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UVM IN BRIEF Trustees find ‘right person at right time’ in presidential pick Throughout
UVM’s presidential search, Trustee and Search Committee Chair Bruce
Lisman ’69 stressed the need for strong leadership, repeating the
priority like a mantra. With
the January appointment of Daniel Mark Fogel, executive vice chancellor
and provost at Louisiana State University, Lisman and colleagues made
it clear they had found the skill foremost on the list of job requirements.
The trustees also found a higher education leader who impressed with a
career built on strong scholarly credentials, high-ranking administrative
experience, deep knowledge of the machinery of a state flagship university,
and a track record on many of the challenges the University of Vermont
faces. “He
is the right person at the right time for our university,” said Lisman. Fogel,
his anticipation of the job ahead obvious in both words and bearing, beamed
as Lisman introduced him at a welcoming reception in the Billings Apse.
His resonant voice didn’t need a microphone to carry up to the students
standing in the balcony. “It’s difficult to convey adequately
the excitement I feel about joining the Vermont community to work and
live in such an extraordinary environment,” he said. Though
Daniel Fogel has built his career as a professor and academic administrator
in the Deep South, his personal and higher education roots are firmly
planted not so far from Vermont — on the other side of the Adirondacks,
in Ithaca, New York and at Cornell University. The
son of a Cornell professor, Fogel earned three academic degrees from the
university before leaving the Northeast in 1976 to begin pursuit of his
academic career as an assistant professor at Louisiana State. Fogel
quickly moved up the tenure ladder at LSU as he dedicated himself to teaching
and scholarship. A published poet, Fogel’s critical writing has been
centered upon late 19th and early 20th century writers such as Joseph
Conrad, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. His most extensive
work has focused on Henry James, and Fogel is founding editor of the Henry
James Review. In
the early 1990s, Fogel began to move toward academic administration, first
as dean of LSU’s graduate college, then as vice provost for academic
affairs. His administrative experience, Fogel says, has shown him that
the visionary aspect of leadership and the more mundane matters of management
are closely linked. “I’m convinced a person must master the
operations of the university in order to pursue the vision effectively,”
Fogel says. A number
of his leadership achievements at LSU could serve as a roadmap for the
tasks ahead as Fogel travels north. As
LSU’s provost, he led an extensive strategic planning effort which
targeted priority programs and backed them up with significant funding.
Fogel was also active in LSU’s drive to increase both public and
private support, including a $22 million increase in the university’s
restricted state operating budget in the current fiscal year, and LSU’s
highly successful first capital campaign. In addition, he led a wide-ranging
effort to enhance the intellectual climate for undergraduate education
at Louisiana State. Nearly
four months before he’ll arrive in Burlington to assume office on
July 1, Fogel says he is taking the first steps of “listening, learning,
and quiet reflection” in preparation for the presidency. In that
work, he builds upon a clear sense of UVM’s strengths. “The
University of Vermont is unique in marrying its public character and its
long tradition of civic engagement to the high excellence and human scale
characteristic of the nation’s elite, small, student-centered research
universities, among which only UVM is public,” Fogel says. He stresses
that this vision, aligning UVM with universities such as Brown, Tufts,
and Princeton, “must be at the center of our understanding of the
identity, character, and mission of UVM whenever and wherever the university
presents itself…” To
achieve that aspiration will require the ability to gather the perspectives
of many and rally the support of more. The former is a skill that Fogel
picked up not only in the administrative wing, but in the library as well. “From
my studies of Henry James I’ve derived a deep sense of the value
of seeing all sides of any issue or set of relationships and of relishing
a variety of viewpoints — an orientation that has been of great practical
use to me as a university leader,” he says. James and Fogel see eye to eye on the latter’s new home, as well. The well-traveled American novelist once opined that a sunset viewed from Burlington rivaled any in the world. For his part, UVM’s new president says, “I’m an Ithaca chauvinist, but this is more beautiful.” UVM’s
25th President Rebecca
Aborn, Class of 2002 Dinner’s
on in twenty minutes and the line in the hall is fifty-some and counting,
but there’s no panic in the kitchen. Everything is on-schedule, under-control
— no small thanks to program coordinator Rebecca Aborn ’02.
The senior psychology major from Scarsdale, N.Y., lugs 20-pound bags of
bread, pours a legion of milk glasses, asks a friend to grease the pan
for the Tater Tots, and fields questions from the whereabouts of the ladle
to the ever-popular, “Do these noodles seem done to you?” If
Aborn handles work and leadership with ease, it is because, at age twenty-one,
she is an old-hand here. She’s volunteered with Food Salvage since
her first year at the university. Recently, that commitment earned her
the Vermont Student Citizen Award, a new honor recognizing outstanding
volunteerism. Sponsored by The Vermont Teddy Bear Company, the award brought
$1,000 to UVM, $1,000 to the Food Salvage Program, and $1,000 (and a cap-and-gown
clad Vermont Teddy Bear) to Aborn. CEO Elisabeth Robert cited Aborn’s
ability to organize and lead others, as well as “her understanding
of the ties that bond us with community.” Back
at the kitchen, the Food Salvage vet offers some gentle guidance to the
volunteer team as they make final preparations to serve the meal. Aborn
notes that at the end of the dinner, extras will be wrapped and clients
will be encouraged to take them. “Be careful not to say, do you want
to take some home with you, because you’ll likely get the response
‘What home? I don’t have a home,’” Aborn says. She admits to the same mistake. The response is both jolt and reminder of why she has given nearly every Sunday evening of her college years to the Food Salvage Program. “Someone less fortunate needs an extra hand,” Aborn says, “and who am I to walk by and pretend that I don’t notice?” Noted
& Quoted USA Today and the Boston Globe were among the media covering a week-long basketball workshop at UVM that brought together coaches from Israel and Palestine. The event, a project of Israel’s Peres Center for Peace, began to take shape when Assistant Athletic Director Jeff Schulman ’89 attended a Peres Center conference during a professional leave in Israel last year. Grabbing
the Ring Stanton
began writing his critical companion to the trilogy during a 1997 medical
leave. When he started, he had no intention of writing a book. But when
he compiled the notes and observations that he gathered while teaching
the books to some 1,800 students over three decades, the mass of material
far exceeded the boundaries of the study guide he had originally envisioned.
