benefited them recently,” says Kosiba. “But we don’t know how much change they’ll be able to tolerate in a warmer future.”

The scientists are confident that their research represents the current state of red spruce in the entire region, according to Kosiba. “Our study included a broad range of tree ages and sizes as well as a variety of plot locations and characteristics,” she said. “We are confident that we are capturing the regional status of red spruce forests, not just a snapshot of a specific location.”

“More broadly our work demonstrates the importance of using research to identify ecosystem problems that inform policy to mitigate those issues, and result in biological recovery,” noted Kosiba.

Pioneers on the mountain

Pioneering studies on acid rain were conducted by famed University of Vermont researcher Hub Vogelmann and other UVM scientists on Vermont’s iconic mountain, Camel’s Hump, in the 1960s. This scientific work was instrumental to the formation of the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act that have brought reductions in acid deposition in the Northeast. Later research by Paul Schaberg, Gary Hawley, and others led to a deeper understanding of how calcium leaching from the soil was a key part of the mechanism that caused acid rain to damage spruce trees and other plants.

“Calcium is slow to replenish in the ecosystem, so even though we’ve had this decline in acid rain, there has been a delay in seeing recovery,” says Kosiba who completed her doctorate in forest science at UVM in 2017. “There was some thought that, maybe, red spruce was not going to be a big component of our forests anymore, that there was too much damage.” Even as recently as 2003, scientists noted a major winter-kill of red spruce and acid rain was a key culprit.

Although the pollution that causes acid rain in the Northeast has been greatly reduced in recent decades, there have been very few studies to show that this cleaner air has improved the health of the region’s forests. “So it’s great that we’re finally seeing recovery of spruce,” Kosiba says, who notes that a recent study of red spruce in the Central Appalachians came to a similar conclusion. “There is a legacy of red spruce research in Vermont — starting with Hub Vogelmann. His work contributed to legislative change that reduced acid rain. Now our new research helps continue the story. It shows that the Clean Air Act works.”

Source: UVM News

Like most sugarmakers, Brian Stowe was used to working without a break from the start of the maple sugaring season in early spring to its bitter end in mid- to late April.

“If you had dental or medical issues, taxes, anything – all that had to be done before or after; during the season, you’re committed, 24/7,” says Stowe, sugarhouse operations manager at the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center.

But after 28 sugaring seasons at the Proctor, Stowe encountered something new this year: weekends off. 

Stowe owed his newfound free time to a combination of state-of-the-art new and cleverly re-purposed old technology at the Proctor sugarhouse, a model facility for the maple industry. If they catch on as past improvements have, the Proctor’s innovations could make sugar-making a more humane, and profitable, enterprise in the future.

What first greets a visitor to the sugarhouse, a peaked two-story structure tucked in a grove of maples down the road from the Proctor’s main research facility in Underhill, is a sea of steel barrels just inside the door that contain the operation’s output for the year: 3,000 gallons of maple syrup, a record crop.

But it isn’t the quantity of maple syrup that made 2018 such a banner year, says Tim Perkins, a research professor in UVM’s Plant Biology Department who is the Proctor’s director. It was the greatly reduced time it took to produce it – an improvement that was responsible for Stowe’s more forgiving schedule.

“In the past we made about 20 gallons of syrup for every hour of sugarhouse time,” Perkins says. “This year we produced 42 gallons of syrup for every hour,” a 110 percent improvement.

Reducing reduction

One cause of the productivity leap is the next thing a visitor sees in the sugarhouse: a gleaming slab of stainless steel and aluminum, a Lapierre Hyperbrix — “brix” is the industry term for the percentage sugar – evaporator.

The evaporator, along with a Lapierre Hyperbrix Reverse Osmosis machine, a compact assembly of geometric steel canisters situated in a room at the back of the sugarhouse, account for a big chunk of the labor savings, Perkins says.  

One of the most time-consuming aspects of maple syrup production is boiling down sap, which is 98 percent water and only two percent sugar, into syrup, 67 percent sugar, a process that is done in an evaporator, a large flat plan positioned over a steady heat source.

While only the smallest maple operations still start their production with raw sap, which takes hours to reduce, many boil sap that has first been processed using reverse osmosis, or RO, a system that employs pressure to force the sap through a fine filter, separating the water from the sugar. This process produce a concentrate that is eight to 15 percent sugar and takes less time to reduce to syrup.

