Children's Project Trust: www.childrensproject.org

The UVM-MPA Program, the James M. Jeffords Policy Research Center, and the Community-University Partnerships and Service-Learning (CUPS) Office is sponsoring the event.

The event will be held in the Dean’s Conference Room in Morrill Hall from 2 to 3 pm on March 28.

About the Author: His main research interests are emergency and crisis management, decision-making in complex environment, collaborative governance, and organizational learning and design. His book Network governance in response to acts of terrorism: Comparative analyses was published in 2012 by Routledge. He teaches collaborative public management, public and nonprofit management, emergency and crisis management, research methods, and analytic techniques for public administration courses. He can be reached at Kapucu@ucf.edu.

Abstract: Community Based Research (CBR) is an emerging approach used by researchers in partnership with practitioners and community members to tackle complex social problems. This approach has been widely applied to health sciences and the field of education. Its application to the field of public policy and management is fairly new and as a result frameworks for its application are underdeveloped. This presentation discusses the rationale for applying this tool to the public policy and management field, and outlines major challenges that exist in its application. This presentation also highlights key principles of CBR and applies them to a study funded by a federal agency in the US.

But unlike nuclear weapons, the climate problem doesn’t sleep. It grows.

What to do? Asim Zia’s list of ways to reduce our accelerating output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide includes: respecting tropical forests, “dematerializing” consumption, re-directing waste streams into productive uses, and, “shifting to local, organic food systems,” he writes.

But, mostly, it will require getting off our fix to fossil fuels. Replacing energy and transportation systems that run on oil, gas and coal — with renewable sources — is an astoundingly complex task. And yet it’s the only way to avoid global climate catastrophe, he argues.

To get there will require more than voluntary targets and technocratic input, Zia believes. He has written a new book, Post-Kyoto Climate Governance, that calls for a deep re-thinking of our politics and economic assumptions, a clearer understanding of the cleavage between the developed and developing nations, and a shift away from expert-based international organizations, like the World Trade Organization, to “democratically anchored governance networks.”

In his book, Zia, an assistant professor in Community Development and Applied Economics and fellow in the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, ranges over several disciplines, looking for the causes of failure in international climate policy. And he’s looking for solutions. These may require dramatic new approaches, like global taxes, new forms of organized confrontation, and a willingness to reconsider reflexive attachments, he argues, like a belief in the benefits of free trade.

UVM Today spoke with Asim Zia about his new book, published on Jan. 28, by Routledge. We wanted him to lay out his map for developing new global climate governance, a post-Kyoto approach that, as he writes, “ confronts the politics of scale, ideology, and knowledge.”

UVM TODAY: We’ve known about the threats from climate change for several decades, but have made little progress. Why?

Asim Zia: We have made some small attempts at fixing this problem, but, so far, the efforts have been at the margins. There are institutions and practices that need to be fundamentally reformed for us to be able really tackle this problem.

My new book is about understanding those institutional and governance challenges. And it also looks into the last twenty years of the United Nations climate treaty negotiation process to understand what needs to happen next.

My fundamental conclusions are that we need to put up an international trade tax, and, secondly, we need to have an international carbon tax, at a global scale, and, thirdly — this is still questionable — that we need to reform the U.N. system.

How much time do we have to do this work?

In my recent NPR blog, we present the carbon budget that is available to us if we want to stop global warming below two-degrees centigrade. And that leaves us maybe seven years, maybe ten years. We are probably running neck-to-neck with the time we have left.

There’s a lot of new science and concern about blowing far past the two-degree target. Now I see reports about a “four-degree world.” Has four degrees becomes the new benchmark?

Maybe. At the beginning of the Doha round of negotiations, for example, the World Bank released a report on a four-degree centigrade world.

And then there have been a bunch of other papers saying that even if we take action now, it’s becoming unlikely that we’ll hold to a two-degree centigrade world unless we do some kind of reverse engineering or geo-engineering — which in itself is highly questionable.

Part of the problem is that the 1992 climate negotiations in Rio left the goal vague: that we, as a community of nations, should not cross dangerous thresholds in the atmospheric limits.

Those dangerous limits have typically been interpreted as two degrees centigrade. Some, like Bill McKibben or the groups doing planetary boundaries work, are focused on 350-parts-per-million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Some people talk about 550-parts-per-million — but it’s not necessary that 350 or 550 would translate into two degrees.

What I am trying to communicate in this book is that instead of fighting about these goals and targets, we need to reform institutions.

 For example?

For example, free trade. International free trade is an institution that has not been touched upon in any climate negotiations! International free trade is mandated under the World Trade Organization — which is, in itself, a big multilateral negotiation process at the global scale.

But, essentially, when you promote free trade of goods and services, it’s the “externalities” from the production of those goods and services that leads to the emissions of greenhouse gases.

Our global institutions since the end of World War II have been designed to perpetuate a production and consumption process that is leading to perpetual and increasing growth of fossil fuel-induced greenhouse-gas emissions. So, till the time that we reform these international institutions that are leading to the greenhouse gas emissions, we cannot deal with this problem adequately.

Challenge free trade? But that’s the quasi-religion of countries around the world. How does advocating for limits on free trade fit into real politics?

That’s really the problem here. I call it, in my book, the politics of ideology. There’s a free-market, free-trade ideology that is dominating the discourse in an institutional setting.

