Four University of Vermont students have been awarded prestigious Benjamin A Gilman Scholarships. The Gilman is a nationally competitive award given to accomplished students with financial need who wish to study abroad.
In a feature on the recently renovated and reopened George D. Aiken Center, home of the Rubenstein School for the Environment and Natural Resources, The Chronicle of Higher Education says it "may be one of the greenest buildings on any college campus," with an estimated 65 percent greater efficiency than before the work began. To view the entire story contact University Communications.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded Rebecca Pincus, a doctoral student in natural resources, a $167,000 grant to study how well it has adapted to the emergence of significant energy-related security threats. The proposal "Strategic Response to Energy-Related Security Threats" was one of 10, culled from more than 300 submissions, selected by the Minerva Initiative in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, a university-based social science research initiative focusing on areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy.
On April 25, the Community-University Partnerships and Service-Learning Office (CUPS) announced the recipients of its Service-Learning Awards at the Eigth Annual CUPS Recognition Reception. Nominations were judged on the quality of engaged scholarship demonstrated in courses between Spring 2011 and 2012 semesters.
Over the last two decades, there has been growing concern that very high rates of modern extinction -- loss of plant and animal species due to habitat destruction, overharvesting and other human-caused environmental changes -- could reduce nature’s ability to provide goods and services that people need, “like food, fuel, carbon storage, clean water, and habitat,” says the University of Vermont’s Carol Adair. But it’s been unclear how these species losses stack up against other human-caused environmental changes that affect ecosystem productivity. Now, a new study in the journal Nature provides a sobering answer: extinction of plant and animal species appears to damage ecosystem health as much as climate change, pollution and other major forms of environmental stress.
The University of Vermont McNair Scholars Program, which prepares undergraduate students for doctoral studies by facilitating one-on-one relationships with faculty, has chosen ten students from the Class of 2013 as this year's Summer Research Fellows. The national program, introduced at UVM in 2004, aims to increase the number of first-generation, limited-income and underrepresented minority students who earn a doctoral degree.
Lola Aiken officially opened the refurbished George D. Aiken Center, one of the most energy-efficient renovations in higher education, at a ribbon cutting ceremony on April 27. The building, home to UVM's Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, was re-opened with all four past and present deans of the Rubenstein School and its predecessor, the School of Natural Resources, in attendance.
An official opening and ribbon cutting ceremony for the University of Vermont’s renovated George D. Aiken Center, perhaps the most energy efficient renovation in American higher education, will be held on Friday, April 27 at 1:30 p.m. at the front of the building near the Davis Center circle. The Aiken Center is the home of UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. The building opened for classes in January 2012 after undergoing an 18-month, $13 million rehab.
The campus community is invited to a ceremony celebrating the Greening of Aiken, the 18-month, $13 million rehab of the George D. Aiken Center, home to the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. John Bramley, UVM interim president, and Mary Watzin, dean of the Rubenstein School, will host the event, to take place Friday, April 27, at 1:30 p.m. in the Aiken Center. The ceremony will be followed by building tours and light refreshments.
The newly renovated George D. Aiken Center is a virtual showcase of Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood: 27,000 board feet in all, which add warmth, luster and natural beauty to all three floors of the building. But what exactly is certified wood and what process does it go through to earn the imprimatur of being FSC-certified?
Don't expect to see for-sale ads on Craigslist that read "Wetland: works good," or "Rainforest: fixer-upper." But that doesn't mean ecosystems have no value, or are beyond price. Indeed, Taylor Ricketts is determined to show the many precise, market-real ways that woods, swamps, hedgerows, estuaries, farm fields, and other lands and waters provide services to people.
You probably don't need a field guide to identify a raccoon. Or a grey squirrel. Youre not likely to say, "that big white shaggy beast, hmm, yes, might be a polar bear. Let’s check." It's just not that hard to identify most mammals. But what in the heck are those mammals doing all day, or all year, scurrying, burrowing, butting heads, running hither and yon, chomping leaves, vanishing under logs, and mating like, well, rabbits? Kurt Rinehart has answers. He is the co-author, with Mark Elbroch, of a new book, Behavior of North American Mammals, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, part of the publishing house's ongoing Peterson Reference Guide series.
Richard T.T. Forman can imagine a future where "we could move gloriously and quietly along in our own comfortable car compartment some 20 feet high between the trees, yet with no engine running, no fossil fuel use, no greenhouse gas emissions, and no need to watch the road." He also knows that, "for centuries, spreading roads have progressively degraded nature," as he writes in the journal Solutions. "The direct ecological impacts of the road system have been estimated as affecting one-fifth of the U.S. land surface, with indirect effects spreading much further." Forman, called by some "the father of landscape ecology," is a professor at Harvard University and world-leading expert on roads, land use and urban ecology. He will give a lecture, Friday, Feb. 10 in UVM's newly renovated Aiken Center, room 102, at 3 p.m.
The renovated George D. Aiken Center’s credentials as an environmental standout are hard to miss. The solarium in the building, which re-opened in January after an 18-month, $13 million rehab, boasts an “eco-machine” for treating waste water, nearly every interior wall is ribbed with Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood paneling, and its green roof features eight experimental watersheds.
Follow Jason Stockwell, director of UVM's Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Lab, and his students onto Lake Champlain as they spend an afternoon and evening studying the movement of mysis shrimp before and after sunset.