The project grew, and grew some more — “I had so many questions
from students over the years that got me thinking,” he says —
and by 1998 Stanton began looking for an agent and writing a book proposal. “At
that point, I still had no idea that the movies were coming out,"
Stanton says. Stanton’s
time in the spotlight may prove fleeting, but he’s certain that WHAT’S
NEW A
20 percent increase in undergraduate applications marks the biggest
single-year jump since 1985, the first year of UVM’s Public Ivy era.
The numbers won’t mean a bigger class, says Admissions Director Don
Honeman, but raises the bar for those waiting on that acceptance letter. Bob Pepperman Taylor, associate professor of political science, has received a prestigious research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The NEH funding will support Taylor’s work on his next book, an examination of the Progressive Era (late 1800s to World War I) in the United States. QUOTE-UNQUOTE Return
of a Native Son Vogelmann,
UVM Botany. If that seems to echo, it’s with good reason. Tom Vogelmann
is the eldest son of Hubert Vogelmann, professor emeritus and former chair
of Botany at the university. When Hub Vogelmann retired in 1991, he closed
a 36-year UVM career that included landmark research sounding one of the
first alarms on acid rain’s effect on forests. Via
nature or nurture, there was little chance Tom Vogelmann would reach adulthood
without a strong interest in the natural sciences. “He was always
good for opening up your eyes to things,” Tom Vogelmann says of his
father. The son admits, though, that in the early part of his childhood,
“I didn’t want to hear too much about plants.” Those fossils
found underfoot on family hikes were another matter. “One
thing leads to another — geology, anthropology, archaeology. Ours
was a family where we had a lot of discussions about science,” Vogelmann
says. His brother Jim ’78 also has a doctorate in botany, and brother
Andy ’84 is the family maverick with his doctorate in meteorology
and atmospheric sciences. When
Vogelmann initially explored his recent career move, location was a bonus
but the position would have been a strong draw if it were in Ohio, Georgia,
or Utah. “I
look at the quality of this department, how we can grow and see some very
exciting things on the horizon,” Vogelmann says. “The university
has made a commitment to build the plant sciences — new faculty positions,
early planning for a new building. It is a whole new world and a very
rare opportunity.” No small bonus for a botanist, Vogelmann finds plenty of inspiration in returning to the Vermont landscape — bare trees against a winter sky, spring peeper frogs, lightning bugs. “This place is just throbbing with life,” he says. “The West has spectacular scene-ry, but I’ve missed this incredible diversity of flora and fauna that we have here.” ONE
QUESTION Political
Science Professor John Burke: In
1992, Clinton benefitted from Bush Sr.’s seeming invincibility after
the Gulf War. It discouraged a number of more prominent Democrats from
running. Dean would need the same advantage going into 2004: no Gore,
Lieberman, Kerry, or Gephardt to contend with. In
1976, Jimmy Carter was the first candidate to really take advantage of
the Iowa caucuses as a way of building momentum that then propelled him
to victory in New Hampshire. Now most presidential aspirants campaign
for one or two (if not three) years in Iowa. At a minimum, Dean would
need a very strong showing in Iowa and a victory or near victory in New
Hampshire to remain even competitive. But two challenges still remain. One is money: it will take about $20 million to mount even a credible effort. The second is the schedule of primaries and caucuses in 2004. The Democratic Party recently approved changes that will allow states to hold them in the days and weeks right after New Hampshire. That calendar favors a front-runner not a dark horse. Dean would really need to take the country by storm coming out of New Hampshire victorious, and his opponents would need to falter in the media’s “expectations game.” Impossible? No. Improbable? Yes. But so were Carter and Clinton’s quests for the presidency. Professor
Hartnett goes to Washington An
assistant research professor in the College of Education and Social Services,
Hartnett is in Washington, D.C. through the support of a Joseph P. Kennedy
Foundation Fellowship in Public Policy. She’s at work in the offices
of Sen. John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia, where she continues her
writing and research into public policy impacts on the lives of individuals
with disabilities. Professor
Susan Hasazi, who was a Kennedy Fellow in 1983 and received the foundation’s
International Award in Education in 1995, has been a mentor for Hartnett
since her years as a UVM graduate student. The two have joined talents
to study such issues as the effect of Vermont’s Act 60 school funding
law on special education or the impact of welfare reform on adults with
disabilities. That Vermont view guides Hartnett as she, in turn, helps legislators make informed decisions for the nation. “With welfare reform and the Individuals with Disabilities Act coming up for reauthorization, this is an exciting time to be in Washington,” Hartnett says. “Our legislative policy needs to be informed by practice and research. I can bring a current perspective of what’s going on at the grass roots level.” Student
team lends a hand at Ground Zero University
offers tuition support to children of alumni
victims |