More than 1,200 members of the campus community contributed $764,238 to the 2012-13 Faculty and Staff Campaign, according to Sarah Sligo, executive director of Annual Giving.
The gift total represents a 5 percent increase in donations over last year, while the number of donors grew 6 percent to 1,229, said Sligo.
“Our faculty and staff really stepped up for this year's campaign, illustrating in this most tangible way the depth of their support for moving UMass Amherst forward,” said co-chair Robert Feldman, dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
To help promote a culture
In one of the earliest experiments using a humanoid robot to deliver speech and physical therapy to a stroke patient, researchers in Communication Disorders and Computer Science saw notable speech and physical therapy gains and significant improvement in quality of life.
The results of a new national UMass Poll released March 18 show strong public support for an assault weapons ban and a broad consensus in favor of a higher federal minimum wage. Additionally, President Barack Obama enjoys high personal favorability, while House Speaker John Boehner is viewed as equally unfavorable.
A newly formed institute that serves as a campus-wide umbrella to coordinate campus diversity initiatives in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has received a four-year, $1.6 million award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund one-year internships for post-baccalaureate students from underrepresented groups interested in biomedical and biobehavioral research.
When researchers led by Microbiology professor Derek Lovley discovered that the bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens conducts electricity very effectively along metallic-like “microbial nanowires,” they found physicists quite comfortable with the idea of such a novel biological electron transfer mechanism, but not biologists.
As the campus marks its sesquicentennial, two of the major public events will be the formal inauguration of Chancellor Kumble R. Subbaswamy on April 27 and the annual Founders Day cookout on the Goodell Lawn on April 29. 
Students, faculty and staff are being asked to help shape a new mission statement for University Health Services by participating in an upcoming survey, according to James Sheehan, vice chancellor for Administration and Finance.
Results of a new study by memory experts in the Psychology Department suggest that adding symbols such as stars or circles to license plates does not make them easier for adults to remember than the traditional plate with only letters and numbers.
For hundreds of years, naturalists and scientists have identified new species based on an organism’s visible differences. But now, new genetic techniques are revealing that different species can show little to no visible differences.