On Thursday, Sept. 17, the Office of the Provost sent an email announcing a revised academic calendar for spring 2021, including a two-week delay in the start of the semester, the elimination of a week-long spring break and two Wellbeing Wednesdays replacing traditional long weekends.
Earlier this week, students were emailed with updated information on the Winter 2020-21 term, including a revised calendar and an increase in the credit cap from four credits to eight.
Infectious disease epidemiologist Andrew Lover has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a new surveillance method to better identify specific locations with the highest risk for tick-borne disease transmission.
In a message to the campus community, Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy announced today that the university is embarking upon an inclusive and deliberative planning process for the spring semester. Leading the planning process will be a Strategy Group co-chaired by Provost John McCarthy and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Life Brandi Hephner LaBanc. This group will synthesize guidance developed by seven function-specific Working Groups and provide a set of recommendations to the chancellor no later than Oct. 21, informing the spring plan.
UMass Athletics announced this week that it intends to schedule and play a limited number of football games this fall. Director of Athletics Ryan Bamford said the decision was reached following a positive review of the football program’s stringent COVID-19 safety protocols and rigorous testing regimen, in place since players’ return to campus in June.
A team of biologists led by Craig Albertson and Ph.D. student Chaise Gilbert at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report this week on their comparison between museum collections of cichlid fishes collected before a dam was closed in 1984 on the Tocantins River in the Amazon and contemporary specimens taken from the Tucuruí Reservoir by fishermen 34 years later.
This fall, the department of music and dance is launching a new speaker series titled “Music, Community Engagement & Social Action.” Organized by violin professor Elizabeth Chang, the series explores how artists and educators, including a number of alumni, are seeking to effect social change through music.
To celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, the Spanish and Portuguese program at UMass has organized a series of virtual events, “Salud y Bienestar en Pioneer Valley,” which will be moderated by internationally recognized Latino/a artists, UMass professors, alumni, students and local members of the Spanish-speaking community.
Working with colleagues in the five college network, faculty in the UMass Amherst department of architecture have planned Exactitude: a Five College Architecture Symposium, to take place online from Oct. 2-3.
In a new climate modeling study that looked at the impacts of accelerated ice melt from the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) on future climate, a team of climate scientists reports that future ice-sheet melt is expected to have significant effects on global climate.
