Trustee Report: The Gilt of "the Guild"

August 1, 2001

MEMORANDUM

To: William M. Bulger, President, University of Massachusetts

From: Marcellette G. Williams, Chancellor, UMass Amherst

Subject: Trustee Report: The Gilt of "the Guild"

For the first time in its history, the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus has achieved the $30 million annual giving mark. We attribute this accomplishment, in part, to what might be regarded as "the gilt of the Guild." Simply put, donors are attracted to success and want to be a part of that success. This report will highlight some of the spring semester accomplishments of the faculty at the UMass Amherst.

You will recall that along with creating a new University logo several years ago, UMass Amherst also developed five key themes and messages that were found to resonate with a number of audiences in the University community, including students, parents, alumni, legislators, business partners, and donors. One of the main themes was: "UMass Amherst boasts a distinguished faculty."

During our surveys and focus groups as we developed the logo and themes, we found that our target audiences most of all value excellence in education. And they understand that the quality of the University is directly related to the quality of its faculty.

The excellence of the UMass Amherst faculty was also a recurring theme at a joint meeting between the University system vice presidents and the Chancellor’s Executive Advisory Council held July 13. At that meeting, a number of attendees mentioned the fact that the quality of our education, the exceptional value that we offer, our partnerships with citizens, businesses, and communities, all depend on our distinctively excellent faculty.

Below is a review of just a few of our faculty accomplishments over the past semester.

UMass professors and business experts Charles C. Manz and Robert D. Marx, along with Karen P. Manz and Christopher P. Neck, are the co-authors of a new book, "The Wisdom of Solomon at Work." The book looks to the Old Testament for ways of creating a more effective, compassionate, and wise organization.

The second issue of JUBILAT, the new international poetry journal housed within the English department, kicked off its second year with the publication of JUBILAT 3. This spring JUBILAT was one of 10 journals selected nationwide by the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses to participate in New Readers for New Writers, a pilot distribution program funded by the NEA and the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds. As part of the program, JUBILAT will be publicized and distributed by Small Press Distributors and CLMP, and will appear on the new Literary Magazine Kiosk website.

A number of UMass faculty from various departments are working with the private, non-profit Institute for Training and Development in Amherst, to develop a civic education curriculum for students in secondary schools in Romania under a two-year, $293,655 grant from the U.S. Department of State. Last winter, Jeffrey L. Sedgwick, associate professor of political science, traveled to Romania to meet with officials from the Ministry of Education, and this spring eight Romanians were in the United States under the program. Students will be taught about pluralistic democratic societies, and teachers will be assisted in building more democratic systems in Romania’s schools.When astronomers presented a new view of the "nearby" universe at the recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society, UMass astronomer Stephen Schneider was front and center. Schneider headed a project that for the first time mapped the whole sky, including the large portion ordinarily hidden by our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and that revealed a complicated network of galaxies surrounding us. Schneider said that galaxies do not uniformly dot the sky; rather, gravitational forces spur them to form clusters and groups of clusters. The findings offer scientists clues about the conditions that existed during the early days of the universe. The mapping work was based on the recently completed infrared survey of the entire sky called 2MASS, carried out principally by astronomers at UMass and NASA’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center.

Paul J. Godfrey, director of the Water Resources Research Center, found no appreciable change in damage from acid rain in the last decade to the state’s lakes, ponds, and reservoirs, after analyzing data collected in a statewide survey conducted on Earth Day, April 22. The Acid Rain Monitoring project, based at UMass was founded by Godfrey and a corps of 1,000 volunteers in 1983 and is funded by contract with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.

Lisa Pike Masteralexis, who chairs the UMass department of sport studies, was part of the legal team that successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that professional golfer Casey Martin should be allowed to use a golf cart while playing on the Professional Golfer’s Association (PGA) tour. She co-authored an amicus brief used in the case by Martin’s legal team when it presented its case before the Supreme Court in January.

Nicholas K. Bromell, an associate professor of English, was named a Fulbright Scholar. He will spend Spring 2002 in Greece teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in American studies at Aristotle University in Thessalonika, Greece, focusing on American popular culture. He is the author of "By the Sweat of the Brow: Literature and Labor in Antebellum America" and of "Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and Psychedelics in the 1960s."

A team of researchers led by Sigfrid Yngvesson, professor of electrical engineering, has received three federal grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation totaling more than $1.79 million to build and improve a receiver that can detect the presence of nitrogen plus, one of our galaxy’s basic components. To date, there is no receiver that can detect nitrogen plus from the Earth’s surface. The ability to map the location and amount of nitrogen plus "will provide a new perspective on stellar, chemical, and galactic evolution," he said. The receiver will be built into an existing radio telescope at the South Pole.

Jose Mestre, professor of physics and a national expert in the science of learning, testified before Congress in May, at a hearing called "Classrooms as Laboratories: The Science of Learning Meets the Practice of Teaching." The hearing was before the House Committee on Science’s Subcommittee on Research. Among the topics he discussed were: the advantages and limitations of assessment tests; how to improve teacher preparation and professional development; and why the learning of science is difficult for many people.

Tornado researcher Andrew Pazmany and graduate student Vidhya Thyagarajan spent the tornado season in the Great Plains, testing new ways to detect and predict the swirling storms. The UMass team designs and constructs specialized radars, which are installed on customized pick-up trucks emblazoned with the UMass logo. The two, along with fellow researchers at the University of Oklahoma, chase tornadoes and monitor them using the truck-mounted radars and videocameras. The radar signals bounce off raindrops and flying debris, enabling scientists to track the movement of parcels of wind – some of it blowing more than 300 miles per hour. Scientists then scrutinize the data, to try to pinpoint what meteorological conditions enable a supercell, or large rotating thunderstorm, to drop a funnel. The goal is to develop accurate predictions of when and where a tornado may touch down, giving people time to evacuate.

