Chalk
it up to outreach: At the University of Nairobi,
tools as simple as chalk and as basic as books are in short supply, says JON
SICKS , associate head of mathematics and statistics at UMass. When Sicks
departed in January for a seven-month teaching sabbatical at the Kenyan university,
he was preceded by more than 200 textbooks donated by his department and colleagues
to found a mathematics and statistics library there.
Up and running: Several student activity spaces are back in use this winter after being temporarily closed last fall due to safety concerns ["Earth moving days," Around the Pond, Fall 1998]. The Malcolm X Center in Berkshire Dining Commons, and the Latin-American Cultural Center and the Southwest Area Government office in Hampden Dining Commons, re-opened in October after necessary repairs. The Hampden Gallery reopened January 28 in newly created space in the dining commons lobby.
 Grand opening: Selections
of period music and readings of verse marked the formal dedication of
the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies last fall, as faculty,
scholars and supporters of the elegant retreat on East Pleasant Street
the former home of late UMass benefactress JANET DAKIN honored donors
of important collections and founding director English professor ARTHUR
F. KINNEY . Earlier in the weekend's festivities, UMass president WILLIAM
M. BULGER announced the establishment of a new scholarship endowment
for classics students, and remarked, "Cicero would have loved this
place." |
Cold war celluloid: "A vanished country which stood as the symbol for the Cold War" will live on in video thanks to an agreement signed last fall between UMass and the German company ICESTORM International. From new headquarters in Northampton, Icestorm will manage global marketing of productions of the former East German film studios DEFA , archived on campus since last year under the directorship of Germanic Languages and Literatures professor BARTON BYG .
Rowing with the flow: Information is the coin of the realm in today's business environment, and a new research center at the Isenberg School of Management acknowledges the fact. At the STRATEGIC INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CENTER, the new breed of CIOs chief information officers will be able to turbo-charge their organizations' ability to collect, manage, and use information from all sources, including online. LESLIE D. BALL `75G is director of the new center.
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Opening the giving 
Alfond, founder and chairman of the Dexter Shoe Company in Maine, is a long-time friend of ISOM benefactor EUGENE ISENBERG and his mentor in the giving department, said Isenberg that evening. Alfond's multimillion dollar gifts to Maine educational institutions have typically been in the form of challenges aimed at inspiring additional giving by others. Thus the challenge portion of Eugene and Ronnie Isenberg's record $6 million gift, which committed $4 million for a new wing on the ISOM building if it could be matched by companion gifts from both the commonwealth and private donors. It's working: throughout the fall the $12 million goal drew closer as gifts from alumni and friends, among them a $250,000 gift from IRWIN M. CHASE '50 and $100,000 from the indefatigable Campaign UMass chair JACK FLAVIN '59, arrived on campus. By mid-February the total had passed the $10 million mark. |
Dept. of far above par: Golfers are ever alert, says exercise science chair JOE HAMILL, to refinements in gear that could shave a stroke or two off their scores. Sporting goods manufacturers are equally alert to the opportunity this represents. A $102,500 gift to the department from Massachusetts-based Titleist and FootJoy Worldwide will support the work of doctoral students on 3-D scanning equipment to refine the design of golf shoes and laser-fitted gloves. Of his company's decade-long collaboration with exercise science, a Titleist vice president says, "We came to UMass and we stayed, because they are the best there is."
Up periscope: After years of serving as a leading manufacturer
of periscopes, the Kollmorgen Corporation is joining with UMass
to seek a higher vision of industry/university partnerships.
Instead of focusing on one project at a time, as most such partnerships
do, the agreement calls for a long-term relationship with a series
of collaborations. The local division of Kollmorgen in Northampton
produces state-of-the-art electro-optic systems for aerospace
and military applications, and UMass has both the resources and
the capabilities for key research in this field.