The “Hyperbrix” version of RO, used at the Proctor, employs much greater pressure and two minutely fine filter to take the process to another level, yielding a concentrate that is 37 percent sugar, with about 95 percent of the water removed.   

By boiling concentrate that is already two-thirds of the way to maple syrup, the Proctor operation greatly reduces the time spent evaporating over traditional RO systems and saves money on fuel.   

“It takes about 43 gallons of raw sap to make a gallon of syrup, 11 gallons of concentrate at eight percent sugar and 5.8 gallons at 15 percent,” Perkins says. “It only takes less than 2.5 gallons of concentrate produced by the Hyperbrix RO.”

Old school

While the productivity improvements from the Hyperbrix evaporator and Hyperbrix RO machine were critical – technology so new and advanced that only about a dozen of the machines are in use in the U.S. and Canada – an old-school piece of equipment commonly used on dairy farms, a refrigerated bulk tank used for keeping milk cool, was just as important.

“Sap is like milk – it’s perishable,” Perkins says, and concentrate even more so. “You can leave it out for little while, but not for long.”

What that meant was that last year, the first that the Proctor used the Hyperbrix equipment, every sap run and concentration cycle required a boil in the evaporator.

“The problem with that is, every time you boil, you need to clean,” Perkins says. “And whether you boil for half an hour or eight hours, it still takes two-and-a-half hours to clean.”

The frequent boiling also added to the general chaos of the sugarhouse during the season, Stowe says. “Everything was happening at once, cleaning and prepping the Hyperbrix equipment, testing pumps, tapping trees, repairing tubing, installing research projects – and boiling concentrate.”

One day a way out occurred to Perkins, an active researcher who also mans the evaporator during boils throughout the sugaring season.

“Bulk tanks aren’t used by that many maple producers, and mostly they’re using them just for storage,” he says. “But I thought, if we can bulk up the concentrate for a few days in a refrigerated tank,” it will stay fresh and “allow us to actually schedule our operations. We could look at the forecast and say, the sap is going to run Monday and Tuesday. We’ll concentrate on Tuesday and Wednesday. And then we’ll boil on Thursday.”

The difference was night and day.

“This year we had 27 sap runs over the 10-week season,” Perkins says. “Normally you would boil 27 times. But with the refrigerated bulk tank, we boiled just 11 times.”

While the extra time off allowed Stowe to “decompress” in ways he had never experienced during sugaring season, it also enabled him to use his time more productively.

“We had more time available to go out and make the repairs in the woods, which ultimately makes more sap for us, and more money,” he says.

NASA

With its gleaming high tech equipment and washable white walls covering the rustic wood framing that’s typically exposed in sugar houses, the Proctor looks like a “NASA installation,” Stowe says.

To Perkins it’s simply evolved to being a “modern food processing operation” with such improvements as plumbed water for cleaning equipment that becomes clogged with syrup. One metal pail hangs from a hook on the ceiling as reminder of the old days when Perkins and his co-workers schlepped water and brushes around the facility.

Either way, once the news gets out that the Proctor more than doubled its productivity this year while significantly cutting its costs, it’s bound to turn heads in the industry.

To its long list of its contributions – from the check valve spout that extends the season by a month or more to the capped maple saplings that allow maple syrup to made almost anywhere on earth – the efficient modern sugarhouse may be one of its most enduring.

“It really changes the time, efficiency and quality of life for sugar makers during the season.”

Both the Hyperbrix RO and evaporator are being operated at the Proctor Maple Research Center as part of a research partnership with their manufacturer, Lapierre Equipment. Some of the improvements made at the Proctor this year, and others planned for the coming season, are being funded by a memorial gift from UVM alumni Robert L. Bickford, Jr. (’43) and his wife, Oletha “Lee” Thompson Bickford (’41). 

Source: UVM News

Gritty and irreverent, exceptional and self-effacing, Mo Beck ’09 is a movie hero that audiences can get behind. She’s a key reason Banff Mountain Film Festival crowds at screenings throughout the world have consistently voted “Stumped” as a fan favorite. Juries at festivals in England, Spain, and Canada have agreed, selecting it for top prizes.

