Tag: University of Vermont

The University of Vermont is hosting the Catalysts of the Climate Economy (cc:econ) September 6-8, a national innovation summit that will bring together entrepreneurs, investors, and thought leaders to gear up for the next stage of economic development and prosperity in a low-carbon future. The event’s goal is to accelerate progress toward the significant economic opportunities associated with solving the unprecedented challenges presented by climate change.

The summit will feature speeches, roundtables and discussion groups with industry leaders from around the country in clean energy, green building, agriculture, transportation, tech innovation, efficiency improvement, smart growth, and more.

The keynote speech for the event will be delivered by environmentalist, entrepreneur, activist, and bestselling author Paul Hawken, who will speak on Wednesday from 6:10 to 7:30 p.m. at the Ira Allen Chapel. The speech is free and open to the public.

Other speakers include Jigar Shah, co-founder of Generate Capital; Danny Kennedy, managing director of the California Clean Energy Fund; Mary Powell, CEO of Green Mountain Power; Gary Hirshberg, chairman and former CEO of Stonyfield Farm; Helen Mountford, program director of the New Climate Economy Initiative; Stephen Lacey, editor-in-chief of Greentech Media; Alex Keros, manager of vehicle & advanced technology policy at General Motors; Lila Preston, aartner at Generation Investment Management; John Replogle, president and CEO of Seventh Generation; Dan Reicher, executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University; and many others. 

In addiiton, the summit is hosting an innovation and pitch contest for entrepreneurs from around the country to exhibit their ideas for a better future. Winners will receive a cash prize and the opportunity to present their work to an audience of investors and other interested parties.  

The final day of the event will consist of a series of “innovation tours” around Vermont, guided by summit speakers and other changemakers. The tours will let participants see the climate economy in action, showcasing businesses, farms, utilities, policy, initiatives, and communities as models of energy production, efficiency, and economic development. Each tour will specialize in a particular area of interest, including Green Building and Design, Distributed Generation and the Rural Grid, and other themes central to the summit agenda.

Registration details and other information including the full schedule and speaker lineup can be found at https://www.ccecon17.com.

The summit is produced by the Vermont Council on Rural Development (VCRD). From local, citizen-led efforts to policy councils that build collaboration between state, federal, nonprofit, and private sector leaders, VCRD brings Vermonters together across political lines and organizational boundaries to create a better future.

Source: UVM News

Researchers have long known that glucose — or sugar — fuels cellular activity, including cells involved in immune response. While previous research focused on sugar stores external to the cell, a surprising new discovery finds that dendritic cells — the messengers of the mammalian immune system — draw from sugar stores within the cell. This new knowledge could lead to targeted treatments to increase immune activity (in cancer therapy, for example), or suppress immune reactions (like in patients with multiple sclerosis). 

Published in the journal Cell Metabolism, this novel finding adds an important missing piece to the puzzle of how early immune responses are powered from a metabolic standpoint, and provides immunologists with a new area of focus in their ongoing effort to regulate immune activity.

“By either enhancing or depleting this sugar warehouse within the cell, the hope would be that we could either influence or dampen immune reactions,” says study author Eyal Amiel, assistant professor at the University of Vermont in the Department of Medical Laboratory and Radiation Science in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. “What we’re really in the business of is finding new switches to toggle to that effect, and this finding provides us with a new target that regulates immune activity. 

The finding gives immunologists a key piece of new information to better understand how the early part of the bioenergetics of a dendritic cell immune response is generated. This is especially significant given the importance of timing when it comes to immune response and the speed at which the switch of inflammation can be either increased or suppressed. 

“What’s surprising is that the intracellular sugar pool is the more important one early on,” says Amiel, who co-authored the paper with Phyu Thwe, a doctoral student in Amiel’s lab, and three external researchers. “The reason that is so important is because in any kind of immune protection scenario it is absolutely a race against time between the microbe and mammalian immune response.” 

When Amiel and his colleagues impaired the ability of dendritic cells to access the internal warehouse of sugar, the cells were less effective at stimulating an immune response in a number of measurable ways. “The really exciting thing is we believe our findings likely extend to other cells of the immune system and are not dendritic cell-specific” says Amiel. 

