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Study Reveals Striking Decline of Vermont’s Bumble Bees

A new study examining 100 years of bumble bee records reveals that almost half of Vermont’s species, which are vital pollinators, have either vanished or are in serious decline.

After conducting the state’s most extensive search for bumble bees, and combing through historical records from museum collections, the team has concluded that four of Vermont’s 17 bumble bee species appear to have gone extinct. 

The study, led by University of Vermont (UVM) and Vermont Center for Ecostudies (VCE) researchers, was published in the Journal of Insect Conservation.

“We’re losing bumble bees even before we fully understand their benefits to our economy and well-being, or how they fit into ecosystems,” said Kent McFarland, conservation biologist at VCE. 

Acquiring the data to understand the conservation status of Vermont’s bumble bees was no small feat. From 2012 to 2014, study authors and a corps of over 50 trained citizen scientists searched the entire state, amassing a database exceeding 10,000 individual encounters with bumble bees from all of Vermont’s counties and biophysical regions, and in 81% of the state’s 255 municipalities. 

To compare current bumble bee diversity and distribution in Vermont to historic records, the team assembled a database of nearly 2,000 bumble bee records, some from as early as 1915, from 13 public and private insect collections. The largest repository of specimens is held at the University of Vermont’s Zadock Thompson Natural History Collection.

While the researchers cannot pinpoint what may have caused these sudden bumble bee population declines, habitat loss, parasites, pesticides, and climate change have all been implicated by recent bee studies in North America.

Now, conservationists here in Vermont and across the continent are sounding alarms. 

Wild bees pollinate wildflowers and most crops in Vermont, including blueberries, tomatoes, squash, and one of the state’s essential commodities: apples. 

“Wild bees perform the majority of all pollination on Vermont farms, whether or not managed honey bees are present,” said Leif Richardson, an ecologist with UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment and Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. “As an ecosystem service, pollination is worth millions annually. But we don’t know how the loss of native bee species will affect our food supply or overall environmental health.”

Potential causes of declines

Trouble for some bumble bees may come from a hitchhiker. In the 1990s, farmers began releasing captive bred Common Eastern Bumble Bees (Bombus impatiens) into greenhouses to increase crop production, especially for indoor-grown crops like tomatoes. Some colonies may have been infected with pathogens and parasites, which they then spread to wild bees in the same areas.

Honey bees, introduced to North America in the eighteenth century, may spread RNA viruses and other pathogens to wild bees through shared use of flowers, as recently found in Vermont. 

Another culprit is likely common pesticides, including neonicotinoids. “Neonicotinoid pesticides are particularly dangerous to bees because plants absorb them through the roots, rendering all plant parts toxic to insects,” said Richardson. “This includes pollen and nectar, essential components of the bee diet.”  

And it’s not only neonicotinoids that may threaten bumble bees: recent research shows that such insecticides can have negative effects on bees when combined with commonly used fungicides.

Warming, drought, and other effects of climate change are impacting bumble bees in North America and Europe by causing both latitudinal and elevation changes in species distributions, with the majority of species experiencing consequent range contractions, according to a study published in 2015 in Science.

Habitat loss and urbanization are also taking their toll on pollinator populations of all kinds, bees included. The study found that diversity and abundance of bumble bee fauna in Vermont were strongly influenced by land use and land cover. For example, grassland cover was one of the strongest drivers of species diversity and predictors of individual species occurrence. In Vermont, most grasslands are located in agricultural landscapes, where pesticide application is more frequent, and periodic mowing can destroy bee nests and forage.

The association between bumble bees and hayfields and other grasslands is cause for concern, because the state lost nearly 2% of its grassland cover between 1996 and 2010, an average of nearly 1,000 acres annually. Land cover change may interact with other issues, such as climate change, to drive bumble bee declines.