Early in the film by Taylor Keating and Cedar Wright we see Beck working rock walls and boulders. And we hear her in a voiceover: “I don’t want to be good for a girl. I don’t want to be good for just having one hand. I just want to be a good climber. Period.”

It’s a thread that runs throughout with Beck, her climbing partner James Scheri, and their fellow adaptive athletes. The film challenges broad perceptions and media presentation of para-athletes, but in a manner that is a good deal more complex than the familiar television news “aren’t they so brave and inspiring” slant.

In a phone interview from her home outside Boulder, Colorado, Beck describes how her own perspective shifted when she connected with fellow para-athletes in a Paradox Sports adaptive ice-climbing event during spring break of her senior year at UVM. She’d long been active as an athlete, but Paradox showed her a new level.

“Their whole motto was, ‘I don’t care what you don’t have, show me what you can do.’ That was such a different tone,” Beck says, compared to adaptive camps she’d attended as a child that felt more conciliatory than empowering. The Paradox athletes climbed to the point of exhaustion all day, went back to the hotel, showered, then got the party started. “I was like, ‘OK, these are my people, I think,’” Beck recalls.

Maureen (Whalley) Beck was born without a left hand. Her arm ends a few inches above the wrist. She calls it her stump, owning the word as she owns this non-standard part of her anatomy. She’s fond of hashtags like #stumpsnotchumps, #gimpsnotwimps, etc.

Early on, Beck’s nature was to tackle activities that required some figuring out. Violin: she strung the instrument backwards and duct-taped the bow to her prosthetic. Soccer: in a sport played with the feet, she played the one position, goalie, where hands are a help. “My mother would call it, ‘being difficult,’” she says. “I just always enjoyed doing things that didn’t make a lot of sense.”

At a Girl Scout camp near her hometown of Ellsworth, Maine, gateway to Acadia National Park, Beck had her first encounter with a climbing wall. Looking back, she figures the counselor advised the girl with one hand she could sit this one out. “So, little twelve-year-old me just thought, ‘well screw you, I’m going to do it just because you think I can’t,’ and then I happened to like it.”

When it came time for college, the Outing Club and vibrant outdoor programs helped draw her to UVM. She dove in, leading trips and trainings. She met her husband, Brian Beck ’09, an outdoorsy guy who grew up in Telluride, Colorado, during their sophomore year. Through their first few months of dating, Brian told her he’d done plenty of climbing out west. Then they drove out to Bolton Valley. Halfway up their first climb together, he copped to being terrified. But small compromises often make relationships work. These days when Mo is climbing, Brian, a software developer by day, goes along and finds the nearest stream to fish or trail to mountain bike.

Mo Beck, who earned her UVM bachelor’s degree in forestry from the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, is in sales for Eldorado Climbing Walls, enjoying a tight knit between work and play.

As a competitive climber, Beck is a four-time national champion and earned gold medals at the 2014 and 2016 Paraclimbing World Championships. Two years ago, when she set her sights on the daunting threshold of a 5.12 climb, she had a quest and her filmmaker friends had a compelling protagonist and story. As for what happened next, no spoilers here. Google “Cedar Wright Stumped” to find the film on Vimeo On Demand.

Looking back at climbing’s initial draw, Beck says. “You feel a little badass, right? Climbing is this extreme sport. I mean, Sly Stallone did it in ‘Cliffhanger,’ right? So even if you’re on a super low-angle overgrown boulder at the crag you still feel really cool.”

Years later, the community of fellow climbers camped out at a crag, encouraging each other and sharing laughs is a lot of what it’s all about for her. Then, of course, there’s always staring up at a new challenge. “I like that the rock doesn’t care that you have one hand or that you’re short or you’re tall or you’re male or you’re female,” she says. “It’s a rock, it doesn’t care. It’s not going to change for you. It’s not going to feel bad for you. It’s just there for you to climb.”

Source: UVM News

As global temperatures increase, ice sheets and glaciers are being closely watched by scientists to see if, and how fast, they will melt. Of all the world’s icy places, the ice sheet covering East Antarctica has the largest potential to make sea levels rise.

But efforts to predict the East Antarctic’s role in future sea-level rise have been hindered by an absence of data about the ice sheet’s response to warming periods in the past. The geological history of the massive ice sheet—frozen both above and, in many places, below the ocean’s surface—has been difficult to make clear.