In a previous paper in Nature Immunology, Amiel and lead author Bart Everts, assistant professor at the Leiden University Medical center in the Netherlands, found that the early consumption of glucose is vital to the activation of cells, in terms of the production and secretion of proteins that are essential to the cells’ immune function.

Amiel has started conducting new research on mice with deficiencies in glycogen synthesis only in dendritic cells to measure the impact of blocking the creation of the intracellular glycogen supply on the longer-term immunological capacity of those cells. “We know that if we prevent their ability to use glycogen during that early window there are long-term consequences for the abilities of those dendritic cells to stimulate T-Cells, even hours and days after the fact.”

 

Source: UVM News

The debate over gun control is one of the most polarizing in America.

Proponents of stricter gun laws point to the fact that Americans are 10 times more likely to be killed by guns than people in other developed countries.

Opponents counter that shooters will always be able to procure guns and that the right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

Three experts – a legal scholar, a social scientist and a philosopher – aim to bring nuance and new dimension to this issue in a Janus Forum panel discussion scheduled for 3 p.m. on September 14 at Davis Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Sanford Levinson, a faculty member in the University of Texas/Austin’s law school and a professor of government at the university, is a renowned constitutional law expert. He will address the extent to which the U.S. Constitution protects an individual’s gun ownership rights. 

Cassandra Crifasi is a highly regarded social scientist in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a core faculty member in the university’s Center for Gun Policy and Research. She will discuss evidence showing that additional gun controls decrease rates of violent crime. 
Michael Huemer, an expert in ethics and political philosophy, is a faculty member in the Philosophy Department at the University of Colorado/Boulder. He argues that the freedom to own a gun supersedes the harms guns cause.

The discussion will be moderated by UVM philosophy professor Don Loeb.

“The goal of the Janus Debate series is to bring attention to important and controversial policy issues and to challenge people to reflect on their views in the light of well argued contrary positions,” said Richard Vanden Bergh, a professor in UVM’s Grossman School of Business and a founder of the debate series.

“Everyone stands to benefit from that kind of self-examination,” he said.

This year for the first time, the Janus Debate series has engaged the university’s student debating organization, the Lawrence Debate Union, to both promote its debates and widen their impact.

Two student debaters in the LDU, Kaya Sittinger and Alex von Stange, will interview the panelists and post the transcripts of the conversations on the Janus Forum website.         

Another student debater, Charlotte Gliserman, will promote the events through the LDU’s social media channels. 

Members of the debate organization, one of the mostly highly ranked in the world, will also meet with the panelists over lunch. The experience, said Sittinger, will be valuable for students since it’s likely they’ll debate the gun control issue during debate contests with other schools over the year.

For the spring semester, the Janus Debate series will address the question: “Yes or No: Should Speech Be Restricted on Campus?”

For more information on the Janus Forum and the gun control panel, visit the program’s website.

The Janus Forum is sponsored by the families of James Pizzagalli and John Hilton.

Source: UVM News

We remember and honor all of those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, including the following UVM alumni.

Carlton W. Bartels G’85

“was not afraid of life, was passionate about it and lived every minute of it,” a family member told the Staten Island Advance. Bartels, who earned his MBA at the University of Vermont, was a partner at Cantor Fitzgerald and was CEO of his own dot-com company, CO2E.com, which helped other companies and governments reduce emissions worldwide. “Carlton was one of the top five people in the world in his industry,” said his wife, Jane Bartels. He had a strong sense of fun, was an avid outdoorsman and cook, and was devoted to his family life with Jane and their two daughters, Melina and Eva. 

Brandon Buchanan ’99

grew up in the countryside of western New York, but was drawn to the business world and the pace of New York City. He took a job as an equity trader with Cantor Fitzgerald after earning his degree at UVM. Twelve hour days were standard, as was the good life of a young man in New York City. His father notes that Buchanan often had plans to see the Knicks or the Yankees play. Following the September 11 tragedy, several of Buchanan’s friends from his days at UVM headed to Manhattan, where they joined in the search, passing photos around, and scouring hospitals for their friend and fellow alum.