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Mussel Tone: A beautiful yellow-toned mussel that's been called "probably the rarest thing in the Connecticut River," has been discovered by a UMass graduate student. SEAN WERLE found the endangered species Lampsilis cariosa, commonly known as the yellow lampmussel, in twelve feet of water and partially buried under the sand just south of the Coolidge Bridge in Hadley. No live specimen of the mussel had been seen in the main stem of the Connecticut 
for more than thirty years, and DOUGLAS SMITH '77, '82G , curator of invertebrate zoology on campus, cites the find as "a clear indication that the river is recovering." Werle is part of a team of UMass divers, led by biologist ED KLEKOWSKI , whose explorations of the Connecticut are showcased in a new permanent exhibit, "The Underwater World of the Connecticut River," at the Springfield Science Museum. |
Sweet victory: In November UMass won its fourth-straight Atlantic 10 women's cross-country championship, this time in the unfamiliar role of underdogs. Five UMass runners finished in the top thirteen, with freshman phenom KRISTEN CISOWSKI taking first place to cap a Cinderella year in which she competed as a runner for the first time in her life. "This is one of the sweetest Atlantic-10 victories due to the emotional level of the team," said Coach JULIE LAFRENIERE . "One of the things we had to do was getting excited to run, but not so excited that we became dysfunctional."
O Sting, where is thy death: "If you were going to make a nutcracker,
chances are you wouldn't make it out of 
cartilage," notes graduate
student ADAM SUMMERS. He alludes to the curious fact that certain stingrays
with cartilage jaws are death on hardshelled prey. Recent investigations by
Summers and Professor ELIZABETH BRAINERD of the biology faculty dissect the
stingray's concealed weapon: tiny mineral formations whereby those soft jaws
make short work of mollusks and snails. The researchers' work "may point
to a bony ancestor for the flimsy fish," observes one science writer.
Graveyard shift: In one intense day at Arlington National
Cemetery last fall, 525 professional arborculturists were joined
by eight students from the STOCKBRIDGE SCHOOL as volunteers tending
to the health of the 12,000 trees on the grounds. Pruning, fertilizing,
bracing, cabling you name it, they did it in a day of service
sponsored by the National Arborist Association. The Stockbridge
contingent, there on the recommendation of the numerous association
members who are Stockbridge alums, was the only college group
invited.
Life and death issues: Intermarriage. When to pull a dying
patient's life support. The Jewish responsibility to a troubled
environment. A discussion series exploring these profound topics
has brought "International Hillel's gold medal" to
the campus for a remarkable fourth time, says UMass Hillel's
RABBI SAUL PERLMUTTER. The 1998 Haber Award for campus community
programs was presented in December. Since the award was established
in 1978, UMass has received it four times a feat, notes Perlmutter,
matched by only two other schools.
The reincarnation business: The UMass Intermediate Processing
Facility is heavy into the business of reincarnating everything
from defunct computers to food scraps. In one day last summer,
the facility collected some 12 tons of superannuated electronics
equipment. It treats about nine tons of food waste each week,
and churns the stuff into 1,500 pounds of usable compost per
day, which is called Earth Enhance and is used on campus for
landscaping needs or can be purchased by anyone in the community
for $30 per cubic yard. The hard-working facility at Tilson Farm,
run by JOHN PEPI `80 , also channels the campus's sobering stream
of waste paper.
Sons of Bam! Zap! Pow! Even if it weren't such a cool
conference, who could resist the headline? Since the dead-serious
comic book Maus received a Pulitzer Prize, says comparative
literature chair CHRISTOPHER COUCH, the "graphic novel"
has achieved unprecedented levels of public recognition. The
conference Couch chaired on campus last November went even further
back, celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the publication
of Will Eisner's A Contract With God, the founding work
in the genre.
Talk of The Nation: "I know not all Americans
condoned this act, but I will always remain with hatred in my
heart." Interviews with two of the five remaining survivors
of the My Lai massacre are at the heart of a story by UMass undergraduate
LISA CHIU which has received the Ninth Annual I.F. Stone Award
for Student Journalism of The Nation magazine. The senior
from Wayland is completing work on a major in journalism and
a minor in Chinese.
Floor it, Chancellor: "Zero to 60 in three seconds:
That was the effect when CHANCELLOR DAVID SCOTT pushed the faculty
and staff part of Campaign UMass into overdrive by pledging $100,000
to the fund-raising drive." So wrote the Campus Chronicle
(see below) in reporting the faculty-staff campaign kickoff held
November 20 in the Du Bois Library. For more on this in-house
section of the campaign, see pages 9 and 10.
