News

New Africa House Ensemble performs Feb. 28

The New Africa House Ensemble, a group of faculty, graduate students and undergraduates, will perform music by Jimmy Smith, Oliver Nelson, Horace Silver, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Abdullah Ibrahim and The Meters on Thursday, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. in the Augusta Savage Gallery, New Africa House.
 
The event is sponsored by the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies.

6 women to be honored by Center for Women & Community

Six area women will be honored for their achievements in the arts, politics and social justice advocacy on Friday, Feb. 22 when the Center for Women & Community (CWC) marks its 40th anniversary with a gala from 7-10 p.m. in the Amherst Room of the Campus Center.
 
Janet Aalfs, former poet laureate of Northampton, is receiving the Arts award in recognition of the enormous positive impact that creative contributions have on the local community. Aalfs is a poet and writer, movement artist, community educator, performer and international peace activist.

Allen Holder presents special Mechanical and Industrial Engineering seminar

Allen Holder of the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology will speak on “Robust Analysis of Metabolic Pathways: Engineering, Biology, and Math” on Thursday, Feb. 28 at 4 p.m. in the Gunness Student Center, Marcus Hall.
 
Refreshments precede the lecture at 3:45.
 
The overriding goal of this talk is to show how topics in engineering design can aid problems in the biological sciences, and in reverse, how the engineering fields can gain from the biological application.

Schmitter to present research at art history workshop in Rome

Monika Schmitter, associate professor of Art History, has been invited to present at the International Workshop on Early Modern Painted Facades in Italy (15th to 17th centuries) being held March 7-9 at Villa Medici in Rome.

Schmitter will present her research on the patronage of painted facades, which will form the basis of a chapter in the book resulting from the workshop.

The event is sponsored by the Académie de France à Rome and the Centre André Chastel, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art.

First Sunday Concert with Circa 1600 at Renaissance Center

Circa 1600 presents "Dancing for Julia," music associated with the work of musicologist and dance historian Julia Sutton, on Sunday, March 3 at 2 p.m. at the Renaissance Center, 650 East Pleasant St.

Circa 1600 is dedicated to high renaissance and early baroque music, including lute trios, lute songs, dance music, and vocal polyphony. With an unusual instrumentation of three lutes complemented by three singers, the group presents rarely-heard music of the time as well as original arrangements following the performance practices of the era.

Obituary: George Treyz, professor emeritus of Economics

George I. Treyz, 76, professor emeritus of Economics, died Feb. 14 at his home in Amherst after a long illness.
 
Born in Callicoon, N.Y., he received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and received a doctorate in economics from Cornell University. He showed his entrepreneurial spirit at Princeton, starting a business selling grinders to fellow students, as featured in an article in Life magazine.

He taught for three years at Bryn Mawr and Haverford colleges before joining the Economics faculty in 1968. He was promoted to associate professor in 1973 and professor in 1980.

'Pioneers of Mass Aggie' exhibit opens at Du Bois Library

The exhibit “Pioneers of Mass Aggie: Founders, Builders, and Innovators” is on display through May 13 on the lower level and in Special Collections and University Archives on floor 25 of the Du Bois Library.

“Pioneers” is the first of three exhibits to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the University of Massachusetts and will focus on the early history of “Mass Aggie,” as the Massachusetts Agricultural College was known.

Among the prominent pioneers highlighted in the exhibit are the first class of students (1867-71), who were known as "the old guard"; early faculty members, including the

Mellon Mutual Mentoring Grant deadline is March 25; information sessions scheduled

The Center for Teaching & Faculty Development is soliciting proposals for the Mellon Mutual Mentoring Grant Programs for academic year 2013-14. These grant programs were established in 2007 as part of a three-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and renewed for an additional three years of support in 2010.
 
Mellon Team and Micro Grants support the development of productive mentoring networks to support the needs of pre-tenure faculty. The deadline for proposals is 5 p.m. on Monday, March 25.
 
Tenure-track and tenured faculty are invited to submit proposals for the following:
 

Information session for 'Shaman's Pharmacy' class in Amazon

There will be an informational meeting for PSOILIN 398, "The Shaman's Pharmacy," on Monday, March 4 at 6 p.m. in 124 Stockbridge Hall.

"The Shaman's Pharmacy" offers students the opportunity to study ethnobotany and medicinal plants in the Amazon rainforest of Peru over the summer semester in August.

New course proposal

The following new course proposal has been submitted to the Faculty Senate Office for review and approval and is listed here for faculty review and comment. Comments on any new course proposal should be submitted to Ernest May, secretary of the Faculty Senate, at senate@senate.umass.edu.

E&C-ENG 175, “Systems and Control: Powerful Universal Concepts,” 4 credits; Instructor: Theodore Djaferis; Through an engineering science approach, students acquire a fundamental understanding of the structure of systems, learn methods for analysis and control, and gain awareness of the importance of

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