Paul Cascio ’94

was on the 84th floor of Tower 2 when he and a co-worker went to the aid of a man in distress, Cascio’s aunt Diane Regan Stuart reported. “That is something Paul would do. His instinct was always to help others. He is a hero in the truest sense of the word,” Stuart said. She added that Cascio’s years at UVM were “some of the happiest in his brief but full life.” 

Robert Lawrence, Jr. ’82

was remembered as a big-hearted man who had put family at the center of his life. “We have a very large extended family, and Bob was kind of the glue,” cousin David Lawrence told the New Jersey Star-Ledger. “The most important thing to him was his daughter, son, and his wife. And all the rest of his family.” Lawrence was married to fellow UVM alum Suzanne Burns ’82. He had just started a new job with investment banking firm Sandler O’Neill & Partners, with offices in the World Trade Center, on September 10. 

Rajesh Mirpuri

transferred to New York University after beginning his studies at the University of Vermont. Though he was on campus for just one year, Mirpuri made many friends in Burlington and is fondly remembered by those who came to know him. Mirpuri worked in midtown Manhattan, where he was vice president of sales for the financial software firm Data Synapse, but was attending a financial technology conference at the World Trade Center the morning of September 11. Friends described Mirpuri as a man who loved the Manhattan nightlife and fine dining, but who was also devoted to his family, his Hindu faith, and volunteer work to benefit the elderly and homeless.

Cesar Murillo ’91

called his wife, Alyson Becker ’92, as he tried to escape from the 104th floor of the World Trade Center. Fleeing down the stairwell, he told his wife that he loved her. The couple had been married just short of one year, and their October 2000 ceremony had included many of their friends from undergraduate days at UVM. Murillo, who worked as an equity salesman for Cantor Fitzgerald, studied political science at the university and was a member of Sigma Phi fraternity. A native of Colombia, Murillo was also very active in building community for students of color at UVM, and was a founding member of the Alianza Latina student group.

Martin Niederer ’99

came to UVM with a passion for basketball and left focused on a career in the business world. A sophomore-year field trip to the New York City financial markets inspired Niederer to study business, and after graduation he quickly landed a job right where he wanted to be — working on Wall Street. A year ago, Niederer was recruited to work for Cantor Fitzgerald and he was at his desk early, as usual, on September 11 when Tower 1 was hit. Former Catamount coaches and teammates numbered among the many at a memorial service held in Niederer’s hometown of Annandale, N.J.

Joshua Piver ’00

loved to take friends visiting New York City up to the deck atop the World Trade Center, five floors above his office. He was in his office at Cantor Fitzgerald when the first airliner hit the north tower. Attending a candlelight prayer service held at a local church in Piver’s hometown of Stonington, Conn., his friend Leah Dann told a New York Times reporter, “He’s the most easy-going, fun-loving guy. Everyone got along with him. I’ve never known him to argue with anyone, even raise his voice. He’s just the best.” Piver earned his UVM bachelor’s degree in economics and started work at Cantor Fitzgerald shortly after graduation.

Eric Ropiteau ’00

was hired by TradeSpark, a division of Cantor Fitzgerald, as a broker’s assistant in June. The art major had moved to New York two months following graduation with hopes of working as a professional model. When that path didn’t appear to be opening, Ropiteau, who also studied economics at UVM, had begun the transition to the financial industry. His classmate Joshua Piver had helped Ropiteau land the job at Cantor Fitzgerald, and both members of the Class of 2000 were on the 105th floor of Tower 1 on the morning of September 11.

Matthew Sellitto ’00

worked in Cantor Fitzgerald’s offices on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center. Shortly after one of the hijacked planes hit the tower, Sellitto called his father. “Matthew will be remembered as full of faith and full of love with a strength that led him in his final moments to call his father to say, ‘I love you all,’” said the Rev. Anthony Carrozzo at a Mass held for Sellitto in Harding Township, N.J. In a tribute to his older brother, Jonathan Sellitto dedicated the song “Brokedown Palace,” by the Grateful Dead, one of Matthew’s favorite bands. “Fare you well, fare you well/I love you more than words can tell/Listen to the river sing sweet songs/to rock my soul.”

