AMHERST, Mass. - James J. Watkins, assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Massachusetts, has been awarded a five-year, $625,000 Packard Fellowship. The award is part of $15 million granted to young scientists in all fields by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

AMHERST, Mass. - The Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts has appointed four new faculty members this fall. In welcoming the new faculty members, Dean Thomas O’Brien said the school has undergone a number of significant changes this year. "The School of Management has embarked upon a new era. It has a new name - the Isenberg School, and it will open a new high-technology classroom wing in 2002. Representing strategic disciplines, our new faculty members - three of them women - will play major roles in this exciting future."

AMHERST, Mass. - Jon Sicks, associate head of the department of mathematics and statistics at the University of Massachusetts, will take more than 200 donated textbooks to Kenya in January, when he heads to the University of Nairobi for a seven-month teaching sabbatical.

AMHERST, Mass. - Both the award-winning University of Massachusetts Marching Band and award-winning UMass football team will be playing in Finley Stadium in Chattanooga, Tenn., Sat., Dec. 19. The football team will be competing in the Division 1-AA championship game against Georgia Southern in a game to be televised nationally on ESPN starting at 2 p.m. The band will perform at a half-time show.