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Macchia's opera to premiere at New Music Festival in NC

Insectaphobia, an opera by Salvatore Macchia, professor of contrabass and composition in the Department of Music and Dance, will premiere in March at the New Music Festival of the East Carolina University School of Music in Greenville, N.C.

Performances will take place March 24-26 with a morning performance for schoolchildren on March 27. Edward Jacobs, director of the New Music Festival and professor of composition at the school of music, received a B.A. in Music Composition in 1984 at UMass Amherst, where he studied composition with Macchia and saxophone with professor Lynn Klock.

Ben-Ur awarded study grant by Hadassah-Brandeis Institute

Associate professor Aviva Ben-Ur of the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies has been awarded a Senior Grant in History from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute for her book project “Eurafrican Identity in a Jewish Society: Suriname, 1660-1863.”
 
Ben-Ur’s book project focuses on slave society in the former Dutch colony of Suriname in South America, where Jews of Iberian origin were among the earliest colonists.

O'Leary presents at conferences in Mass., Kazakhstan

Maureen O’Leary, adjunct assistant professor in Veterinary and Animal Sciences, discussed institutional animal care and use committee and institutional biosafety committee collaboration for animal model research at the Massachusetts Society for Medical Research Conference on Oct. 2 in Wellesley.

In September, O'Leary was an invited speaker at the Central Asian Biosafety Conference in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where she presented a talk on “Regulatory Harmonization to International Standards in Kazakhstan.”

Obituary: G. Richard Huguenin, founder of Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory, inventor and former trustee

G. Richard Huguenin, the founder and director of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory (FCRAO) and former professor of Astronomy and a one-time member of the Board of Trustees, died Nov. 22 in Sedro-Woolley, Wash. He was 75.  
 
Born in East Stroudsburg, Pa., he received a B.S. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959 and a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University in 1963. He was elected to the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1960-63.
 
He taught at Harvard and directed Harvard’s space radio astronomy program from 1963-68. He came to Amherst in 1968 and

Obituary: William T. O'Neill, retired maintainer

William T. O'Neill, 84, of Chicopee, a retired maintainer I with the Grounds Department, died Dec. 8 at the Holyoke Soldiers Home.
 
Born in Holyoke, he was educated in the city’s schools.
 
He was a Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War.
 
He worked joined the campus staff in 1972 as a custodian and later worked as a motor truck driver, handyman/skilled laborer and a maintainer. He retired in 1994.
 
He leaves his wife, Tessie F.

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