John W. Wright, Jr. ’89

was a managing director for investment banking firm Sandler O’Neill & Partners, where he had worked for five years. He was in his office on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center’s Tower 2 on the morning of September 11. His wife, Martha Oliverio Wright (also a member of UVM’s Class of 1989), said that her husband called her after the first WTC attack and minutes prior to the plane hitting his building. “His voice was calm and he told me that he was all right. He said that he would call me back later, but I never did get to speak to him again.” Wright lived in Rockville Centre, N.Y. with his wife, and their three children, Emily, Robert, and John W. III, who was three weeks old in September 2001. Martha Wright said that in addition to spending time with his family, her husband enjoyed boating, fishing, and skiing.

 

This story originally appeared in Vermont Quarterly, Winter 2002.

Source: UVM News

Senior Kristina Ushakova knows the value of a bold, well-targeted request. The exercise science major considers it a necessary practice for gaining access to world-class trainers and researchers in her chosen profession of strength and conditioning coaching.

That initiative paid major dividends this summer when she received the opportunity to spend three months as an intern at the U.S. Olympic Training Site at East Tennessee State University. Part of that experience included a trip to the Pan American Weightlifting Championships in Miami with Doctoral Fellow and OTS Weightlifting Coach Aaron Cunanan. Ushakova asked if she could join Cunanan to shoot video as part of the data collection process for his dissertation on the biomechanics of weightlifting.

“I just know what I want and I’m not afraid to ask,” says Ushakova, an accomplished CrossFit athlete and weightlifter. “The worst thing they can say is no. I basically invited myself to the Pan American Weightlifting Championships, which allowed me to meet some of the top weightlifting coaches and athletes in the world. You won’t know unless you ask.”

Using cutting edge technology for evidence-based training 

At the U.S. Olympic Site in Johnson City, Tennessee, Ushakova worked with Olympic-caliber weightlifters and bobsledders, collected and analyzed data using cutting edge technology, and attended clinics and lectures on a variety of topics related to athletic performance. She interned under renowned high performance coach Brad DeWeese, who she emailed after learning about him from David Brock, associate professor in exercise and movement science at UVM.

“Kristina was the first in the door and the last to leave,” says two-time Olympian Meg Stone, a leading strength and conditioning coach and co-founding director of the Center of Excellence for Sports Science and Coach Education at ETSU. “She has been quite an added value in that she learned our data collection methods and the technology that we use, which I think will really stand in good staid for what she wants to do in the future.”

A typical day involved setting up and breaking down twice-a-day workouts for weightlifters and bobsled athletes and helping them with training. Ushakova eventually assisted in the monitoring, testing and collection of performance data. She calibrated force plates for athletes to jump on or perform a squat, for example, so researchers could measure their rate of force development. She also analyzed urine samples and other performance data in a lab setting that was used by coaches to guide training decisions and track progress.

“Using sophisticated technology was really cool, but learning how to analyze and interpret data was especially important because the equipment is useless if a coach can’t properly interpret results,” says Ushakova. “The program is very focused on evidence-based training to help people reach their highest potential.” 

At the Pan American Weightlifting Championships, Ushakova was able to interact and ask questions of Kyle Pierce, who coached Kendrick Farris to three Olympic Games, and U.S. Olympian and Weightlifting Coach Cara Heads-Slaughter. On her return to Vermont, Ushakova visited Heads-Slaughter at her training facility in Virginia. “It was an incredible experience to play a small part in the dissertation process and talk with coaches and athletes who are at the top of the sport. My internship supervisor, Doctoral Fellow John Wagle, constantly emphasized the importance of networking and that really resonated with me.”

Bringing knowledge back to UVM athletics 

Ushakova plans to apply what she learned over the summer here at UVM where she works with varsity athletes in multiple sports under the guidance of Mark Hickok, UVM’s co-director of athletic performance. She developed a resistance training program for a track & field athlete based on the principles of block periodization that she learned about at the Olympic training site. The program aims to sequentially increase the strength and power of the athlete, explains Ushakova, which would ideally translate to faster speeds on the track when paired with a logical speed development curriculum.

“I’m building it around the UVM track and field schedule so that I can better understand the realities and challenges strength coaches face like competition schedules, collaborating with a sport coach, and attempting to have the athlete peak at the right times,” says Ushakova. “My summer mentors really enhanced my understanding of training theory and proper planning. One of the biggest takeaways was the emphasis on the little things like proper running technique that can mean the difference between .01 of a second, which at this level could be the difference between winning an Olympic medal or not.”

