News

Campus launches first-ever online fundraising drive as part of sequicentennial celebration

The campus is celebrating its 150th birthday and is asking supporters to be part of the festivities by making a gift to the university during its first-ever fundraising campaign driven by social media.
 
The 36-hour UMassGives campaign will be launched at noon on Founders Day, Monday, April 29. “The goal is to increase the number of donors among alumni and other supporters, who will be invited to contribute to areas most meaningful to them,” says Sarah Sligo, executive director of Annual Giving.

Galman lectures in London

Sally Campbell Galman, associate professor in the School of Education’s Department of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies, presented a lecture April 24 with the Gender and Education Association at London South Bank University’s Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research.
 
Galman’s lecture, “She is Kind, She is Busy: Carework in Primary School Classrooms Reconfigured,” described the changing shape of carework as experienced by young children and a female workforce in the current ideological and economic climate.

Groundbreaking for new Agricultural Learning Center

One hundred fifty years after Levi Stockbridge helped found Massachusetts Agricultural College, his descendant Kay Stockbridge will join other dignitaries in a groundbreaking ceremony and celebratory lunch from 12:30-2 p.m. on Thursday, April 25 for the campus’s new Agricultural Learning Center (ALC).
 
The 50-acre working farm will serve as an outdoor classroom for educating future farmers grounded in the latest research and farming, horticultural, nursery and landscape techniques.

Tymoczko lectures at universities in India

Maria Tymoczko, professor of Comparative Literature, presented a public lecture on “Translation and the New Science of Mind” on March 15 at the University of Hyderabad in India.
 
During her visit to the city, Tymoczko also gavea lecture titled “Problematizing the Translation of Cross-Cultural Concepts” at the departments of translation studies at the University of Hyderabad and the English and Foreign Languages University.
 

Nagurney to speak on transport and traffic at New York Times conference in NYC

Anna Nagurney, the John F. Smith Memorial Professor of Operations Management at the Isenberg School of Management, will be an invited panelist at The New York Times 2013 Energy For Tomorrow Conference on April 25 in New York City. The theme of the conference is Building Sustainable Cities. The conference will be opened with an address by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

With more than half of the world’s population now living in cities, the conference will convene thought leaders, public policy makers, government urbanists and C-suite level executives from the energy, technology, automotive

All-day women’s history program to honor Joyce Berkman’s retirement

History professor Joyce Avrech Berkman, who is retiring after 48 years of campus service, will be honored Friday, May 3 in the Cape Cod Lounge with a series of presentations on women’s history followed by a reception and dinner.
 
Berkman, who is also adjunct professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, teaches courses in U.S., British and European women’s history, oral history and the history of reproductive rights in the U.S. A Woodrow Wilson Fellow and Danforth Associate, she has also served as a Fulbright scholar and senior Fulbright professor in Germany.

Sinha keynotes Civil War symposium in Maine

Professor Manisha Sinha of Afro-American Studies is scheduled to give a keynote address on April 27 at “Maine in the Civil War,” a public symposium at the University of Southern Maine in Portland.
 
The conference celebrating the sesquicentennial of the Civil War is sponsored by the Maine Humanities Council and the Maine Historical Society and made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
 

150 trees being planted to mark sesquicentennial

As part of the sesquicentennial, Physical Plant last week began a year-long effort to plant 150 trees at campus locations.
 
The work started last week at the west entrance to campus along North Hadley Road as students from two classes taught by Brian Kane of the Environmental Conservation Department pitched in to assist Landscape Management staff.
 
Ninety trees will be planted this spring and another 60 will be planted in the spring of 2014.
 
The three varieties, black oak (Queras velutinus), burr oak (Quercus macrocarpa) and black tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) were selected by the Campus

Kurtulus to explore effects of affirmative action bans on workforce representation

Fidan Kurtulus, assistant professor of Economics, will discuss her recent work in a talk titled “The Impact of Eliminating Affirmative Action on Minority and Female Employment and Occupational Representation: A Natural Experiment Approach Using State-Level Affirmative Action Ban Laws” on Monday, April 29 at noon in 620 Thompson Hall.
 
Her research explores a number of topics in labor economics, including the organization of workers within firms, workplace diversity, the impact of affirmative action in employment, participatory workplace practices and employee ownership.
 
This lecture is the

Portuges edits book on post-Cold War cinema in former East Bloc

Comparative Literature professor Catherine Portuges and Peter Hames are the editors of “Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989,” published by Temple University Press.
 
The cinemas of Eastern and Central Europe have been moving away from earlier Cold War perspectives and iconographies toward identifications more closely linked to a redefined Europe.

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