Vanishing bees

Despite examining more than 10,000 bumble bees since the turn of the century, the scientists did not encounter a single Rusty-patched Bumble Bee (Bombus affinis), which was fairly common in Vermont until the 1990s. The last known record for Vermont was a drone collected on August 31, 1999 in the Intervale in Burlington. Information from this study helped the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources list this species as Endangered in the state in 2015, followed two years later by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listing it as federally Endangered. 

“This investigation confirms our fear that the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee is almost certainly extinct in Vermont and may never be back,” said McFarland. “We hardly knew it – and now it’s gone.”

The Vermont Bumble Bee Atlas, a project of VCE’s Vermont Atlas of Life, revealed that at least three other bumble bee species warranted listing in Vermont:

  • Ashton Cuckoo Bumble Bee (Bombus ashtoni) infiltrates colonies of Rusty-patched and Yellow-banded Bumble Bees, enslaves the workers and uses them to feed its young. With the Yellow-banded Bumble Bee severely depleted and the Rusty-patched Bumble Bees now gone, so goes the invader. It was last seen in 1999 and is listed as Endangered in Vermont.
  • Yellow-banded Bumble Bee (Bombus terricola) had been feared to be on the brink of extinction in Vermont, but new encounters with this bumble bee during the VCE survey suggest it might be surviving some threats. It was listed as Threatened in Vermont.
  • American Bumble Bee (Bombus pensylvanicus), once a common bumble bee in the Champlain Valley, it has not been found since a University of Vermont student’s unwitting discovery in 2000. A detailed report is being written to consider it for listing status in the state.

But not all bumble bees have fared poorly. The biologists found that the five species that increased the most belonged to the dominant subgenus in North America called Pyrobombus, which is relatively stable or increasing in other areas of the continent as well. The Common Eastern Bumble Bee appears to be expanding its range, possibly in part due to transport of managed colonies for crop pollination. 

“I’ve been amazed to see how this study, and other recent pollinator news, has increased the public’s awareness of bumble bees in Vermont,” says Spencer Hardy, a field biologist for VCE during the study. “It seems a lot more people are paying attention to bumble bees and are conversant in their ecology and diversity.”

“Our next step is to move from investigation toward solutions,” said McFarland. “But those solutions will take hard work and partnerships among federal and state agencies, conservation research groups like ours, and the public.” 

“These collections are priceless,” said VCE biologist Sara Zahendra of the historic bee collections used in the study. “Decades ago, students and biologists likely had no idea that some of the species they were collecting would completely disappear. Without these collections, we wouldn’t know how our bee populations have changed.” 

Learn More

Media Contacts:

Leif Richardson
Gund Institute for Environment
University of Vermont
leif.richardson@uvm.edu
802.793.6449

Kent McFarland
Vermont Center for Ecostudies
kmcfarland@vtecostudies.org
802.649.1431 x201 

 

 

Source: UVM News

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Meet UVM’s Brightest Young Leaders

A chemist, a fisherman and a producer. No, this isn’t the start of a “walks into the bar” joke or a Canterbury tale. This is the triad of University of Vermonters who landed on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list this year. While these three professionals might appear to have little in common at the office—or lab or boat for that matter—the tie that binds them at work, according to Forbes, is that they are “bold risk-takers putting a new twist on the old tools of the trade.”

Each year, Forbes selects 600 of “the brashest entrepreneurs across the United States and Canada” from 20 different categories. This years’ categories ranged from big money professionals to immigrants who are shaking up their industries and making the future a little brighter. UVM’s triad is comprised of a professor, included in the science category, and two alumnae: one in the social entrepreneurs category and one in the media category.

The three join a growing community of Catamounts who have been named to Forbes’ annual list in recent years. Alumna Sasha Fisher ’10 was included in Forbes’ 2015 social entrepreneurs category, while alumni Kristoff Grina ’12 and Karina Marshall-Goebel ’10 were included in the 2017 social entrepreneurs and science & healthcare categories, respectively. This year marks the largest number of UVMers to make the list, as well as the first faculty member to make the list.

Meet UVM’s 2019 Forbes “30 Under 30” honorees.