Source: UVM News

Global warming could reduce coffee growing areas in Latin America — the world’s largest coffee-producing region — by as much as 88 percent by 2050.

That’s a key takeaway of the first major study of climate change’s projected impacts on coffee, and the bees that help coffee to grow. The findings appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“Coffee is one of the most valuable commodities on earth, and needs a suitable climate and pollinating bees to produce well,” says Taylor Ricketts, director of the University of Vermont’s (UVM) Gund Institute for Environment and study co-author. “This is the first study to show how both will likely change under global warming – in ways that will hit coffee producers hard.”

While other research has explored climate-coffee scenarios, no other study has explored the coupled effects of climate change on coffee and bees at the national or continental scale. The study forecasts much greater losses of coffee regions than previous global assessments, with the largest declines projected in Nicaragua, Honduras and Venezuela.

“Coffee provides the main income for millions of the rural poor, so yield declines would affect the livelihoods of those already vulnerable people,” says Ricketts, who is also a professor in UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. 

While the research suggests coffee suitability and bee populations will decline in Latin America, it does offer some good news. The scientists projected a slight increase in coffee suitability in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and Costa Rica, mainly in mountainous areas where temperatures are expected to support coffee growing and more robust bee populations.

The study also identified future coffee regions where the number and diversity of bees are likely to increase. This could boost coffee productivity regionally, offsetting some negative climate impacts, the researchers say.

“If there are bees in the coffee plots, they are very efficient and very good at pollinating, so productivity increases and also berry weight,” says lead author Pablo Imbach of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). “In the areas projected to lose coffee suitability, we wanted to know whether that loss could be offset by bees.”

The study highlights the importance of tropical forests, which are key habitats for wild bees and other pollinators. While 91 percent of the most suitable area for coffee in Latin America is currently within a mile of tropical forests, that is projected to increase to 97 percent by 2050, meaning conservation of those habitats will be crucial.

“We hope the models we have created to make these projections can help to target appropriate management practices such as forest conservation, shade adjustment and crop rotation,” says Lee Hannah, senior scientist at Conservation International and a co-author of the study.

The study was conducted with advanced modelling, spatial analysis and field data. It   provides strategies to improve coffee growth and bee pollination for Latin American coffee farmers:

1. Increase bee habitats near coffee farms where bee diversity is expected to decrease.
2. Prioritize farming practices that reduce climate impacts on coffee production where bees are thriving, but where coffee suitability will decline.
3. Protect forests and maintain shade trees, windbreaks, live fences, weed strips, and native plants that provide food, nesting and other materials to support pollinators.  

The research was supported by the International Climate Initiative, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, and CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security.

Source: UVM News

In the wake of disasters around the world, Noah Ahles ’14 and Nina Loutchko ’20 like to throw a party. So, last week, when Hurricane Harvey roared through coastal Texas, they did it again. “There’s chips and salsa and Oreos,” Ahles calls out cheerfully, over some soft music, to a group of about twenty UVM students and others who have gathered in a computer lab in the Aiken Building on campus.

But this party is no joke. It’s a mapping party—with a deadly serious aim to help first-responders, disaster planners—and anyone else in the region who needs an accurate map of what the storm has done on the ground. “We’re going to be working tonight in Houston to help them get back up on their feet,” Ahles says.

The students are volunteering their evening for the UVM Humanitarian Mapping Club—and it seems a bit like a video-game competition as they focus intensely at computers, drawing magenta squares on satellite maps. Each box goes around a building and then is classified—“tonight we’re mostly just looking at houses,” Ahles says—joining their work to a global effort called OpenStreetMap that include teams of engineers, GIS professionals, humanitarians, and other groups of college students around the world.

 

“This is a just a picture, a satellite image,” says Emily Kornfien ‘19 (above), a transfer student who’s new to the club. She points to her screen at what looks like a curving cul-de-sac of houses and swimming pools. “The computer doesn’t know anything is there. That’s why these lines are being added: you put in the lines, for a road or school or whatever, and then you name it.”