Or take the carbon tax. In the EU, the carbon tax has been aligned with certain green parties or some left-wing parties, so there is a radicalization of the discourse.

But if you look at it rationally, if you look at all the analysis, these coupled human/natural system computer simulation models will tell you that the carbon tax and trade tax have low transaction costs, and they would stimulate local markets.

This approach could revitalize local communities that are losing their vitality to grow, for example, local organic food. And this kind of food production is an important piece in this picture for reducing methane emissions and reducing carbon emissions from agro-industrial systems. Then there are energy implications. Decentralized energy systems could be promoted, like solar and wind and community-based energy systems, through taxes and institutional reforms. But that is not being talked about.

Whenever somebody mentions international carbon taxes someone else says, “Oh, that’s not politically feasible.” Well, why is that? It’s not really feasible because those lobbies have been able to hijack the discourse.

Taxes are sticks. For example, tobacco taxes have been successful in reducing tobacco use in this country. Similarly, gasoline taxes have been successful in Europe in improving the fuel economy of cars. These taxes are proven.

What’s wrong with carbon markets and “cap and trade?” Can’t those work within existing free trade arrangements?

Let’s look at deforestation. Twenty percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from tropical deforestation. I’ve studied tropical forests for the last nine years in many countries including Peru, Tanzania, Vietnam, Brazil and Indonesia.

These loose market mechanisms, like carbon markets and cap-and-trade and REDD+ have not been able to adequately deal with or stand against the free market mechanisms, which are causing the problem in the first place.

International free trade rules result in lifting a lot of environmental regulations that were put in place inside these countries to protect tropical forests. They’re now being deforested because of globalization of their markets. It’s not just the local timber mafias. The major drivers are the international agro-industries. You have all kinds of companies — mining, coal, Chinese companies, Canadian companies —  cutting down tropical forests, releasing greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

These cap-and-trade mechanisms, like REDD+, are still just starting to be negotiated and piloted in a few countries. But I am very skeptical about their effectiveness. It is just creating a new artificial market for carbon with the same problems as the European carbon market, which tanked after the global recession.

Cap-and-trade has only been successful in few isolated conditions, like the sulfur dioxide market in the U.S. — and that was successful because the market was clearly defined. We knew exactly which coal-fired power plants to tackle so you can do effective monitoring of those plants.

Global carbon markets, and cap-and-trade mechanisms like REDD+ and the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism were designed as experiments under Kyoto. We should acknowledge that that experiment has failed.

How much do your proposed governance reforms require a kind of human rationality, an enlightened self-interest, that seems in rather short supply when it comes to climate change?

There is this game theoretical perspective — that leads to this “prisoner’s dilemma” situation, which we are observing right now, where each actor tries to protect their own interests and the institutions are also designed in a way to protect individual interests — like the market economy, for example.

But the result is the tragedy of the commons: when everyone protects their own interests, at the collective level we are not able to protect anyone’s interest. The atmosphere is called the pure tragedy of the commons because it’s such perfect application of that idea.

Noboby owns it, and so we all dump our trash in it?

Exactly. That view is deterministic and tragic — and leads to a point where we are looking at not a four-degree-centigrade world but maybe an eight-degree-centigrade world by 2200, and we’re toast. It’s that sad.

Even if you look at some of the more advanced modeling applications, they suggest or recommend that high-greenhouse gas emitters, like the United States, not take any action but wait until the last minute, because then they’ll get a “better deal.” They are so cynical about that.

That model has limitations: it is probably good at describing one situation, but this kind of modeling is not good at setting norms, the value-based discussion that we need to have.

We should look to international cooperation practices and international norms that have been built over thousands of years of negotiations and wars. Climate change is a global-scale crisis that we cannot just keep under the carpet and say that this is going to happen sometime in the future. It’s happening now. It’s not going to be one country’s problem. If we have climate refugees, they are going to migrate. It will create security challenges like terrorism and economic destabilization.

What is it going to take for governments to change and adopt new approaches to climate?

This is a democracy. So there are always checks and balances, and that is one of the challenges in climate change. Historically, policy changes are incremental unless you look at revolutions like the Stalinistic revolution or the Iranian revolution. And the climate change challenge is that we need fast change, radical change, within existing institutions. A carbon tax, an international trade tax: these are radical changes.

The hope and need is to seek for quick change that doesn’t result in toppled governments and bloodshed?

Exactly. There will be some adverse impacts of carbon taxes and international trade taxes, but there are established compensation mechanisms that could be used to compensate people in vulnerable populations who are affected adversely.

But I don’t think that cost will be higher than the cost of not taking action. The cost of not taking action will be enormous in terms of mass migrations, extreme weather events, and just the sheer chaos that can be expected under an eight degree centigrade warmer world.

What are your personal hopes and fears about climate change?

I, myself, come from a developing country. Pakistan is very vulnerable. Both Pakistan and India are very vulnerable to climate change — and they have done the least to cause it, but they would suffer the most in the first fifty years or so.

I have been working there — and some of work is reported in this book — in setting up early warning systems, dealing with climate-refugee problems. If you look at the map, Pakistan is on both sides of the Indus River. The massive flooding in 2010 was part of the trend of more and more flooding during the monsoon season. If you look at the last sixty years of data, you can see that this is caused by climate change. So we are trying to understand the planning regime in Pakistan so that we don’t have more development in those regions which would be affected by floods or droughts.