The Chemist

It’s likely you’ve read a text book in the past or heard a science teacher rattle off statistics about the number of atoms that can fit on a pencil tip, driving home the point that atoms are small. When it comes to atoms, 28-year-old assistant professor Michael Ruggiero doesn’t stop at just how small they are; he’s studying their subtle movements. Ultimately, Ruggiero’s work in molecular movement could lead to improved medicines, improved hydrogen fuel cells and other positive applications.

Learn more about Ruggiero.

Alumna Claire Neaton '12 holds a salmon next to her sister, co-owner of Salmon Sisters

The Fisherman

Braving the Bering Sea isn’t for the faint of heart, nor is starting a small business or launching a fashion line. However, Grossman School of Business and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumna Claire Neaton ’12 (left) has done all of the above. Together with her sister, 28-year-old Neaton runs Salmon Sisters, a sustainable fishery and apparel line that celebrates wild Alaskan seafood and the community that surrounds it.

Learn more about Neaton.

Alumna Ariel Wengroff in front of a bridge

The Producer

Ariel Wengroff ’10 has walked the red carpet with Gloria Steinem, sat in the Oval Office with President Obama, and traveled to dozens of countries around the world for her work as an executive producer and publisher at Vice Media. At 26 years old, she was the youngest executive producer to be nominated for an Emmy in the nonfiction or documentary series category. Today, the 29-year-old English alumna uses her storytelling skills to illuminate the struggles and realities of marginalized communities across the globe.

Learn more about Wengroff.

Source: UVM News

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Just Building

Dia Brown would like to solve some hard engineering problems. In fact, she’d like to solve some problems that many conventional engineers wouldn’t think of as belonging to their field. “Like how do we make new apartment buildings environmentally sustainable and healthy,” she asks, “while allowing the folks, low-income folks, who live in that neighborhood to stay and thrive?”

For her—a sophomore majoring in environmental engineering—the traditional work of the engineer to develop the smartest, most elegant, budget-conscious design can only be judged successful if it deeply considers social justice.

“Whenever I think of engineering, I think of activism,” she says.

Which helps explain why—while taking the full load of foundational courses in engineering—she’s founded a UVM chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers; worked as an intern for the climate-change organization 350.org; met with students of color at Winooski High School to encourage them to pursue engineering in college; and put important questions in front of other students and the faculty in the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences.

“Who’s invited into the space we call engineering?” she asks. Then she turns this question on its head. “Who doesn’t think about engineering as a pathway? It’s not the people from multigenerational families with engineering backgrounds, who are relatively affluent, and relatively whiter.”

At the intersections

Brown grew up in an affluent county outside of Washington, D.C., “but there were still people there who were homeless and who had to fear getting shot,” she says. Her grandfather was a farmer, and her father, who largely raised her, is a construction worker. “When I helped my dad at work, I felt sad because I saw all of these really environmentally detrimental products and toxins that go into construction,” she says, “and I think this work could be healthier for the people who do it and also for the people who live in those places that are built.”

Brown also grew up near the Chesapeake Bay and fell in love with its beautiful-but-polluted tidal marshes and waterways. At 14, she founded Crochet for the Bay, a volunteer group that crochets and sews clothes and toys to fundraise for conservation work on the Chesapeake.

It was Brown’s beloved history teacher who said to her, in her first year of high school, “I know you want to do ecology, but you should look at environmental engineering,” she recalls. The teacher and that moment were transformational. “Before that, I didn’t even know what engineering was,” Brown says.

“The thing that keeps me up at night now is I see all of these intersections and how everything’s woven together, but we’re told they are separate,” she says. “The environment, social justice, and STEM—I think about them together.”

Just chilling

On a Friday evening, after class, Dia Brown is leading the weekly meeting of the UVM chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, above. Well, really, tonight, “we’re just chilling,” Brown says, as she and seven or eight fellow members of the group tell jokes and eat sandwiches. Most weeks, “I want to get things done, have an action agenda,” she says, laughing even more, but her co-members reminder her: “how are you expected to be a community if you’re not building a community?” she says. Sandwiches and jokes help.

