Highlights
Making it hers: Using the Fine Arts Center as her canvas, junior MICHELLE FINKINS presents “Surfacing,” a class project for art professor SUSAN JAHODA. The assignment was to visualize the dreams of a local community and present the work in a community venue. Inspired by artist Krzysztof Wodiczko’s giant projections at the FAC in the late ’80s, Filkins chose to cast her images on the building she calls the center of her campus. Readers will see much more of the FAC in our spring issue, which will include a feature on its burgeoning programs.
Dept. of distinctions: Biologist
and doctoral student JEANCLAUDE RAZAFIMAHAIMODISON is one of ten researchers
from around the world to receive a Lindbergh Grant, which furthers the
aviator’s vision of a balance between technology and the environment.
Razafimahaimodison will study impacts of development in his native Madagascar…
THE INTERGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT (IPM) PROGRAM won a 2000 Governor’s
Award for Outstanding Achievement in reducing toxins in the environment…
EVERYWOMAN’S CENTER is in line to receive a $392,000 grant from the
U.S. Department of justice through its Program to Combat Violent Crimes
Against Women on Campuses. “This is the first significant funding
that has come along specifically for college campuses,” said CAROL
WALLACE, director of the center… ANNE STARKEY, a graduate student
in classics, received a Bronze Chalice award from AbleMedia for her “Roman
Living,” published by the Classics Technology Center on the Web…
And chemistry professor JULIAN TYSON won two gold medals at the U.S. National
Fencing Championships last summer in Texas, taking first place in the
masters and veterans divisions of the epée competition.
It
started with a scholarship and ended with a
$2.5 million bequest enabling the economics department to endow a chair
to be named for her mother, Helen Sheridan. MILDRED BARBER ’43, a
Boston native and former U.S. Department of Labor economist, retired in
’73 from her job as chief of data operations and reporting operations.
She died at age 78 in October. Niece Sheridan Phillips says Barber credited
UMass with allowing her to pursue a career that few women could.
Thinking
about it: They are
doing field work as well as class work in Homelessness and Shelters. This
is an honors program class of 24 undergraduates with many majors, and
with many motives for studying a topic that many Americans would rather
not think about. The course was created by two UMass ministers, Episcopal
chaplain CHRISTOPHER CARLISLE, and Protestant chaplain KENT HIGGINS. Their
students read, write, visit cities, interview homeless people. In addition,
they work 20 hours in a related social-service agency.
Joegoldstein, the asteroid: Getting
your name on an asteroid is quite an accomplishment. These chunks of rock
that float around the universe can make quite a stir if you get in their
way; look at what happened to the dinosaurs. School of Engineering dean,
Joe Goldstein, recently had one such chunk named after him. The rock in
question was discovered in 1981. Goldstein himself has done research on
asteroids for almost 30 years.
