Recent news from UMass
This
man was not smiling just because he planned to hand off his duties as
CEO of General Motors a few months later. GM president JOHN F. SMITH '60
was also evidently having a very good time at a luncheon for fellow alumni
at the Colonade Hotel in Boston this spring. Shown kicking back with Jack
are fellow alumni KATHERINE BOWES '81 and MANNY BARROS '91.
Two Nobel laureates were on campus within a space of two weeks this spring. Nobel Peace Prize winner JODY WILLIAMS, who founded the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, visited us April 13 to deliver this year's Lois E. Toko Class of '56 Lecture at Memorial Hall. Eight days earlier, Nobel Prize-winning poet SEAMUS HEANEY packed the Campus Center Auditorium for the annual Barney Troy Lecture. According to Amherst Bulletin intern VICTORIA D'CRUZ '00, Heaney told the crowd that "The secret of art and life is getting started, keeping going, and getting started again."
Scientists
at Advanced Cell Technology, the Worcester biotech firm created by UMass
professor JAMES ROBL and STEVEN STICE '89G, have found chromosomes from
cloned cows that appear to have unusually long telomeres - the tips that
protect the genetic code during cell division. By suggesting a means by
which old cells may be rejuvenated, the findings enhance prospects of
creating replacement tissues and organs for humans.
ALUMNUS DON AUCOIN '78, television critic for The Boston Globe; is one of twelve U.S. journalists named a Nieman Fellow at Harvard this year. . . The INTERIOR DESIGN/ARCHITECTURAL studies program at UMass is ranked fifth in the nation in the Almanac of Architecture and Design 2000…Computer systems engineering tyro AKIRA MUKASA '00 was showcased as an "MHT Whiz Kid" in the April 17-23 issue of Mass High Tech. The high achiever from Hong Kong followed sister REI MUKASA '99 to UMass…In May, THE STOCKBRIDGE SCHOOL became the first academic institution in history to receive an Award of Merit from the National Arborists Association…And UNIVERSITY HEALTH SERVICES has one of the eight best campus HIV/AIDS education programs in the nation, says a National Association of Student Personnel Administrators report.
Sounding
off on everything from tubas to didgerydoos, seven students and an alumnus
of THE MINUTEMEN MARCHING BAND were among the sixty-eight-member cast
in last spring's London production of the Broadway musical BLAST. Associate
director THOM HANNUM '84G led the UMass delegation—the largest from
any one school—in the "awe-inspiring" show created by the
Star of Indiana Drum and Bugle Corps. . . . In other bando news, Hannum
and UMMB director GEORGE PARKS assured national visibility and audibility
for the campus by helping to produce the pregame and halftime shows for
the Sugar Bowl last winter. And Parks made the front page of the Wall
Street Journal last March with his comments on the necessity for
"peas" in whistles.
Despite
a new home and a roster that included just one senior, the UMass softball
team did this spring what it's always done: win. Here, during a winning
game over Princeton in April, freshman KAILA HOLTZ delivers the first
pitch on the stylish, state-of-the-art diamond on Stadium Drive that is
the Minutewomen's new home turf. The softballers won eighteen of twenty-one
games and conducted an Atlantic 10 sweep that produced their sixth consecutive
conference title. The team also made its tenth appearance in the NCAA—where,
however, it fell to South Carolina and second-ranked Arizona.
"Don't
walk around in a bathrobe or your underwear."
Duh.
Probably half of the caveats in How Not
to Embarrass Your Kids: 250 Don'ts for Parents of Teens will be familiar,
if not obvious, to all of us: grizzled boomer-parents who can't remember
where we parked the car, but still cringe at the memory of mortifications
inflicted on us three decades ago by our own parents; those same, now-octogenarian,
parents who enjoy the sweetest of revenge seeing their offspring cast
in the "perpetrators of humiliation role"; and, of course, the
teens themselves.
But get this. Chapter V, Watching TV, Don't
#17: "Don't use your index finger to work the remote - always use
your thumb." Or Chapter VI, At the Movies, Don't # 15: "Don't
laugh unless everyone else is laughing."
Ouch. Who knew?
What Zack Elias '03, and his co-author and
fellow-teen, Travis Goldman, confirm in their very funny book, now in
its second printing, is that though there are at least 250 documented
ways for a teen's parent to screw up, there are precious few "do's"
to guide parents through the teen years. But cheer up. Be patient. Someday
these teens will have children of their own.