Now, using ultra-sensitive analytical measurements that have helped to reveal the history of other ice sheets, a team of researchers from the University of Vermont, Boston College, and other institutions has found that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet did not retreat significantly over land during the warm Pliocene epoch, approximately 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago, when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were similar to today’s levels.

The results were reported June 13 in the journal Nature.

Land vs. sea

The findings suggest that some ice on the southern continent could be stable in a warming climate, but do not signal that Antarctica can somehow backstop the impact of climate change, the researchers caution. Ongoing emissions mean that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will soon surpass the benchmark set during the Pliocene, the last time Earth experienced CO₂ levels higher than 400 parts per million.

The study—conceived by Boston College scientist Jeremy Shakun and University of Vermont geologist Paul Bierman—focused on terrestrial ice, the portion of the ice sheet that sits above the ocean and sequesters enough water to account for more than 110 feet of sea level rise were the ice sheet to melt away in response to rising air temperature. The other component of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is so-called marine-based ice, which sits below sea level and is thus directly affected by the ocean.

“Based on this evidence from the Pliocene, today’s current carbon dioxide levels are not enough to destabilize the land-based ice on the Antarctic continent,” said Shakun, the lead author of the report. “This does not mean that at current atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, Antarctica won’t contribute to sea-level rise. Marine-based ice very well could and in fact is already starting to—and that alone holds an estimated 65 feet of sea-level rise. We’re saying that the terrestrial segment of the ice sheet is resilient at current carbon dioxide levels.”

Estimates of sea-level rise during the Pliocene have varied, from 20 feet to more than 130 feet higher than today. The upper end of this range would imply that much of the ice on the planet melted, which all together holds enough water to raise sea levels by over 200 feet. If the land-based East Antarctic Ice Sheet was stable during the Pliocene, however, as the team of scientists suggest, the Pliocene total could have been at most about 100 feet.

Needle in a haystack

The researchers analyzed sediment contained in drill cores taken from the sea floor. These cores contain geological records, but also chemical signatures. In particular, the rare isotopes beryllium-10 and aluminum-26, which were extracted in the US National Science Foundation-supported Community Cosmogenic facility at the University of Vermont and measured using particle accelerators at Purdue University’s Rare Isotope Measurement Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry.

“Isolating these rare isotopes from grains of ancient sand is like finding a very small needle in a very large haystack,” said UVM’s Paul Bierman, professor of geology, fellow in the Gund Institute for Environment, and one of four UVM co-authors on the new study. “But measuring them gives us a powerful view of Antarctica’s past that has never been seen before.”

Both isotopes are found in rock surfaces that have been exposed to cosmic radiation bombarding the earth from outer space. Researchers usually examine rock samples from hillsides, mountaintops, and rivers to determine where and when ice retreated during prior geological eras.

Bierman, Shakun and the eight other co-authors of the new report used a different approach two years ago to offer one of the most comprehensive climatological accounts of the Greenland Ice Sheet yet, dating back 7.5 million years ago. In the Greenland study, levels of beryllium-10 found in sandy deposits brought out to sea in icebergs suggested the ice sheet has been a “persistent and dynamic” presence that has melted and re-formed periodically in response to temperature fluctuations. Those findings helped confirm that the Greenland Ice Sheet is a sensitive responder to global climate change.

Chemical signatures

Earlier studies of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet indicated that some marine-based portions of the ice sheet and its neighboring West Antarctic Ice Sheet melted back during the Pliocene. But it was unclear whether terrestrial ice also melted.

Examining sediment samples delivered from land-based sections of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the researchers found those areas that drain into the Ross Sea have been stable during the past eight million years, the team reports. Their analysis found “extremely low” concentrations of beryllium and aluminum isotopes in quartz sand in the marine sediment samples taken in the region.

While the sediment was the product of erosion from the continent, the low levels of tell-tale chemical signatures reveal that the sediment experienced only minimal exposure to cosmic radiation, leading the team to conclude East Antarctica must have remained covered in ice.

“The findings indicate that atmospheric warming during the past eight million years was insufficient to cause widespread and/or long-lasting meltback of the EAIS margin onto land,” the team writes. The findings not only clarify the past impact of rising temperatures on East Antarctic ice, but confirm the accuracy of models scientists are using to assess past and future consequences of a warming planet.