That is very personal to me. I have been in the refugee camps. I have seen people who have been displaced for years. After 2010 floods, 20 million people were displaced and two million are still displaced today, after three years. I was there two months ago and visited a couple of camps. It’s very personal to me, because those are the people seeing climate change up front.

We need to tackle and reform those global institutions that are causing local problems. It’s not going to happen by just creating new markets — that’s my main message.

The award, named in honor of the late John Finley, a respected agricultural educator and Vermont community member, recognizes an individual who has performed distinguished service to Vermont Agriculture and exhibits the outstanding character and mental vigor exemplified by Finley.

“Bob is man I’m sure my dad would have been proud to have as a colleague and a friend,” said Kate Finley Woodruff, an MPA Adjunct Professor and daughter of John Finley. Both John Finley and Parsons studied at Penn State University, received PhD’s in Agricultural Economics, and had years of dedicated experience to the dairy industry, farm management and profitability.

Parsons’ greatest contributions to the agricultural industry have been made in Vermont. His accomplishments include securing more than $8 million in grants, conducting agricultural research on turning cow manure into electricity, and evaluating Vermont grass-based livestock farm policy.

However, Parsons’ agricultural economics work spans international boundaries, including Albania, Kenya and Zambia, where he worked with farmers on dairy management, increased profitability and financial training.

“I love my work because it ties together so many different aspects of the dairy sector, from technology and business to community planning,” Parsons said. “It keeps what I do very refreshing.”

Parsons currently teaches Agricultural Policy and Ethics in the Community Development and Applied Economics department.

This fall, students in a Community Development and Applied Economics research methods class (CDAE 250) surveyed the student body to determine their beverage preferences in an effort to help inform the University’s soon to come water bottle ban, effective January 1, 2013.

CDAE 250, taught by professor David Conner, had students conduct field research, literature reviews, interviews and surveys as part of their work with service-learning partner, UVM’s Office of Sustainability.

This Office was interested in clarifying UVM students’ perspectives on the water bottle ban — specifically defined as the elimination of all “plain, flat, unflavored bottled water” sales on campus. While this was a significant step towards UVM becoming more environmentally responsible, drafting this policy was not an easy process.

In the original policy of the water bottle ban, smartwater was not included because it had minerals removed and then added back in with electrolytes, putting it into a different category from plain water.

Through qualitative and quantitative research done by the CDAE 250 students that gauged over 900 UVM students’ preferences, results showed that UVM students opposed the exclusion of smartwater from the ban.

Gioia Thompson, head of the Office of Sustainability and the students’ main contact, listened to these results and advocated for smartwater to be included in the ban.

“In the drafting of this policy, we had heard a lot of different ideas going around about how to best implement this ban,” said Thompson. “Being able to take part in this service-learning experience, where the students themselves became experts in the field helped to clearly and confidently express through research what needed to be done.”

“Because this was an issue that students had a personal stake in, they were genuinely very interested in the research, which led to students actually owning the project,” Conner explained. “Students saw Gioia’s commitment as our service-learning partner, who came in for several meetings with the class throughout the semester.” 

On November 30, Richard Cate, Vice President for Finance and Administration at UVM, declared that “smartwater is the same as bottled water,” according to an email from the Office of Sustainability.

The intention was always that all unflavored water be taken out of the system, Cate said in an interview. 

"The bottom line is smartwater will not be for sale on campus and for me that was not a difficult decision to make," he said.

“Seeing our results already making a difference by adding smartwater to the ban is very satisfying. Through this relationship we formed with Gioia at the Office of Sustainability, we had a real input into this policy,” Ajla Afizi, CDAE senior, said. “That is what made this service-learning class so mutually beneficial.”

The Office of Sustainability is hosting a water bottle retirement party this Wednesday, December 5th from noon to 2 pm in the Davis Center Atrium. The party will feature speakers, games, taste tests, discounted water bottles and additional information about the ban of bottled water sales on campus.

Additional reporting contributed by Danielle Bilotta. Updated 12/10/12.

As philosophers are wont to do, he made his points Socratically, by asking audience members how they would react to a series of progressively thorny ethical dilemmas.

“There's a girl drowning in a puddle outside the Davis Center,” he began, gazing innocently at the audience. "Should you save her?" Of course, a woman near the front replied. “What if the puddle was very deep?” he added. Still yes. “What if it was burning hot, like lava,” he elaborated impishly. A nodding affirmative. “If it paralyzed you from the waist down?” Yes, again. “Is there any cost you would not pay?” he asked the impressively altruistic audience member with a smile, after pausing for effect.

Doggett's drift, in part, was to unpack an unspoken assumption behind an Economist cover story that had caught his attention titled “Feeding the World.” Unexamined by the magazine, Doggett pointed out, was the question of whether we should feed the world, especially when the many and varied costs of such an endeavor were taken into account.

“Everyone thinks you should save the child if there’s no cost,” he said, returning to his example. “It becomes significantly less plausible if you jack the cost up.”

But his real point was about the need for transdisciplinarity in addressing problems, including those related to the food system.

“Philosophy has nothing to say about what the costs are, but a lot to say about whether or not you should pay them,” he said. “Philosophy is important, but it’s not enough.” For example, an agro-economist, like Doggett’s fellow faculty member Ernesto Mendez, might be a good partner in integrating the “should” and “how” elements of the Economist cover story.

Such transdisciplinary coalitions of the willing –  where to find them, how to build them, how to make them work – were the theme of the day at the symposium, titled “The Cultivation of Collaboration: Increasing Our Impact on the Food System.”

