Talking Points

Family Business Center joins BFF Affiliate Network

The UMass Family Business Center has joined Business Families Foundation (BFF) Affiliate Network to work collaboratively on developing additional educational material, supporting business family communities and encouraging research in the field of family business.

As a philanthropic organization, BFF supports research and develops and disseminates educational material to family enterprises and professionals working with them to help them address their unique growth and development challenges.

The UMass Family Business Center provides a learning community for families in business who aim to

Physicists discover mechanisms of wrinkle and crumple formation

Smooth wrinkles and sharply crumpled regions are familiar motifs in biological and synthetic sheets, such as plant leaves and crushed foils, say physicists Benny Davidovitch, Narayanan Menon and colleagues, but how a featureless sheet develops a complex shape has long remained elusive.
 
Now, in a cover story of the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the physicists report that they have identified a fundamental mechanism by which such complex patterns emerge spontaneously.
 
Davidovitch says they were inspired and moved toward a solution by thinking about how a familiar

Alumna Natasha Trethewey named US poet laureate

Natasha Trethewey, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and 1995 graduate of the MFA Program for Poets and Writers, has been named the U.S. poet laureate by the Library of Congress.
 
Trethewey is a professor of creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta. She was born in Gulfport, Miss., and is the author of three poetry collections, including “Native Guard,” her collection about black Civil War soldiers who helped protect a fort on Ship Island a few miles off the Mississippi coast, that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. She will be the 19thU.S.

Trustees approve 4.9% increase in tuition and fees

The Board of Trustees on June 6 approved a 4.9 percent increase in student fees for undergraduates and most graduate students, but pledged to freeze charges for the next two years if the state agrees to fund 50 percent of the five-campus system’s education budget.
 
“If the state agrees to take on a more equitable share of the funding burden over the next two years, we will keep tuition and fees frozen at this new level,” said James J. Karam, chairman of the board.
 
“We would be the first public university in the country to hold the line on tuition and fees for two full years if the state

Frog development study may reveal secrets of cancer cell migration

Developmental biologists Dominique Alfandari and Helene Cousin of the Veterinary and Animal Sciences Department recently received a five-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate craniofacial development in a frog model to better understand genetic control of cell migration. The work is expected to advance knowledge of how cancer cells migrate away from primary tumors to cause metastatic disease in new sites, among other processes.

Doctoral candidate Genevieve Abbruzzese in Alfandari's lab is following up on Cousin and Alfandari's earlier discovery of

UHS earns 4-star rating in health care survey

University Health Services (UHS) offers four-star care in many areas which patients value most, according to a survey published in the current issue of Consumer Reports magazine.

Released by Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP), a coalition working to promote improvements in the quality of health care services, the survey rated 487 adult, family and pediatric practices throughout Massachusetts. As part of a pilot program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, results are published as a June insert in Consumer Reports.

The survey asked about aspects of patient experience

New campus master plan to guide development over next 50 years

With the campus in the midst of a $1 billion capital improvement program, the university has adopted a new physical master plan that looks 50 years into the future. The plan matches academic vision with facilities to strengthen a sense of community and enhance the campus's beauty.

Chancellor Robert C. Holub said, "UMass Amherst has changed and grown over the past century and half, from 50 students at its founding to more than 27,000 today.

Margulis memorial plaque and painting installed in Morrill

A dynamic and colorful painting honoring the life and work of the late evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis was installed this week in the Morrill Science Center, where it aptly dominates a hallway between the Biology and Geosciences departments.

Her colleagues say the 4-by-6-foot reproduction of a bright and complex painting, "Endosymbiosis: Homage to Lynn Margulis," by Shoshanah Dubiner of Ashland, Ore., is a fitting tribute to the brilliant originality of a woman who combined microbiology, chemistry, geology, paleogeography and many other disciplines to form a unique vision of the Earth

Campus research spending grew 7.2 percent last year

Campus research spending increased 7.2 percent to $181.3 million during fiscal 2011, according to Michael Malone, vice chancellor for Research and Engagement, who cited nanotechnology, new weather radar systems and international education among the areas attracting strong external support.

Overall, the five-campus UMass system spent $586.7 million during the same period, an increase of 8.1 percent or $44 million over the previous year, President Robert L. Caret told the Board of Trustees' Science, Technology and Research Committee on May 23.

"The innovations and discoveries happening on our

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