“These findings add to the growing body of evidence that curbing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide can still ensure the stability of significant amounts of ice in Antarctica and around the globe,” said Shakun.

In addition to Shakun and Bierman, the co-authors of the report included University of Vermont researchers Lee B. Corbett, Kristen Underwood and Donna M. Rizzo; Boston College’s Carling C. Hay; Susan R. Zimmerman of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Marc W. Caffee of Purdue University; and Tim Naish and Nicholas R. Golledge of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

This story adapted from material written by Ed Hayward. Chart in sidebar by Jeremy Shakun.

Source: UVM News

The University of Vermont’s Office of Student and Community Relations has received the Presidential Excellence Award from the International Town Gown Association for its work on Burlington’s Isham Street. The program the office implemented there led to large decreases in noise tickets, vandalism and burglaries after it was launched in 2012.

In its award letter the association, the  leading higher education organization focusing on colleges’ relationships with their communities, described the office and its staff as “trail blazers in doing new and innovative work.” 

“I’m thrilled at the much deserved recognition UVM’s Office of Student and Community Relations has received from such an important group in the higher education community relations field,” said University of Vermont president Tom Sullivan. “The office’s work is both innovative and vitally important. UVM and Burlington are each strengthened by the other. It is critical that we have a healthy relationship based on mutual understanding and respect. This program provides a blueprint for achieving just that kind of healthy interrelationship.”

“I couldn’t be more proud of the work our office has done, in conjunction with our partners, to improve student-resident relations in Burlington,” said Gail Shampnois, director of the Office of Student and Community Relations. “The Isham Street program is unique in its approach and grounded in community development, restorative approaches, social justice and the collective wisdom of residents.”

Strategy: Working together on neighborhood projects

The Isham Street initiative grew out of a strategy developed in 2010 by the Office of Student and Community Relations, UVM’s Student Government Association and city and community groups — organized as an entity called the UVM Community Coalition – to address quality-of-life issues in high density student neighborhoods. 

The strategy’s underlying approach was to find ways for students and neighbors to get to know one another by organizing neighborhood activities and events.

Isham Street was chosen to pilot the program because students make up over 90 percent of residents on the street and quality of life for non-students was a significant issue. 

As they began implementing the Isham Street strategy eight years ago, Shampnois and her UVM colleagues found a sympathetic viewpoint and willing partner in a grassroots neighborhood group called ISGOOD, for Isham Street Gardening and Other Optimistic Doings. Shampnois’ office supported ISGOOD from its inception with funding from its Neighborhood Grants program.

ISGOOD co-founders Brian Cina and Phil Hammerslough believed that neighborhood interaction through gardening and cleanup initiatives would greatly improve the quality-of-life on their street.

The group and students on the street jointly organized a series of projects that have continued annually. Examples of these projects include the following:

• Former Isham Street resident and UVM student Sabina Parker worked with the Office of Student and Community Relations and ISGOOD on a New England Seeds grant and was awarded $2,500 to build planters on land donated by landlords for flowers and vegetables on the west side of the street. The project was completed in the spring of 2018. 
•  Each year UVM Community Coalition members dedicate their April meeting to doing a project in a neighborhood.  This April they did a clean-up on Isham Street and prepared greenbelts and landlord donated gardens for planting.
•  ISGOOD was awarded a $2,000 grant from AARP, used in 2014 and 2015 to create greenbelt gardens along the entire length of the east side of Isham Street and to purchase vegetables for the landlord donated community garden.   

Impact: large decreases in noise tickets, vandalism, burglaries

The Isham Street program has achieved impressive results. From 2012 to 2015, the most recent year statistics are available, Burlington Police Department data show a 68 percent decrease in noise tickets, 86 percent decrease in vandalism and 60 percent decrease in burglaries on the street. On surrounding streets with similar make-ups, Hickok and Greene, there was little to no change in these categories. 

“Since our first block party in 2010, the culture of the street has evolved,” said Hammerslough. “You can see the change. It’s palpable. Students say hello to each other, they say hello to us. We talk. There’s sharing going on.”

“Isham Street is the weakest link, and its efforts can ripple upwards to other neighborhoods,” Cina said. “If Isham can do it, many others can too.”

Shampnois said the Isham Street model will be expanded to Hickcok Place, where students and neighbors have already begun working on a greenbelt with Neighborhood Grant funding, and Greene Street next year.