“That’s OK”

Partnerships can evolve almost serendipitously, said John Barlow, assistant professor of animal science, who spoke about a new transdisciplinary project he participates in that addresses artisanal cheesemakers’ ability to minimize food safety risks and understand consumer needs. The project's six-member team includes Catherine Donnelly in nutrition and food science, an expert in foodborne pathogens; Jane Hill in engineering, an environmental engineer who focuses on microbial activity; and David Conner, an agricultural economist in the department of community development and applied economics.

Barlow met Donnelly through normal channels – both are faculty members in animal, nutrition and food sciences graduate program and colleagues in UVM's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. But he met Conner at a new faculty oriention and Hill through the Vermont Center for Immunology and Infectious Diseases (COBRE).

“Some of it was dumb luck and random chance,” Barlow said. “That’s OK. Another way to look at that is you’re watching and thinking about what’s going on, and identifying potential opportunities for future use.”

Power of partnering

Another presentation given by Linda Berlin, director of UVM’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture, was all about the power of partnering. Her project addresses how better to serve so called “food deserts” – places where people, often of low-income, have limited access to grocery stores and limited transportation, and so are "food insecure" in a variety of ways. Her research is part of a large USDA grant involving several schools, including UVM. 

The goal of the grant is to improve access to healthy food for underserved populations by better understanding what a regional food system means and how it works. The project encompasses nine communities in the Northeast, including Essex County in Vermont where it focuses on two independent grocery stores.

Ultimate transdisciplinarity

In the last presentation of the day, Amy Trubek, associate professor of nutrition and food sciences, gave an overview on the new food systems masters degree program. It is one of the most transdisciplinary programs on campus. 

Thirty faculty members affiliated with the program are doing many kinds of food systems research, she said, from the work Jane Kolidinsky, chair of community development and applied economics, is doing on obesity; to work by Chris Koliba, director of the master's in public administration program, on food systems policy. Students can work with any faculty member in the program, which is both an opportunity and, given their large number, a challenge. Discussions are under way, she said, to improve ways for faculty and graduate students to find one another.

The symposium also included a panel of representatives from Green Mountain College, Vermont Technical College and Vermont Law School on opportunities for cross-institutional collaboration. The symposium's keynote speaker, Wouter Van Hoven, who was to speak about African food security, was stranded in Boston by Hurricane Sandy. Diane Imrie, director of food services at Fletcher Allen Health Care, took his place. 

Douglas Lantagne, dean of UVM Extension and interim director of the Food Systems Spire, said he was very happy with the symposium, which was attended by about 100 people, but he is eager to do more. “When you get people together to network, great things come out of it,” he said. “I have to figure out how to do that more frequently, not just at the Food Summit and the Food Symposium. That’s what I’m going to be working on – more frequency and less logistical planning.”

Laggis is quick to credit the help of many University of Vermont students for the DREAM activity, which was really the warm-up to a hike that the teens participated in the following weekend on Vermont's Long Trail. The Long Trail hike was part of the Outing Club's new Catamountain Classic – an attempt to hike the entirety of the Long Trail in groups in a single weekend.

But credit, she says, is especially due to her friend Avi Kurganoff, a UVM student who passed away in March 2012.

This effort to get underprivileged Burlington youth into the woods was the concept behind Kurganoff's impact plan, a project required of all members of UVM's Dewey House for Civic Engagement, the residential learning community dedicated to service where Laggis and Kurganoff met as first-year students. 

"He created this plan, but he was never able to implement it," Laggis says. "After he passed away, there was so much sadness. All the groups he had been a part of were devastated." Drawn together to mourn, new alliances started to form. With the help of DREAM and the Outing Club, the Dewey House, led by Laggis, set to work to carry out his vision.

The weekend of Sept. 29 and 30, nearly 40 clubs, groups and campus organizations hiked Long Trail routes of varying difficulty, all together covering the entirety of the 272-mile Long Trail. The teenaged DREAM mentees and their mentors hiked a two-mile portion in southern Vermont, ending at Little Rock Pond. Kurganoff's family joined them. The event's registration fees were donated, in his memory, to a scholarship fund that will enable a DREAM youth to attend an Outward Bound course, a program Kurganoff completed when he was a young teen.

"In terms of who Avi was and what his objectives were in life, to give the scholarship to a DREAM student is well aligned," says Outing Club adviser John Abbott. Hosting the Catamountain Classic was long a goal of the Outing Club, he says, and organizing it in memory of Kurganoff was a perfect fit. "I can't give enough credit to Joe Kassay, Sara Stanton and Kathryn Martin," Abbott says, the students – friends of Kurganoff's – who helped on the Outing Club's end to organize the event and fundraiser.

Dreams realized

The project is one that helped Laggis, last July, earn a nationally competitive Pearson Prize for Higher Education, that honors students who have completed at least one year of college and have demonstrated community service leadership. She was chosen as one of 20 winners, out of more than 20,000 applicants, who received $10,000 to help defray the cost of college, as well as guidance, support and training from the Pearson Foundation around endeavors in community involvement and social entrepreneurship. 

