Women for UMass Amherst (WFUM), a network of alumnae and friends of the campus who have made gifts to support the university, is boosting its impact through a new dedicated, collective fund that is providing awards to worthy projects.
Women become members of WFUM by donating to any area of campus, according to Stephanie Flaherty, senior associate director of Annual Giving in the Development Office.
“Through WFUM, we want to build a network of like-minded women who inspire and encourage other women to support the university through philanthropy,” she said.
Undergraduate Commencement will take place at McGuirk Alumni Stadium on May 10, according to Nancy Buffone, executive director of External Relations and University Events.
Aiming to make the campus more bike-friendly, Physical Plant recently installed bicycle repair stands at the bike shelters outside of the Student Union and Integrated Sciences Building.
Recently, large studies have identified some of the genetic basis for important common diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, but most of the genetic contribution to them remains undiscovered. Now campus researchers led by biostatistician Andrea Foulkes of the School of Public Health and Health Sciences have applied sophisticated statistical tools to existing large databases to reveal substantial new information about genes that cause such conditions as high cholesterol linked to heart disease.
The campus' 150th birthday celebration features a yearlong series of events and activities that will reflect on the contributions of a once-tiny agricultural college that now enrolls 28,000 students and ranks among the nation’s top public research universities.
State Senate President Therese Murray last week named alumnus Stan Rosenberg to the No. 2 spot on her leadership team, tapping the longtime Amherst Democrat as majority leader.
University Health Services (UHS) has been reaccredited by two independent national organizations recognized as standard-bearers for healthcare excellence.
A new interactive website, the Campus Sustainability Explorer, is allowing students, faculty, staff and the public to click on more than 100 icons to read about “green” buildings, research programs in sustainability, a student farmers’ market and related topics.
A new report, drafted by a national panel that included two Resource Economics faculty members, says the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), should consider several factors in determining whether benefits are adequate. These include time constraints on low-income families and their ability to cook healthy meals, differing food prices across the country and the availability of healthy foods from local food stores.
Just-forming stars, like growing babies, are always hungry and must “feed” on huge amounts of gas and dust from dense envelopes surrounding them at birth. Now a team of astronomers including Robert Gutermuth, a research assistant professor and expert in imaging data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, reports observing an unusual “baby” star that periodically emits infrared light bursts, suggesting it may be twins, that is, a binary star. The discovery is reported this month in Nature.