“We want everyone to feel welcome here in NSBE. Everyone,” says Elyon Eyimife, a junior electrical engineering major and the vice-president of the student club. She pauses to consider her words, turning her henna-red braids in her hand. “And as the UVM community works to increase the diversity on campus, I feel like our club has something to give: a comfortable space. We want to welcome everyone and we want our club members to really be part of this community, to make a good home here.”

Towards home

Which is what Dia Brown hopes to create as an engineer: good homes. “Right now, my passion is sustainable row housing,” she says, “not just environmentally sustainable, but deeply sustainable for the whole community.” She thinks that environmental engineers are unlikely to succeed by just considering the design of a building, but must confront the arrangement and racial politics of cities. “American cities are still very much designed through redlining districts,” Brown says. “And that’s an unsustainable design because, like, how are you expecting a community to thrive when on one block you have extreme poverty and then a block over you have multimillion-dollar houses?” Dia Brown, it seems, is figuring out how to be an engineer who considers both the buildings and the intersections.

Source: UVM News

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Largest Capital Gift in UVM History Will Name New Event Center

This evening the University of Vermont announced that it has received a $15 million gift from Rich and Deb Tarrant, Vermont philanthropists with strong ties to the University. The gift, one of the largest ever made to UVM and the largest capital gift in its history, will help bring the highly anticipated Multi-Purpose Center project to fruition. The Tarrants were recognized with an on-court presentation prior to the start of the men’s home basketball game versus St. Bonaventure.

The Multi-Purpose Center project includes construction of a new event center that will be home to UVM’s men’s and women’s basketball programs, and also host a variety of academic, social, cultural, and entertainment programming. This new facility will be named the “Tarrant Event Center” in recognition of their gift. The project also includes a major renovation of historic Gutterson Fieldhouse and significant upgrades to campus health, wellness, fitness, and recreation spaces.  The project is anticipated to start as early as this winter, and is scheduled to be completed in various stages throughout the 2020-21 academic year with minimal disruption to varsity athletics schedules. The total project cost is projected at $95 million, which will be funded through a combination of private philanthropic gifts and other institutional sources.

“While this is technically a gift to the University, universities are an integral part of the community,” noted Rich Tarrant. “They provide entertainment, jobs, healthcare, and are a place for people to come together. A university of this caliber, especially in a small community, is an incredible resource. Deb and I believe in investing in projects that have an impact far beyond campus, including projects like this one.”

“Rich and Deb Tarrant are exceptional friends and allies of this University,” said UVM President Tom Sullivan. “Their leadership as philanthropists and thought partners on our campus has had remarkably positive effects on our students and faculty, and on students and community members around Vermont. We are deeply grateful to them for this transformative investment in the future of UVM Athletics and the health and wellness of our campus community.”

“The Tarrants embody everything we work to instill in our student-athletes,” observed UVM Athletics Director Jeff Schulman ’89, “they’re passionate, hard-working, loyal, and know how to deliver in that crucial moment when success hangs in the balance. The Tarrant Event Center will be among the finest mid-major college basketball facilities in the country while also finally providing our campus with an appropriate event space for countless other activities. This is a facility that will be enjoyed by our teams, our fans, and the entire community for generations to come. I’m so honored to have Rich and Deb as partners in this exciting endeavor.”

With this gift to the Multi-Purpose Center, the Tarrants become the second largest donors in UVM history. Previously, they have made substantial contributions focused on revolutionizing middle-level education through the establishment of the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education in the College of Education and Social Services. They also have provided significant support for the UVM Cancer Center, the Larner College of Medicine, and the Dudley H. Davis Student Center, among other programs. In addition, the Tarrants have named a floor in the UVM Medical Center’s new Robert E. and Holly D. Miller Building in honor of dedicated hospital volunteers and supporters Allen and Bonnie Martin.