It was Carrie Williams Howe, course instructor for "Rebuilding Vermont," the service-learning course Laggis took following the devastation of Tropical Storm Irene at the beginning of her sophomore year, who encouraged Laggis to apply. "Hillary quickly emerged as an engaged and passionate student in our class," Williams Howe says, adding that Laggis, a Hardwick, Vt. native, has "an ability to genuinely relate to people with whom she is volunteering, to really listen to them, and do amazing work without asking for any credit. You could tell she was doing her best work not for the grade, but in order to meaningfully contribute to recovery for her fellow Vermonters."

"The 'Rebuilding Vermont' class really opened a ton of doors for me, beyond just the Pearson Prize," Laggis says. "It was my favorite class I've ever taken at UVM. It was the first time I was actually able to apply everything I'd learned in the classroom immediately in the field." It led to another opportunity this past summer for Laggis: an internship using knowledge from her public communications major working for the Irene Recovery Office in Montpelier, an area of work she says she might like to explore after graduation.

In the meantime, she's using the resources available to her through the Pearson Foundation to make "Avi's Adventures" – bi-semester excursions to the woods – a sustainable program and a permanent collaboration between DREAM and the Outing Club. 

"It's really a mutually beneficial experience for everyone," she says. "The Outing Club gets to give back. DREAM gets to work with the Outing Club. And besides it being really exciting for our kids to do the outdoor adventure, they're directly benefiting from this scholarship fund."

Beyond national awards, Laggis can rejoice in meeting another goal: the sounds of adventure and exploration echoing around Centennial Woods are testament to Avi Kurganoff's dream realized.

Our College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) played a significant roll in the ceremony. Among attendees, Professors David Barrington served on the presidential search committee, Robert Tyzbir was University Marshal, CALS senior Maria Carabello carried the College's banner and Tom Vogelmann sat among the deans.

in perhaps prophetic remarks by Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, Vermont's U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, University of Minnesota President Emeritus Robert Bruininks and the 42nd U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale charged Sullivan with the tasks of making tough decisions and at the same time collaborating with and inspiring others. As Mondale said, “A president… must unite imagination and vision with practical know-how and be ready to make progress the old-fashioned way: through hard work and determination.” 

Sullivan outlined his plan for UVM, just as he has since his arrival in July to smaller groups on campusi, in his statewide travels,to the media and again Oct. 9 in an email to the UVM community:

1. “We must provide our students access to success through more scholarships and financial aid.  Affordability must be our top priority! 
2. We must advance academic excellence by rebalancing priorities and investing in this University’s strengths to create a distinctive teaching and learning environment. 
3. We must improve facilities and support creative endeavors and breakthrough research for our faculty and staff to attract and retain talent of the highest quality.
4. Central to our mission are public service, civic engagement, and outreach throughout Vermont to further economic development, health, civic life, and environmental sustainability.  We seek to inspire students to apply what they learn here and to build vibrant communities wherever they live.”

See the whole slide show of UVM College of Agriculture and Life Sciences people as they played their part in this historic rite of passage. (©Stephen Mease Photography).

Here is the UVM slide show by uvmphoto ©Sally McCay. 

But wait a minute. Words can't begin to describe the way photographs do how students, faculty and staff welcomed visitors and how much fun families and alumni had, so let's cut right to the SLIDE SHOW of cute animals and children and folks you know. Then read on, if you will.

On Friday in classes as complex as Laura Almstead's Survey of Biochemistry and Jenny Wilkinson's Horse Health and Disease, parents were spotted in the back rows. One anonymous couple who had majored in chemistry and biology respectively admitted they wanted to see if they could actually understand what their daughter was learning. An animated Almstead walked up and down the aisles waving her arms, challenging students to commit to answers with their iClickers, then shook her head, urging them to talk it over, do better. She could instantly see their choices on computer screen.

Saturday's rain made the indoor chat with Dean Tom Vogelmann all the more popular as dozens stopped by to hear about the College's continued rapid growth to 1,245 undergraduate and 146 graduate students this year, $3.1 million in research grants brought to the College by its scientists and some of the state-of-the art facilities where even undergrads can conduct research with their mentors in addition to classroom learning. But talk was informal. Families from Washington, Oregon, California flew to Vermont to see how their first-year students were doing. The answer was: doing very well. Alumni like John Vanderpol of Hudson, Massachusetts and Steve Hancock from Dartmouth, Massachusetts came back to campus to see old friends, former professors and how the place has changed. The both graduated in Plant and Soil Science in 1987. 

But a hub of activity was the UVM Farms where cattle and horses were on display and equestrian demonstrations were a hit even with folks not familiar with agriculture.

Thousands of visitors converged on campus for Reunion and Homecoming. Many came to see the ceremonial installation of Thomas Sullivan as the University of Vermont's 26th president on Friday, Oct. 5.

Attaining national accreditation has been a long-term goal of the MPA faculty since relocating to the Community Development & Applied Economics Department in 2001 after years of moving between departments. The program has steadily grown in numbers and quality over the last decade, achieving national ranking by U.S News and World Report for the first time in 2011.

To date, 169 programs have earned NASPAA accreditation. Accredited programs "must contribute to the knowledge, research, and practice of public service, establish observable goals and outcomes, and use information about their performance to guide program improvement." They must also practice truth in advertising and ensure their students achieve learning objectives in five domains essential to public service.

Founded in 1986 by an interdisciplinary group of faculty committed to advancing UVM's capacity to serve and support the region's public and nonprofit managers, the UVM MPA Program's mission-driven emphasis on democratic governance has attracted students from around the world. The MPA is headquartered in Morrill Hall in the department of community development and applied economics. 