Dean E. Robinson, an assistant professor of political science, has been awarded a two-year, $100,000 fellowship from the Center for Advancement of Health and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to study health disparities at the Harvard University Center for Society and Health. He received one of the first six fellowships in the program.

Kevin Boyle, associate professor of history, has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for work on his book, "The People v. Sweet: A Story of Race, Rights, and Murder in Jazz-Age America," about a civil rights case and courtroom drama in the 1920s in Detroit. He is one of 183 recipients of the 2001 fellowships given to artists, scholars, and scientists by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in New York City.

A paperback edition of "Langston Hughes and the Blues," by Steven C. Tracy, a blues musician and associate professor of Afro-American studies, was published in May. Tracy is currently working with the University of Missouri press as a co-editor of an 18-volume series of Hughes’s collected works, is editing two volumes of Hughes’s work for children, and is working on an Oxford University Press literary guide that places Hughes in his historical context. A contributor to a book about blues and gospel music to be published by Cambridge University Press, Tracy is also the author of "Going to Cincinnati: A History of the Blues of the Queen City."

Faculty and students at UMass are among the first in the nation to use a state-of-the-art package of Microsoft software and resources designed to enhance teaching and research at national universities. UMass is one of only four schools chosen as test sites. The others are: Brown University, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the University of Utah.

Renowned Holocaust-memorialization scholar James E. Young was quoted in many national publications in the past year and a featured speaker at various Holocaust Memorial events, including one on the Amherst campus, organized by UMass students and faculty. He is a leading authority on the public memory of the Holocaust. In recent years he has given hundreds of public lectures on forms of national remembrance of the Holocaust through art, architecture, and the establishment of museums. In 1997, he was invited to the Bundestag to address Germany’s Holocaust memorial issues, and later was named to the five-member Findungskommission for Germany’s Holocaust memorial. He was the only foreigner and only Jew on the panel.

Art Keene, professor of anthropology, coordinated Reverse Spring Break, which brought nine teen-agers from two Virginia communities, New Road and Cape Charles, to UMass to get a taste of college life. Earlier, about 100 UMass students spent their spring break performing community service in five rural Virginia communities, including New Road and Cape Charles, as part of a class in grassroots community development. Keene said: "These students come from communities in which the obstacles to completing high school are considerable and where support for aspiring to a college education are few. We hope that this program will make a small contribution in helping them to buck the odds. At the same time, the visit will deepen our relationship with these Virginia communities, which have served as such important centers of learning for UMass students."

Faculty in the School of Education sponsored a conference on children’s literature that drew about 500 educators, librarians, writers, illustrators, parents, students, and teachers. The focus of the conference was the latest trends and topics in children’s literature. One of the keynote speakers was Julius Lester, a professor of Near Eastern and Judaic studies at UMass, who has won awards for his children’s books, which include "From Slaveship to Freedom Road" and "When the Beginning Began."

Faculty in the College of Engineering hosted more than 180 minority high school students from 21 schools across the state in March, giving the high school students a chance to interact with UMass engineering faculty, alumni, and current UMass students, plus industry representatives. The high school students also had hands-on time with interactive displays and took pictures with an infrared camera brought by Raytheon Systems Company.

UMass faculty in the Geosciences Department and the Climate System Research Center hosted about 80 experts on paleoclimateology this spring, to discuss the latest research related to the Arctic and global warming. Paleoclimateology is the study of "natural archives," such as lake sediments, ice core samples, and tree rings, to make determinations about past climate. UMass researchers are among the world leaders in studying Arctic warming.

Stephen Haggerty, a geologist and expert in the geology of diamonds, was part of a group of scientists who met at the White House this spring to discuss how to "fingerprint" diamonds. The effort is aimed at stamping out a lucrative, and bloody, guns-for-gems trade that is reportedly financing brutal civil wars in Africa. Earlier in the year, Haggerty interrupted his Fulbright Fellowship and fieldwork in India to give an invited talk at the White House Diamond Conference.

Lynn Margulis, Distinguished University Professor in the department of geosciences, was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree from Union College, Schenectady, N.Y. The degree was conferred during Founders Day ceremonies at the college Feb. 22. Margulis delivered the keynote address at the event, titled "Slanted Truths and the Wisdom of the Biosphere." Margulis also received the 1999 National Medal of Science from President Clinton, and was recently named a recipient of the 2001 Commonwealth Award, presented by the Massachusetts Cultural Council for outstanding contributions to the arts, humanities, and sciences. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has also been elected to the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

UMass climatology researchers led by geoscientist Raymond Bradley, have found that the glaciers atop Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain on the African continent, are melting much more rapidly than previously believed, with more than one meter of surface lowering occurring within the past year. The data were announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in San Francisco.

Ethan Katsh, professor of legal studies and co-director of the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution, helped to run a free, five-day all-online series of workshops, discussions, courses, and software demonstrations this spring on resolving disputes that arise in cyberspace. The Center focuses on understanding the nature of online conflicts and how to use the Internet to resolve disputes, Katsh says.

Leonard L. Richards, professor of history, won second place in the 11th annual Lincoln Prize awards competition from Gettysburg College for his book, "The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860." The award included a $15,000 prize. His book, published by Louisiana State University Press, presents and analyzes the concept of slavery as a major and determining force in pre-Civil War national politics, including its impact on Southern domination of the electoral system, the Democratic party, and the Supreme Court. The jury that chose the book noted that this "detailed and intelligent" study "fills a crucial void in our understanding of the political crisis leading up to the Civil War."

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