The UVM club is part of an organization called YouthMappers with 74 chapters in 24 countries. “We’re exchanging emails with universities in Kenya, South Africa, and India,” says Loutchko, who joined the effort last year and now serves as president. “We’re collectively trying to get young people involved in mapping and humanitarian work.”

Noah Ahles (above left)—who graduated from UVM in 2014 and is now on staff at UVM’s Spatial Analysis Lab—describes OpenStreetMap as the Wikipedia of maps. “Anybody can edit, anybody can download, and anybody can use it for free,” he says. “It’s powerful because it takes the red tape away from organizations that need to do damage assessment, or disaster recovery, or any situation where they need open-source data immediately.”

The global effort began in 2010 following a terrible earthquake in Haiti. “We started at UVM in October 2014 during the Ebola outbreak,” Ahles explains. “Doctors Without Borders requested maps to be able to plan out exactly how to get from one village to another in Sierra Leone. They needed all the roads to be digitized.” So he began to volunteer.

“We take it for granted that we’re able to use our phones to find every single turn to reach any address in New York City,” he says. “That’s all vector information. That’s lines. That’s geographic information that a lot of developing countries don’t have.”

And some places in the U.S. too—including Houston—don’t have complete datasets of where buildings and roads are that would allow a computer to create before-and-after images of flood-damaged areas. “Let’s find neighborhoods that are underwater,” Ahles tells the group, showing them striking images, on a projector at the front of the room, of submerged houses where Harvey dumped feet of water. “We’re using both pre-storm and post-storm imagery,” Ahles explains, to help aid groups and others “understand how many buildings are within the area of flooding.”

Two students get up from their workstations and come to the front of the room. “We’ve earned a cookie,” one says, with a smile. “It can seem intimidating—all this geospatial technology,” says Loutchko, “but it’s really easy and fun. We listen to music and put in to a really great cause.”

By the end of the evening, twenty-four people have mapped 3,960 buildings in Houston. Three days later, Ahles posts another invite to the club’s Facebook page: “I’ll be doing some mapping,” on Saturday, he writes, “to help provide building footprints in preparation for Irma in Florida/Carribean Islands. Feel free to stop by.”

Source: UVM News

When Emily Speck learned in eighth grade that her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer she focused on staying strong for her parents. Consequently, she never spoke about her own internal struggles throughout her mother’s treatment and recovery.

Speck ’17 shared her experience publicly for the first time this summer at a camp for children who lost a parent to cancer or have one in treatment or remission that she co-founded with Morgan Medeiros ’18 and Alex Cohen ’16. Her story helped campers open up about their own experiences during an empowerment ceremony at the first UVM-student-sponsored Camp Kesem in Tuftonboro, New Hampshire.

“I wish I had a Camp Kesem when I was going through that experience,” says Speck. “It was really hard to speak out loud about it, but it seemed to empower the kids to share their own stories. Their ability to be brave in that situation is a testament to their own strength, but also to the environment that we created at camp.”

Speck was part of a handful of dedicated students, including Emily Torsney ’18, who worked tirelessly to bring a chapter of Camp Kesem — a nationwide community of college students who support children through and beyond their parent’s cancer — to UVM.

Cohen, who heard about the camp from a friend, first discussed the idea with Speck while volunteering together at the University of Vermont Children’s Hospital. “We saw a need, but had no idea how much work it would take to get a chapter,” says Cohen, adding that Harvard, Dartmouth, Boston College, MIT, Yale and Brown were the only New England schools with chapters.

It wasn’t long before students from a broad range of majors including education, math, business, economics, nursing, biochemistry, and computer science joined the effort. Some were motivated by the loss of a parent, although most just wanted to help children. “Being able to say that we have 30 students willing to put in so much time for a great cause just shows how great the UVM community is,” says Medeiros, a nursing major who served as camp co-director with Torsney.

The reward far outweighed the sacrifice, according to many of the 28 students who served as counselors for the 26 campers, ages 6-16. “It was absolutely the best week of my life,” says Cohen. “It was incredibly powerful to hear the kids tell these raw stories that other campers could relate to in a very deep way.”

Coupled with those moments of sharing common experiences and emotions, the camp came with ample opportunity to escape into activities you’d find at any other summer camp. Much of daily life at UVM Kesem revolved around the simple, yet powerful, motto: “Let Kids Be Kids.” 