Williams, himself a former Peace Corps volunteer, spoke about a sometimes overlooked third goal of the organization: for volunteers to make a difference when they return home. In addition to the handful of audience members who affirmed their service as volunteers, he congratulated two Vermonters in attendance, John William Meyer of Shelburne, a 2010 Middlebury College graduate who recently completed his service as a youth development volunteer in Peru, and UVM doctoral student Charles Kerchner of Burlington, who served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic from 2001-2003.

Kerchner took to the podium to outline his “Two Worlds — One Bird” project, an alliance he founded to protect endangered rainforest in the Caribbean and save the threatened Bicknell’s Thrush, a songbird that migrates from Vermont and the northeast to the Dominican and Haiti. Using his Peace Corps background as an agro forestry specialist, Kerchner imports organic cacao from the Dominican to manufacture Kerchner Artisan Chocolate in Vermont. The business partnership helps the cacao farmers to improve earnings while conserving land in the rainforest canopy to protect the Thrush and other migratory songbirds. Kerchner earned his master's degree from UVM College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in the department of community development and applied economics.

His work received initial funding through small donations at the Henderson Café cash register about five years ago, an amount leveraged to $1.25 million as the project has grown in the years since. Kerchner spoke of his work with Bicknell's Thrush as symbolic of the goals of the Peace Corps, one that celebrates the "shared values and morals between countries" and showcases the "compounding impact" of serving in the Corps.

Vermont is nationally ranked on the 2011 Peace Corps Top State list for per-capita volunteer production with 47 currently-serving Peace Corps volunteers. Historically, Vermont has produced 1,422 Peace Corps volunteers who have helped promote a better understanding between Americans and the people of the 139 countries in which they have served. 

The University of Vermont ranks No. 5 on the 2012 top Peace Corps volunteer-producing colleges and universities in the medium size category with 42 undergraduate alumni currently serving overseas. Since the agency was founded in 1961, 801 UVM alumni have served in the Peace Corps.

“Any estate that has one penny, or more, can be the cause of a fight.”

“A Vermont farmer would rather endure three weeks of below zero weather, than talk about his feelings.”

These are just a few of Bob Parsons favorite sayings, oft repeated during his talks to farmers on how to transfer businesses, estates and assets. Parsons, an agricultural economist with both the University of Vermont College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and UVM Extension, gives about five such talks and workshops every year throughout the U.S. His headquarters are in Morrill Hall in the department of community development and applied economics.

Before an audience, Parsons is animated and engenders bursts of laughter, not just the nervous laughter of recognition and discomfort about planning for the afterlife either.

Making the Most of a Legacy

The audience for “Farm Transfer & Succession Planning” one day in January was the Vermont Christmas Tree Growers Association gathered at the Vermont Farm Show in Essex Junction. They were there to grapple with the same issues that any property owner faces unless he wants to cash out his assets. Parsons led listeners through the personal issues such as procrastination, fairness versus equity and children’s interests and abilities to inherit family businesses. He highlighted tax law changes, estate planning basics and various transfer options. His is also a crash course in business structure.

He speaks from research: Parsons’ material comes from a four-year, nationwide comprehensive study of the ways families transfer their small and medium-sized farms to the next generation – a critical component to the future of U.S. agriculture. The study was funded by a $468,000 USDA National Research Initiative grant and five grants from the Northeast Center for Risk Management Education totaling $265,000. His conclusions mirror Vermont's farm landscape. The average age of a farmer nowadays is 57, a decade older than in the 1970s. Trends show more absentee landowners and more complicated regulations. On the other hand, the number of small farms is on the increase as are efforts to preserve farmland. That’s why Parson’s presentations resonate with his audiences.

He speaks from experience: Parsons tells the tale of his own dad, 88, who created a business plan to hand over his Pennsylvania farm to his adult children yet routinely plans which trees to plant next year. “Now that is long-range planning,” says Parsons, confessing that his dad wasn’t always so well organized. “In the 1980s on the way into heart surgery, he asked his wife not to sell the farm.”

Parsons leaves his audiences with plenty to think about, a 12-page PowerPoint handout and the suggestion that they contact the University of New Hampshire for its websites and course tapes.

“This was helpful for a lot of people here,” said James Horst, surveying the crowd of about 60 attendees that day. His take-away message was “people – the spouse and kids – have to be all thinking and acting in the same direction.” Horst, a Bennington tree farmer with some 300 acres, says he has been through farm transfer as a recipient. And now he’s on the giving end.

“My kids are young, in their twenties – they need time to decide what they want to do,” he says, so his plan includes, “I’ve got to keep alive for a long time.”

Partnering with Cabot, CDAE’s “Cabot Marketing Challenge” Helps Local Businesses

Alumni Profile: Shaun Gilpin ‘09 and Sarah Woodward ‘10: Two CID alums help head up the effort for mobile home residents in VT 

Faculty Spotlight: Bob Parsons and Qingbin Wang 

Growing Vermont news and vendor info

Current Student Highlight: Michelle Searer PCOM '12

CDAE Updates: Publications, Undergraduate Updates, Graduate Student News

Read it all here! 

“The students in our College are among the most academically talented of the University, so this is truly a celebration of the best of the best,” said Tom Vogelmann, Dean of the College in his opening remarks. “Not everyone can receive an award; I want to acknowledge the outstanding performances of our many excellent students, talented staff and gifted faculty members. They serve us well and we are proud of them, their achievements and their commitment to our academic community. They contribute so much to making CALS such a special place to study, teach and work.”

