Staff at UMass Amherst’s Cold Spring Orchard Research and Education Center are out in the fields gathering the season’s harvest and regularly stocking the orchard’s farmstand while visitors flock to pick-your-own, which officially opened last Saturday, Sept. 12.

Throughout the academic year, this year’s series, “Escape from Oligarchy: The History and Future of Rule by the Rich,” will trace the global history of oligarchy as well as the popular movements that have fought back.

The Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management, housed in the Isenberg School of Management, has been named the world’s No. 1 postgraduate sport management program by SportBusiness for the fourth time in the last five years, and sixth time overall. 

Marking the opening of this year’s UMass Amherst Community Campaign, representatives from over 30 local nonprofit organizations will be on hand to offer volunteer opportunities and share their work on a broad range of causes.

Gezen, professor of German studies, and Mednicoff, professor of Middle Eastern studies and public policy, have been appointed directors of ISI, which has been a central and indispensable venue for open interdisciplinary exchange and intellectual enrichment, grounded in social, cultural and political responsibility for over 25 years.

Jeffrey Hescock, assistant vice chancellor for environmental health and safety and emergency management, and Amherst Fire Chief Lindsey Stromgren co-presented “Beyond the Fire: Coordinating Campus Recovery and Student Support Following a Large-Scale Off-Campus Emergency” at the New England Preparedness Summit, held Sept. 9-10 at the DCU Center in Worcester.

Ma, assistant professor of finance at the Isenberg School of Management, along with her co-authors from UNC-Chapel Hill, were awarded for their paper “Mergers and Acquisitions, Technological Change, and Inequality.”

Waterfall Scientific, built upon research led by Craig Martin, emeritus professor of chemistry, and Sarah Perry, Gary R. Lapidus Professor in the Riccio College of Engineering was recently awarded up to $54.5 million by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health to lead a six-company consortium to revolutionize the production of medical-grade mRNA—an achievement which could not have occurred without IALS and the associated Center for Bioactive Delivery.

Perry Halkitis, dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health, will present “More Than Disease: Reclaiming the Human Side of Public Health,” followed by a fireside chat with Anna Maria Siega-Riz, dean of SPHHS, Friday, Sept. 25 from noon-1 p.m. in the Seminar Rooms of the new SPHHS Hub Building.