Weekly Bulletin

Visiting Writers Series hosts poet Clark Coolidge March 28

The Visiting Writers Series will host poet Clark Coolidge on Thursday, March 28, at 8 p.m. at Memorial Hall.

Coolidge is a poet and jazz musician connected to both the Language movement and the New York school. Coolidge’s numerous collections of poetry include "Sound as Thought," which was chosen for the New American Poetry Series, "This Time We Are Both," "Own Face," and "Flag Flutter & U.S. Electric." His work is included in the collections "An Anthology of New York Poets" and in 1968’ s "The Young American Poets." He is a contributing editor for Sulfur.

The event is free and open to the

New course proposals

The following new course proposals have been submitted to the Faculty Senate Office for review and approval and are 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.

EDUC 647A, “Assistive Technology for Learners with Disabilities,” 3 credits; Instructor: Jason Travers; Focuses on benefits, affordances, problems, practices, and law related to the use of technology to support academic, social, communication, and adaptive development of students with special education

Doctoral oral exams for March 25-29

The graduate dean invites all graduate faculty to attend the final oral examinations for the doctoral candidates scheduled as follows:

Jorge Trabal, Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering. Monday, March 25, 9 a.m., 109 Knowles Engineering Building. Dissertation: “Data Quality Assessment and Rainfall Estimation Using Dense Radar Networks.” David McLaughlin, chr.

Marcil Boucher, Ph.D., Communication Disorders. Monday, March 25, 10 a.m., 358 N. Pleasant Street, room 206. Dissertation: “Evaluation of Motor Speech and Intervention Planning for Children with Autism.” Mary Andrianopoulos, chr.

Spring equinox programs offered at Sunwheel

The public is invited to witness sunrise and sunset associated with the spring equinox among the standing stones of the UMass Amherst Sunwheel on Wednesday, March 20 at 6:45 a.m. and 6 p.m. The events mark the astronomical change of seasons when days and nights are nearly equal in length in the Northern Hemisphere.
 
At the gatherings, which have attracted more than 10,000 visitors over the past 15 years, astronomers Judith Young and Stephen Schneider will discuss the astronomical cause of the sun’s changing position during the hour-long gatherings.

Penn State historian speaks on legacies of violence in Jim Crow era

Pennsylvania State University professor Nan Woodruff will present the Five College History Annual Lecture on Thursday, March 28 at 4 p.m. in the Cape Cod Lounge of the Student Union.
 
Woodruff’s lecture is titled “Living with the Legacies of Violence in the Jim Crow South: Memory, Trauma and the Civil Rights Movement.”
 
The event is free and open to the public.

Art historian examines cultural politics in Nazi-occupied Denmark

Art historian Kerry Greaves of the City University of New York will discuss the role of the subversive Danish art journal The Hell-Horse in criticizing both Nazi and Danish policies during World War II on Monday, March 25 at 5:30 p.m. in 301 Herter Hall.
 
Greaves’ talk, “Give and Take: Negotiating Cultural Politics during the Nazi Occupation of Denmark” is part of the series Scandinavian Impulses: Vengeance and Violence in Scandinavian Life and Culture.

On April 9, 1940, despite a non-aggression pact, Germany invaded and occupied Denmark after meeting only two hours of resistance.

Muthukumar speaks on 'Organizing Principles of Virus Assembly'

Murugappan Muthukumar, Wilmer D. Barrett Professor of Polymer Science and Engineering, will speak on “Menagerie of Viruses: Organizing Principles of Virus Assembly” at a Physics Department colloquium on Wednesday, March 13 at 4 p.m. in 124 Hasbrouck.

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Public forum on draft natural hazard mitigation plan is March 15

Campus officials are holding a public forum on Friday, March 15 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. to discuss a draft plan for dealing with natural hazards, including severe weather such as hurricanes and blizzards, earthquakes and other large-scale natural disasters. The forum at the UMass Amherst Police Department building on East Pleasant Street is an open format event that features a brief presentation of the draft showing every 15 minutes.

The campus Natural Hazard Planning Group created the preliminary plan with assistance from Jamie Caplan Consulting LLC and the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission.

'Quilts for the Soul' exhibited at School of Nursing

“Quilts for the Soul,” featuring the work of artist and nurse practitioner Sharon Carty, will be displayed at the School of Nursing in Skinner Hall. An opening reception will be held in the foyer and room 101 on Monday, March 25 from 4–5:30 p.m.

Carty is a psychiatric nurse and passionate quilter. Her quilts are intricate, detailed and colorful. In her prior work with clients and their dying family members, she used her craft to assist grieving families by creating personal reminders of their family members in the form of a quilt.

Talk looks at 'Influences of Childhood Adversity on Health in Midlife'

Dr. Judith Crowell will discuss “Influences of Childhood Adversity on Health in Midlife: First Findings of a Longitudinal Study” on Thursday, March 28 at 4 p.m. in 904 Campus Center as part of the Center for Research on Families’ Tay Gavin Erickson Lecture Series.
 
Crowell is professor and director of training, child and adolescent psychiatry at Stony Brook University and senior scientist at the Judge Baker Children’s Center at Harvard Medical School.

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