University Awards

Six graduating seniors from the College received top university-wide recognition.

Liam Donnelly, Erika Hesterberg, Pamela Rooney and Brandon Vanasse took home the Mortar Board Award for outstanding service, scholarship service, scholarship, and leadership.

Samantha Case and Julie L. Williams were named Mc Nair Scholars, a Congressional program aimed to increase the number of first generation and minority students admitted to graduate programs.

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Awards 

Robert Rudy received the Alexander Kende Academic Merit Award. This award honors the memory of the late Alex Kende and achievements of a 2012 second‑semester junior CALS student for academic excellence and interest in medicine or bio‑medical research.

Notably, Rebecca Calder received the most awards: three animal science department awards, College-wide recognition for her research, induction into the Alpha Zeta Honorary Society and she will receive the College’s Outstanding Senior Award at the alumni and friends dinner on May 12. Sara Ziegler won four awards from the department of plant and soil science and CALS recognition for her undergraduate research.

CALS Undergraduate Research Leaders

Nineteen students received certificates from their mentors for their distinguished undergraduate research that was performed in addition to pursuing their regular course of study. They are:

Emily Andersen: “The Impact of Social Isolation on the Anxiolytic Effects of Voluntary Exercise in C57 Mice,” in the Andre-Denis Wright lab.

Kira Benson: “Dose Dependent Effects of Mitochondrial Targeted Nitroxides on Malignant Mesothelioma Cells,” in the Nicholas Heintz lab.

Rebecca Calder: “Expression and Biological Activity of Recombinant Bovine IL-22:  A Key Cytokine in Mucosal Defenses,” in John Barlow’s lab.

Meagan DiVito: “Evaluating the Physical Activity Levels of Head Start Children Using the CATCH Curriculum,” under the guidance of Jean Harvey-Berino.

Liam Donnelly: Molecular Genetics Program – “107 Genes found to be Up-regulated in a Phagocytic Entamoeba Histolytica Fraction may be Induced in Response to Phyagocytic Stimuli,” in the Chris Huston lab.

Kelsey Haist: “Strand-Specific Quantitative Reverse-Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction Assay for Measurement of Arenavirus Genomic and Antigenomic RNA Species,” mentored by Jason Botten.

Keven Juaire: “Myo51:  A Player in Assembly of the Actomyosin Contractile Ring of Fission Yeast S. Pombe,” in Matthew Lord’s lab.

Alyssa Kropp: “Evaluating Service-Learning Relationships: A Case Study on Community Partnerships in St. Lucia,” mentored by Jane Kolodinsky.

Michele Langone: “Multifunctional Gardens to Bring Sustainability and Beauty to UVM’s Campus,” working with Mark Starrett.

Samantha Ogilvie: “Analysis of in vitro mRNA Processing Provides Insight into the Integration of mRNA Splicing and Poly (A) Site Cleavage” in Gregory Gilmartin’s lab.

Peter Oswald: “Exploring Social Media and Their Effectiveness for Vermont Wine and Cheese Farmers,” studying under Kathleen Liang.

Clara Pedley: “Analyzing Participant Satisfaction with the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese,” mentored by Catherine Donnelly.

Kyriel Pineault: “Cell Surface Events Modulating Factor V Endocytosis by Megakaryocytes: A Possible Role for Receptor Phosphorylation and the Ganglioside GM3 in Acquisition of the Critical Platelet-Derived Cofactor Pool,” in Beth Bouchard’s lab.

Kelsey Preston: “Is FOXM1 the Therapeutic Target of Thiostreption in Malignant Mesothelioma?” in the Nicholas Heintz lab.

Todd Stanley: “Evaluating the Nutritional Status of the Thru-Hiking Community,” mentored by Jean Harvey-Berino.

Gianna Vannelli: “The Correlation Between Breath-Methane Levels and the Quantity and Structure of the Methanogens in the Human Gastrointestinal Tract,” in Andre-Denis Wright’s lab.

Kalyn Weber: “The Relationship Between Twitter and Student Engagement and Exam Scores in an Advanced Nutrition Course,” studying under Stephen Pintauro.

Dylan White: “The Effects of the Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Quorum-Sensing Molecule 3-oxo-C12-homoserine Lactone on Clincial Candida Albicans Biofilm Development,” in the Douglas Johnson lab.

Sara Ziegler: “Efficacy and Ecological Impact of Neem Oil and Bacillus Thuringiensis var. Kurstaki as Control Agents for the Invasive Earthworm Amynthas Agrestis in Vermont Hardwood Forests,” in Josef Gorres’ lab.

Chairs from CALS’ nine departments and programs presented scholarships and honors in their areas.

Animal Science

Sarah Morrison received the Elmer Towne Award, presented by the Vermont Dairy Industry Association.

The faculty chose Rebecca Standish for this year’s George H. Walker Award for dairy science.

Stephanie Simpson took home the upperclassman animal science scholarship award in memory of Brian D. Hawley.

Marking the greatest contribution to equine or companion animal activities, the Donald J. Balch Award went to Mallory O’Neil and Pamela Rooney.

Twenty students were tagged as future leaders in the field, with the American Society of Animal Science Award. They are:

·      Seniors: Rebecca Calder, Sarah Moylan, Jean Drolet, Pamela Rooney, Juliann Kattermann, Gabrielle Tetschner and Laurie Lesage.