Source: UVM News

The author of a new study showing slow but consistent progress in the experiences of LGBTQ students on college campuses over the past 70 years is concerned that for the first time since 1944, that trend may be reversing.

The article, recently published in the Journal of College Student Development, shows generational progress and improved perceptions of campus climate for LGBTQ undergraduates from 1944 through 2013, based on data form the National LGBT Alumni Survey. Key factors included support by LGBTQ faculty, co-curricular involvement with peers, choice of major, and geographic location. Graduates of rural institutions reported more negative campus climates, while students who attended colleges in New England had the most positive experiences.

Perhaps the most interesting finding, however, was the role that historical events in U.S history and the LGBTQ movement played in the perceptions of campus climate. Wartime policies such as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, the Vietnam War draft, and the federal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy created isolating experiences for LGBTQ students with regard to identity disclosure and the criminalization of LGBTQ people in the armed forces.

“In the wartime Navy, anyone openly gay would have been given a dishonorable discharge and lost the support of his college education,” responded a gay man who graduated in 1945.

“Had I revealed my sexuality I most likely would have lost my scholarship and would have immediately been inducted into the U.S. Navy as a Seaman recruit,” reported a gay Hispanic man at an Ivy League school in 1970.

“I was closeted and in the ROTC, so discussing my orientation was not an option during the era of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell …. The pressure from being closeted had a direct effect on my academic performance,” wrote a gay man who graduated in 1994.

Not coincidentally, the study showed that the first time the mean standardized score for campus climate perceptions showed a positive value was 1998 – the same year Matthew Shepard was murdered, sparking widespread attention to homophobia and violence against LGBTQ people. A proliferation in the number of on-campus resources for LGBTQ students followed suit in the early 2000s.

“The gradual acceptance and affirmation of LGBTQ people in mainstream society are inextricably linked to increasingly progressive social policies for LGBTQ people and more positive perceptions of campus climate in higher education,” says study author Jason Garvey, assistant professor of higher education and student affairs at the University of Vermont, who co-authored the article with graduate students Laura A. Sanders and Maureen A. Flint from the University of Alabama. 

New federal, state policies having negative affect on campus climate

Garvey is concerned that recent policies by President Donald Trump, coupled with a rise in anti-LGBTQ state-level proposals, are negatively impacting the overall climate for LGBTQ people on – and off – college campuses. In particular, he cites Trump’s ban on transgender individuals in the military; the so-called “bathroom bill” to restrict the use of public restrooms by transgender people; and a filing by the Justice Department asserting lesbian, gay and bisexual people have no protections under Title VII of the Civil Rights of Act.

Garvey says the State of California’s recent ban on publicly-funded travel by state employees to Kentucky, Texas, Alabama and South Dakota in response to anti-LGBTQ rights laws is representative of the regional differences for LGBTQ state-level legislation. California lawmakers also passed legislation last year banning non-essential travel to North Carolina, Kansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.

“This study shows that the warmth or chilliness of higher education for LGBTQ people differs greatly depending on the region and whether an institution is urban or rural, and I think a lot of these geographic differences are coming to the forefront because of the Trump administration,” says Garvey. “There is no one narrative for LGBTQ student success, but these federal and state-level decisions have a direct impact on how welcome or unwelcome LGBTQ people feel. It feels like we’re moving in the wrong direction, which is especially discouraging considering the gradual progress across the last seven decades.”

No data, no power

Less publicized, but no less important, says Garvey, is Trump’s decision to not include data collection from the 2020 Census related to sexual orientation and gender identity, and the removal of a question allowing respondents to identify as transgender from the National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants. The Department of Housing and Urban Development also withdrew two notices expected to impact data collection and implementation guidelines for a homelessness prevention initiative targeting LGBTQ youth.

“There’s a data-void for LGBTQ people and we, therefore, have difficulty legitimizing our experiences through empirical data,” says Garvey. “Only recently have scholars and higher education administrators begun to understand the importance of data-driven experiences for LGBTQ people. It may not sound like a big deal that the Trump administration is erasing LGBTQ and trans people from federal data collection, but by empirically tracking the experiences of LGBTQ, we’re demonstrating the need for increased resource allocation, more LGBTQ affirming policies, and a greater depth of understanding of our stories.”