The Isham Street project has also been recognized by the city of Burlington. Under Mayor Miro Weinberger’s guidance, the work of the Office of  Student and Community Relations, the UVM Community Coalition and ISGOOD were cited as a local best practice in the Neighborhood Project Request for Proposals and Draft Plan.

In 2016 Shampnois won the Peter Clavelle award from the City of Burlington, which recognizes individuals whose leadership has advanced social equity, environmental stewardship, quality education or economic growth and vitality in Burlington.

Source: UVM News

As the U.S. Department of Agriculture prepares guidelines for labeling products that contain genetically modified ingredients, a new study from the University of Vermont reveals that a simple disclosure can improve consumer attitudes toward GMO food.

Led by Jane Kolodinsky, an applied economist in UVM’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the study compared levels of consumer opposition to GMO foods in Vermont – the only U.S. state to have implemented a mandatory labeling policy – with consumer attitudes in the rest of the U.S. The analysis showed opposition to GMO food fell by 19% in Vermont after the implementation of mandatory labels.

The study is the first to examine the real-world impact of consumer attitudes toward GMO foods in a state where consumers were exposed to mandatory GMO labels.

“Our findings put to bed the idea that GMO labels will be seen as a warning label,” said Kolodinsky, professor and chair of the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics and a Fellow of UVM’s Gund Institute for the Environment. “What we’re seeing is that simple disclosures, like the ones implemented in Vermont, are not going to scare people away from these products.”

National Debate

Published today in Science Advances, the research provides timely new evidence in a longstanding national debate over the impact of mandatory GMO labeling policies on consumer attitudes.

Several studies, including past research by Kolodinsky, show consumers consistently express a desire for labels on GMO foods, but mandatory labeling has been opposed by some manufacturers and scientific organizations for fear that the labels would be perceived as warning signs and might signal that a product is unsafe or harmful to the environment.

Despite numerous scientific studies that have shown that GMO foods are safe, nationwide, the majority of consumers express opposition to the use of GMO technologies, a trend that has been steadily increasing over the past decade.

“We’re finding that both in real-world and hypothetical studies, the introduction of a simple disclosure label can actually improve consumer attitudes toward these technologies. In a state that has been such a hot bed for GMO opposition, to see this change is striking,” said Kolodinsky, who has tracked attitudes to GMOs in Vermont since 2003.

Kolodinsky’s latest study, with co-author Jayson Lusk of Purdue University’s Department of Agricultural Economics, suggests a simple, straightforward label disclosing whether a product is “produced or partially produced using GMO ingredients” may improve consumer confidence in GMO technologies and enable consumers to make an informed decision.

However, proposed national labeling regulations released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in May, seek a narrower definition of genetic engineering and propose alternatives to simple labeling disclosures. The draft guidelines also propose changing the labeling terminology from GMO to “bioengineered” or “BE”, a new descriptor for genetic engineering that is unfamiliar to most of the general public.

The USDA has invited public comments on the draft guidance through July 3, 2018.

Vermont as a Case Study

While several states introduced bills to require labeling of GMO foods, Vermont became the first and only U.S. state to implement a mandatory labeling initiative in July 2016 before the new federal legislation came into effect.

Kolodinsky, who collected data on Vermonters’ attitudes toward GMO food before and after the labeling policy was implemented, combined her results with Lusk’s national data. Taken together, the study analyzed attitudes of over 7,800 consumers from 2014-2017 who ranked their attitude toward GMO food using a one to five scale. When controlling for demographic factors, opposition to genetic engineering fell significantly in Vermont after mandatory labeling, whereas opposition continued to increase nationwide.

“One of the concerns many people, including myself, expressed about mandating GMO labels is that consumers might see the label as a type of warning signal and increase aversion to the label. This research shows that this particular concern about mandatory GMO labels is likely misplaced,” said co-author Lusk.

Kolodinsky and Lusk note the findings are consistent with prior research that suggest “labels give consumers a sense of control, which has been shown to be related to risk perception.” Indeed, some food manufacturers, including General Mills and Campbells, continue to voluntarily label GMO food products citing consumer demand for transparency.

Funding support for the research came from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the Willard Sparks Chair at Oklahoma State University.

Source: UVM News