Within the Athletics Department, Rich played an instrumental role in securing funding for the Gucciardi Fitness & Recreation Center, which he named to recognize Richard and Mary Anne Gucciardi, long-time supporters of UVM Athletics and student-athletes. As part of the Multi-Purpose Facility project the Gucciardi Center will be transformed into a modern varsity athlete performance center with cutting-edge equipment and training space servicing all eighteen varsity athletic programs. In 2016, the UVM Foundation awarded Rich and Deb its Lifetime Achievement in Philanthropy Award. 

Rich was a First Team All-American basketball player at Saint Michael’s College (the only one in school history) and was drafted by the NBA Boston Celtics in 1965. Five decades later, he still holds records in Vermont for the highest single-season and career scoring averages, among others. Rich is co-founder of IDX Systems Corporation—one of the nation’s leading healthcare technology companies (acquired by General Electric in 2006)—and the founder and chairman of Marathon Health. He served as a member of the University of Vermont’s Board of Trustees from 1994 to 2000 and is the father of three sons who were all varsity athletes at UVM.

Deb is a summa cum laude graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She traveled the world as a buyer for major department stores and later directed the National Sales Accounting Department for Office Depot. She has served as the mayor of Hillsboro Beach, Florida since 2016 and in 2018 gave the commencement address to UVM’s College of Education and Social Services. Rich and Deb currently lead the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation, one of the most active private foundations in Vermont.

“We are absolutely thrilled that the lead gift to this project is also the third largest gift in UVM history,” said UVM Foundation President and CEO Shane Jacobson. “The Tarrants’ commitment is a monumental vote of confidence for the Multi-Purpose Center and signals that the time really has come. With this remarkable momentum added to the philanthropic leadership already demonstrated by other supporters, we are attaining new heights for fundraising. It has been a great joy working with Rich and Deb to connect their passion to our vision for UVM’s future.” 

Rendering of Tarrant Event Center exterior

Fundraising for the Multi-Purpose Center project is a key component of Move Mountains: The Campaign for The University of Vermont, a comprehensive fundraising campaign for the University of Vermont and the University of Vermont Medical Center. Thanks to gifts from more than 70,000 alumni, parents, community members, and friends, the campaign has raised over $538 million to date. At UVM, these funds benefit a wide range of programs and initiatives to enhance teaching, research, and a broad range of student experiences.

To learn more about how you can support the Multi-Purpose Center project—including about opportunities to name spaces within the Center—visit go.uvm.edu/itstime or contact Director of Major Gifts for Athletics Chris Bernier at Chris.Bernier@uvm.edu or (802) 656-3910.

 

Source: UVM News

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UVM Study Is First to Predict Which Oil and Gas Wells Are Leaking Methane

Each year brings new research showing that oil and natural gas wells leak significant amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane.

A new University of Vermont study just published in the journal Environmental Geosciences is the first to offer a profile of which wells are the most likely culprits.

The research, conducted by Civil and Environmental Engineering professor George Pinder and James Montague, his former doctoral student, is based on a study of 38,391 natural gas and oil wells in Alberta, Canada. Companies in that province are required to test wells at the time they begin operating to determine if they have failed and are leaking natural gas, which contains methane, and to keep careful records of each well’s construction characteristics.

The study used a machine learning algorithm to correlate wells that leaked and those that didn’t with a set of 16 characteristics.

The analysis yielded a cluster of traits that was predictive of whether a well would fail and leak, highlighted by three:

  • wells that deviated from a vertical drill line;
  • older wells, drilled before modern drilling practices were put in place; and
  • wells with greater circumferences, whose larger casings required larger volumes of cement that increased the likelihood of voids.

For a subset of 4,024 wells for which the algorithm had access to more complete information, including the fluid properties of the oil or natural gas being mined, the researchers were able to identify leaking wells with 87 percent accuracy.

For a larger sample of 28,534 wells, where the fluid property was not known and taken into account, 62 percent of leaking wells were identified accurately.

