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Talking Points

5,500 awarded degrees as Class of 2013 graduates

Under partly sunny skies, 5,500 students received bachelor’s degrees at Undergraduate Commencement on May 10. A crowd of 20,000 heard commencement speaker and American Express CEO Kenneth I. Chenault advise, that in a world permanently disrupted, graduates may not “find” a job but that “21st century technology makes inventing a job much cheaper and easier.”

Chenault, who also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at the ceremony, told the graduates, “When you take a risk, expect others to question you, and they should. Your employer. Your colleagues. Your friends.

Graduate School Commencement honors tradition and innovation

The Graduate School conferred more than 1,200 doctoral and master’s degrees at May 10 Commencement ceremonies that drew nearly 1,000 graduates, along with family members and friends to the William D. Mullins Memorial Center.
 
Distinguished Professor John J. McCarthy, marking his first Commencement as vice provost for Graduate Education and dean of the Graduate School, said that well over 1,700 students earned graduate degrees at UMass Amherst during the just-completed academic year.
 
During a ceremony that repeatedly highlighted a spirit of academic innovation and daring, Chancellor

SPHHS researchers get $3.64m from state Gaming Commission to study gambling impacts

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) has selected a School of Public Health and Health Sciences (SPHHS) research team to perform a comprehensive, multi-year $3.64 million research project, believed to be the first of its kind, on the economic and social impacts of introducing casino gambling in Massachusetts. It will focus particularly on problem gambling, but also examine a wide array of social and economic effects of expanded gambling in Massachusetts.
 
Funding is expected to start with a one-year contract followed by a three-year extension.

Ice-free Arctic may be in our future, say researchers

Analyses of the longest sediment core ever collected on land in the Arctic, recently completed by an international team led by Julie Brigham-Grette of the Geosciences Department, provide “absolutely new knowledge” of Arctic climate from 2.2 to 3.6 million years ago and show that with estimated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) similar to today’s levels, the Arctic was very warm, with no ice sheets.
 
“While existing geologic records from the Arctic contain important hints about this time period, what we are presenting is the most continuous archive of information about past climate change

New webcam offers closeups of peregrine nestlings on Du Bois Library

A new, more powerful web camera on the roof of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library is giving viewers a close-up look at the newest brood of peregrine falcon chicks in their nest box.
 
Three chicks have hatched and one egg is still being incubated by the adult falcons, which have nested at the site for 11 years.
 
The new camera is a cooperative effort of Design and Construction Management, the Office of Information Technologies (OIT), the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, the Libraries’ Systems and Web Management Department, and the Friends of the Libraries. 
 
Live images of the

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