Source: UVM News

New England has been losing forestland to development at a rate of sixty-five acres per day—and Vermont is losing 1,500 acres of forest every year—according to a new report released today by the Harvard Forest and a team of authors from across the region including two scientists at the University of Vermont.

Public funding for land protection has also been steadily declining in all six New England states and is now half what it was at its 2008 peak. Land conservation trends have followed suit.

“Over the last decade, Vermont lost about one percent of its forest cover due mostly to suburban and rural residential sprawl, reversing a 150-year trend of forest recovery and expansion,” says co-author Bill Keeton, professor of forestry & forest ecology and Gund Fellow at the University of Vermont.

Conversion to development is the biggest near-term threat to forests, bigger even than climate change, the scientists report.

“If our goal is to make sure our forests in Vermont are resilient and able to adapt to the changes that climate change and invasive species pose, then the first critical step is to keep those areas forested,” says co-author Tony D’Amato, an associate professor and director of UVM’s Forestry Program. “That is often lost in our discussion of how to manage and conserve in the face of such future uncertainty.”

Fading forests

The new report, Wildlands and Woodlands, Farmlands and Communities, documents that public funding for land conservation in New England dropped fifty percent between 2008 and 2014 to $62 million per year, slightly lower than 2004 levels. The pace of regional land conservation has also slowed substantially from an average of 333,000 acres per year in the early 2000s to about 50,000 acres per year since 2010.

“The incremental chipping away of forest and farmland by scattered development is hard to see day-to-day but it adds up over time and represents a significant threat to the region,” said David Foster, director of the Harvard Forest. “If we stay on the current path, we’ll lose another 1.2 million acres of open land by 2060.”

Opportunities

Despite these trends, the authors assert that the targets outlined in their bold vision for the future of the New England landscape are still attainable and they identify opportunities for gaining ground.

“Vermont has led other New England states in terms of forest protection efforts, with combined federal and state spending for land conservation here at a per capita rate 4.6 times that of neighboring New Hampshire, for example,” says UVM’s Bill Keeton. “With this report we present a clear vision of strong and continued community-level engagement in farm and forestland conservation to compensate for rapidly declining federal and state funding across New England as a whole.”

In Vermont, twenty-three percent of the state’s land area is currently conserved as forest and farmland. The state ranks first in New England in per capita state funding for land conservation at an average of $6.70 per person per year for 2004 to 2014.  Nevertheless, annual land conservation rates in Vermont have generally fallen back to early 1990s levels after a period of elevated conservation in the late 1990s, even as groups report that private landowners’ interest in conserving their land remains high.

Report series

This is the third in a series of Wildlands and Woodlands publications led by Foster, Keeton, D’Amato and a team of colleagues. Previous reports defined a regional vision that calls for conserving thirty million acres of forest—seventy percent of the region’s land area—and all remaining farmland. The vision proposes that most of the conserved forestland should be managed for wood products and other benefits, with ten percent managed as wildlands.

“Bill and I were also co-authors on the original vision for the New England landscape published a few years back and I also served as a coauthor on the original Wildland and Woodlands vision that was developed for Massachusetts before we explored a more regional approach,” notes UVM’s Tony D’Amato—who has one eye on the next generation of forestry scientists and professionals. “The message from this report is very consistent with what we teach and research in the UVM Forestry Program,” in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.

Triple the pace

“When we look specifically at forests in New England, it is clear that the impacts of land use will be far greater than those of climate change over the next 50 years,” said Harvard Forest ecologist Jonathan Thompson. “This may seem counter-intuitive given the major threat that climate change poses to all sectors of society. But climate change slowly alters the health and types of trees that grow whereas conversion eliminates forests altogether.”

The report’s authors say it is still possible to attain the Wildlands and Woodland vision by tripling the pace of conservation, reversing trends in public funding, putting more land to work for sustainable farming and forestry, and integrating land conservation with the planning of cities, suburbs, and rural communities to reduce forest loss and promote more efficient use of land for economic development.

“We need to do everything we can—a lot more than what we’re doing now,” says UVM’s Bill Keeton, “to keep our forests, and to keep them resilient.”

Source: UVM News