“The big picture,” Pinder said of the study’s findings, “is that we can now have  tool that could help us much more efficiently identify leaking wells. Given that methane is such a significant contributor to global warming, this is powerful information that should be put to use.” 

“Provincial and state regulatory agencies never have enough inspectors or financial resources to locate, let alone repair, leaking wells,” said A. R. Ingraffea, the Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Cornell and an expert in oil and natural gas well design and construction, who was not involved in the study. “The methodology created by this research will be invaluable to those agencies because they can now focus inspections on wells most likely to be leaking now or to leak in the future.”

The findings also shed light on how new wells should be designed and constructed to minimize the chance that they will leak, Pinder said.

About 12.5 percent of the wells in the Alberta database were leaking at the time they were to become operational. More research is needed to look at methane leaks over time as wells age, said Montague, the study’s lead author.

“The failure rate is likely to underestimate the number of wells that will eventually fail and leak, given the clear possibility that they will degrade with age,” he said.

Research published in June in Science estimated that natural gas wells are leaking 13 million metric tons of methane each year, 60 percent higher that EPA estimates, offsetting much of the climate benefits of burning natural gas instead of coal.

Under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed reducing the monitoring of oil and natural gas wells and has created a variety of regulation exemptions.

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Source: UVM News

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2018 Year in Review: Milestones at UVM

As we enter the new year, we take a look back at some of the biggest moments at the University of Vermont in 2018.

1. A Changing Campus

Transformation continued on campus, with brand new facilities opened, and historic buildings reopened with new purpose. Ifshin Hall features new classrooms, study rooms, and an atrium that has changed the face of the Grossman School of Business. Fall also saw the opening of UVM’s first integrated center for the creative arts. The former Taft School was renovated and repurposed into Michele and Martin Cohen Hall, bringing together studios, labs, and teaching spaces. And, historic Billings Library has a new life as an academic center, home to Special Collections, the Holocaust Center, the Humanities Center, and the Center for Research on Vermont. To date, at least 20 key facilities have been constructed or renovated since the Move Mountains campaign began.

2. Mountains Moved

Thanks to gifts from more than 70,000 alumni, parents, community members, and friends, Move Mountains, the ambitious fundraising campaign for the University, surpassed its initial $500 million goal 11 months ahead of schedule. Among the landmark gifts made this year: a $15 million gift from philanthropists Rich and Deb Tarrant to the Multi-Purpose Center project, and a $5 million gift to establish the MassMutual Center for Complex Systems and Data Science.

3. Hummel’s Novel a Top Pick

UVM professor Maria Hummel and her class sit in a circle

Assistant professor of English Maria Hummel’s novel “Still Lives” made its mark with readers. The ’94 UVM grad’s latest work was selected by both the Book of the Month Club and Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club. Read more about Hummel’s book.

4. A Push for Justice, Progress

Staff alumni and students stand around a marker reading Andrew Harris Commons

Early in the spring semester, a student group called NoNames for Justice launched a protest demanding that the university administration take stronger action on race-related issues, improve diversity courses and training for faculty and staff, and removed a name from a campus building of an individual linked to the Vermont eugenics movement.

Since these student actions, the administration has made tangible progress. Based on a recommendation from the university’s Renaming Advisory Committee, the Board of Trustees voted to remove the name of Guy Bailey, UVM’s 13th president, from the main university library. And, the life and work of Andrew Harris, Class of 1838, UVM’s first African-American graduate and a noted abolitionist, was remembered with the installation of a historic marker and the formal naming of the green between the Davis Center and library in his honor. Follow along with progress on advancing diversity and inclusion at UVM.

5. Wellness Environment Named a National Leader

UVM’s Wellness Environment, an innovative, neuroscience-inspired program that incentivizes students to build healthy brains and bodies, was featured on CBS “This Morning” and in the Chronicle of Higher Education. WE’s enrollment has grown from 120, when the program was launched in 2015, to more than 1,200 today.