Fervently "Yes!"
Delphine Quarles has been a UMass booster both woman and girl.
The daughter of a Springfield extended family that for generations
"has always had somebody at UMass," the `73 alumna
and director of campus activities has invested three decades
in this campus.
It's beginning to look like a lifetime thing. Delphine is the last person you'd ever call "a lifer," though. The woman practically percolates. Her husband, Jerry, a UMass housing services administrator, exercises a calming influence, one senses. But in his quieter way he's equally crazy about the campus.
"We love UMass!" exclaims Delphine. "Our wonderful young people," she enthuses. "The opportunities we provide to them. The opportunities we've had, Jerry and I, to work with colleagues of the highest caliber " and at a loss for an ardent enough predicate, she shakes her head, grins, and adds fervently, "Yes!"
The Quarleses are among the early heroes of the on-campus Campaign UMass, which sends out formal appeals to faculty and staff this spring. In the last three years the couple have committed $6,000 to the campaign. What the Quarleses' gifts highlight besides just how much you want to hug people so generous and enthusiastic is how donors can not only target, but subdivide, their gifts.
"I'd admired Fred Tillis from afar from the moment I set foot on campus," says Delphine, explaining why their most recent commitment is to the Tillis Endowment in the Fine Arts Center. "And my admiration just grew exponentially when he became associated with New WORLD Theater." [For a story on NWT, see page 36.] That the then-FAC director would "recognize and embrace and relentlessly support" a program that originated in student activities represents to Delphine "the most wonderful bridge-building" and "the highest spirit of cooperation."
Besides, she and Jerry love the arts. A jazz fan "since I was four," Delphine has made a habit of buying up blocks of tickets to FAC performances to pass out "more or less at random" to students.
As for the other chunks of their gift, the Quarleses' love for students is a big part of why they targeted a second sum for Afro-American studies. The very existence of this tenacious academic department fills them with pride, and that pride overflows when they consider its recent inauguration of a very nearly unique Ph.D program. And pride the need for it, and for leveraging it to raise money and friends is why the third part of their gift is targeted to university advancement. "Both Jerry and I believe that Royster" Royster Hedgepeth, the vice chancellor in charge of Campaign UMass "is doing a spectacular job," Delphine says.
"And we want to support that," she says, as she does of all three of the Quarles gift targets. "We want to give to that, because it's helping our institution."
THIS sucker is on everybody's hit list. The chain-link fence around the Du Bois Library can make even a civilized bibliophile dance in place like a barely restrainable Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz: "Lemme at it! Lemmeaaaatit!"
Library director MARGO CRIST , who arrived on campus two years ago, is as peeved as the rest of us by chain-link. Indeed, her first choice for a fund-raiser for the fence-replacement project was to line up everybody willing to pay a few bucks for a swing of the sledgehammer. Legal and logistical concerns prevailed, but an alternative has been found. Cyber-demolition.
As of early March, a soul-satisfying virtual swing at the offending barricade was available at www.library.umass.edu/fence. On the "Cyberwhackey" page designed by JOSH SILVER and MARK PAPPAS , visitors can deliver a cyber-slam, hear a cyber-smash, and watch the counter go up on the number of fellow-slammers they're joining in this good, if destructive, deed. They can also examine the design by UMass facilities planning for the far nicer and less obstructive fence that will separate future pedestrians from the untrustworthy brick veneer of the library tower.
The site also includes a hitters' list of contributors to the project. "My sense is that this one will be like the Statue of Liberty restoration," says library development officer ARNETTE NELSON . "It'll be funded by a lot of small donors rather than only a few large ones."
Thanks to underwriting from the UMass President's Office, only $75,000 is needed. But it's needed quickly so that real-time demolition and reconstruction can begin in April. If everybody steps up to the sledgehammer, students will return to campus next fall to find the project complete.
To put your money where your whack is, return the postpaid "Count me in" card to the Friends of the Library, call them at 413.545.0284, or visit www.library.umass.edu/fence.