6. Green and Gold

The US Women's Hockey Team with Olympic Gold Medals

A record number of athletes with ties to UVM competed in the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. Amanda Pelkey ’15 became the fifth Catamount to win gold with Team USA in women’s ice hockey; Jonathan Nordbotten ’14 won bronze for Norway; and Kevin Drury ’14 narrowly missed the podium for Canada in men’s ski cross, placing fourth. See results for Catamounts who took part in the 2018 games.

7. World-Shifting Research

Researcher Ali Kosiba inspects a red spruce tree in forest

It was a year of breakthroughs, from discoveries about climate change’s impact on reef fish, to a new tool to judge gerrymandering, to research on one of the world’s most important crops, chickpeas. Stories were covered by Newsweek, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Axios, and more. See some of the most talked-about discoveries of the year.

And, four UVM professors were ranked among the most cited researchers in the world: Taylor Ricketts, director of UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment and Gund Professor at the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources; Mary Cushman, professor of medicine and of pathology and laboratory medicine in UVM’s Larner College of Medicine; Russell Tracy, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and of biochemistry in the Larner College of Medicine; and Richard Page, dean of the Larner College of Medicine and a professor of medicine.

8. The Class of 2022, Record Breakers

For the fourth year in a row, UVM’s incoming class achieved the highest academic credentials in the university’s history. The Class of 2022, an estimated 2,500 students, hails from 43 states and 15 countries. First-year students arrived on campus in August for Opening Weekend, which included a twilight induction ceremony. Read more about this record-breaking class.

9. Introducing DeepGreen

Cables on the Vermont Advanced Computing Core

UVM’s supercomputer is now faster. A lot faster. The National Science Foundation awarded the university a $1 million grant to significantly upgrade its Vermont Advanced Computing Core. The new high-performance cluster, dubbed DeepGreen, will be able to achieve a speed equivalent to 20,000 laptop computers working in tandem.

10. Conversations on Campus

Visitors to UVM led thought-provoking talks throughout the year. Thousands gathered on election night to hear a conversation between poet Major Jackson and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the celebrated author of the Class of 2022’s first-year read, “Between the World and Me.” “Voting is not the end of your political engagement,” said Coates. “We need to do all of that other work, so that when we fill out the ballot we aren’t just trying to forestall evil.”

Other visitors included: comedian Michelle Wolf; Senator Bernie Sanders; Rachael Denhollander, a lawyer and former gymnast who was the first woman to publicly accuse Larry Nassar of sexual assault; writer Jelani Cobb and ABC News’ John Quiñones; intellectual and activist Marc Lamont Hill; and alumni Richard Ross ‘67, an artist whose recent work explores the juvenile justice system, and Alexander Nemerov ‘85, a noted art scholar who delivered the 2018 commencement address. His words of wisdom? Honor your own “illuminations of goodness in the world.”

11. Tops in Peace Corps

A Peace Corps Volunteer in the field

For the tenth year in a row, UVM ranked among the Peace Corps’ top volunteer-producing colleges. Vermont placed at No. 7 among medium sized schools. As of February, more than 900 alumni have served in the Peace Corps since its founding in 1961.

12. No. 1 Green MBA

For the second year in a row, UVM topped The Princeton Review’s “Best Green MBA” list. Through the Grossman School of Business’ Sustainable Innovation MBA program, “we train and launch the next generation of leaders who will create and reinvent profitable business models to address 21st century challenges pertaining to climate change, social inequities, and widening income equality, to name a few,” says David Jones, academic director of the program.

13. Young Leaders Shine

An aerial photo of a village impacted by Spark Microgrants

Some of UVM’s brightest young leaders were honored this year: Sasha Fisher ’10 received an Obama Fellowship for her pioneering community development work. Fisher, who co-founded Spark Microgrants, has impacted more than 178 African communities. Plus, three Catamounts were named to Forbes’ annual 30 Under 30 list, including professor Michael Ruggiero and alumnae Claire Neaton ’12 and Ariel Wengroff ’10.

14. Social Buzz

Foliage in Vermont mountains; a dog and cat in UVM hats

And in the world of social media, it was the year of the cat (and dog). Our most-liked photos on Instagram: a river of green and gold foliage, captured by senior Colby Yee, and a pair of pets showing off their UVM pride, taken by 2018 grads Emily and Abigayle. Our most popular Facebook post: announcing UVM’s spot on Architectural Digest’s 50 Most Beautiful Colleges in America.

Follow us on social media to stay up-to-date with all that happens in 2019.

Source: UVM News

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How to Succeed in Business

UVM alumni return often to their alma mater to share experiences with today’s students. This past semester’s guests included Robert Clarkson ’88, PayPal general manager for North America, and Brian Halligan ’90, CEO and co-founder of HubSpot. Read on for a distillation of their insights on building a career in business and making the most of your college years.

Brian Halligan ‘90

Think big, then think bigger

I would think big. A lot of entrepreneurs coming out of UVM don’t think big enough. One of the things that we were inspired by is we wanted to build a California-style company in Boston. We wanted to build something like an Apple or a Google or an Amazon, something big and ambitious. From the beginning, we were ambitious about our vision, about who we hired, ambitious about how much money we raised and how much dilution we could take. We swung hard. I would encourage that. If you’re going to do it, do it.

The lasting impact of Vermont

The culture in Vermont is very different than the culture in Boston or New York, and I’m not saying it’s better or worse, but people are really friendly and nice up here. That has had a big influence on me. There’s a little bit of Vermont that has stuck with me. I wanted to take a little bit of Vermont, being nice and friendly and sociable, and combine it with my technical skills. That sort of mix has been very helpful for me.

Branch out

I was an electrical engineering major with a biomedical option. I took a ton of electrical engineering courses, math, physics, biology, chemistry. There are technical skills I learned, and I use them all the time. I took computer science classes that were early and raw, but useful. I can speak like an engineer to our engineers.

Tips for the entrepreneurial student

Starting a company early in your life or career is a good thing. At school, you’re in a very inspiring environment to start a company. And, pick a really good cofounder, someone who complements you. My co-founder Dharmesh is really technical, and I’m more on the business side, and we’re sort of this one plus one equals three. The leading cause of death in startups is co-founder conflict.

Robert Clarkson ‘88

On Silicon Valley culture

Some might misperceive laid-back behavior as being non-motivated. There is enormous motivation, enormous pressure, and a constant sense of urgency to innovate. If you went to Silicon Valley thinking that it’s all foosball tables, ping-pong, beer on Fridays, that would be under-selling that sense of urgency and accountability you have to have to make a major impact. You know that the mission never stops, so therefore the job never stops. But it is an absolutely thrilling place to work.

The virtues of a broad education

I loved the balance I found at UVM. In addition to my business courses, I took a lot of English classes and worked on set designs for the Royall Tyler Theatre. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I was in college, but I was smart enough to know what I didn’t know. I realized that I didn’t have it all figured out and thought the wider the influences and education I got was going to be better for me in the long run. It worked out that way, and I still feel that way. The world isn’t single-threaded.

You can’t go it alone

At work I’m motivated by other people’s success. I feel best when I can get somebody on my team promoted or they get more responsibility. I feel like that’s my mission as their leader. Or when I can help a merchant grow their business and satisfy their customers’ needs, I feel like that’s a pretty good day. In Silicon Valley, there’s a strong ethic that advancement is in the collective, not the individual sense—the thinking is “we” not “me.”

On lifelong learning and creativity

Looking back when I was a student, I think I thought that the working world was going to be like some sort of Dickens novel or a Pink Floyd video where you’re shuffling off to contribute to the machine. But that same sense of joy of discovery and camaraderie that you have while at the university can continue throughout your career. The university creates the platform to be successful. But, in fact, the peak of your curiosity and your agility is after you graduate.

Source: UVM News