·      Juniors: Ashley Ackert, Kaitlin Lee, Christopher Alling, Rebecca McBride, Douglas Klein, Noelle Schariest and Hannah Lachance.

·      Sophomores: Alexandra Cerretani, Ashley McCoy, Brittany Colbath, Sarina Selleck, Roberta Hemmer and Kirsten Weberg.

Every year CREAM herd advisors receive Brett Klein Memorial Scholarships. CREAM stands for Cooperative for Real Education in Agricultural Management. Fall advisors were Rebecca Calder and Mehgan Patterson. Spring advisors were Henry Cammack and Samantha Soltau.

This year’s Animal Science Faculty Award went to Rebecca Calder.

And Clarice Brewer and Rebecca Reusch received the Triona Wilder Marno-Ferree Memorial Award for their enthusiasm for UVM Horse Barn activities.

Biochemistry

Brittany Carroll received the John Thanassi Award for superior academic performance by a senior biochemistry major.

Biological Sciences

Scholastic Achievement Awards for outstanding academic records are senior Kyriel Pineault, junior Andrew Tranmer and sophomore Kirsten Meisterling.

Community Development and Applied Economics

Graduating seniors with the highest scholastic grade point average each major are:

·      Trisha Hlastawa and Arielle Kleinman in Community Entrepreneurship

·      Brian Hamel and Jarrod Szydlowski in Community And International Development

·      Hannah Kammerer and Benjamin Mervis in Public Communication

Seniors with the top 10 percent cumulative grade point average are: Aimee Bailey, Travis Gervais, Hannah Hinsley, Hannah Kammerer, Jennifer M. Kaulius, Allison Keller, Arielle Kleinman, Julia Megson, Loren Scott and Jarrod Szydlowski.

Jennifer Kaulius and Galen Mooney won the department’s Teaching Assistant Award.

Environmental Program

Emily Bird and Christina Economou were recognized as the top graduating seniors who demonstrated academic excellence, environmental leadership, and campus and community activism and service.

Microbiology and Molecular Genetics

Amara J. Forgues received the Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award.

Keyan Pishdadian received the Nicole J Ferland Award.

Liam Donnelly and Samantha Ogilvie shared the Lucille P. Markey Outstanding Senior in Molecular Genetics Award.

Kelsey Haist took home the Warren R. Steinbring Outstanding Senior In Microbiology Award.

Nutrition and Food Sciences

Jillian Nyman earned the Agnes T. Powell Award.

Kayla Gatos received the Bertha Terrill Award.

Meagan DiVito took home the Blair Williams Award.

Todd Stanley received the Nutrition And Food Sciences Faculty Award.

Clara Pedley and Kalyn Weber received Nutrition And Food Sciences Research Awards.

Lucille Glaize was named Outstanding Dietetics Student.

This year’s Cornelia Wheeler Irish Memorial Scholarship Awards went to Erika Hesterberg and Sarah McMahon.

Plant Biology

Beck Powers received the Sproston Award for undergraduate research projects of high academic merit.

Amanda Bousquet received the department’s Superior Performance Award for research and teaching activities in Plant Biology.

Plant and Soil Science

Sara Ziegler earned the Agronomy, Soils And Sustainable Agriculture Senior Recognition Award.

American Society For Horticultural Science Collegiate Scholars Awards for the top 15 percent of the senior and junior classes went to: seniors Samuel Hoadley, Michele Langone and Sara Ziegler and junior John Bruce.

The W. H. Darrow Horticulture Prize recipients are Graham Glauber and Michele Langone.

Sara Ziegler also won the Lewis Ralph Jones Award.

Marielle Fisher and Sarah Kresock benefit from the James E. Ludlow Endowed Scholarship Fund.

The Seymour Horticultural Prize went to, you guessed it, Sara Ziegler.

And finally, Graham Glauber and Samuel Hoadley were recognized with the department’s Teaching Assistant Awards.

Alpha Zeta Society Members                                                               

Several new students were recognized for their recent induction into the Green Mountain Chapter of Alpha Zeta Society. They join others in this professional, service and honorary agricultural organization listed below. Newly initiated are:

Nicolas Alonso-Harper, Frederick Broda III, Alexandra Cerretani, Heidi Considine, Dylan Estabrooks, Katherine Ettman, Laura Friedland, Danielle Geller, Hillary Gilson Sean Hennessy, Zoe Herwitz, Carlyn Levy, Anna Lidofsky, Sarah McMahon and Galen Mooney.

Also new to Alpha Zeta are: Marina Oriel, Emily Piche, Alexander Prolman, Janine Provenzano, Sam Resnicow, Rachel Rogoff, Joseph Romano, Melissa Rosen, Molly Sanborn, Michaella Scott, Andrea Smith, Julia Stratton, Pia Tomasello, Victoria Wellington, Natalie Wilson and Melissa Woolpert.

Previously initiated Alpha Zeta members: Ashley Ackert, Kira Benson, Molly Bortin, Matthew Buder-Shapiro, Rebecca Calder, Erica Campbell, Maria Carabello, Brittany Carroll, Kayla Clark, Jeffrey Deacon, Meagan DiVito, Christina Economou, Kendra Fleming, Lindsey Fuller, Graham Glauber, Jonathan Gonzalez, Lyndsey Hayden, Kristina Harpin, Erin Henry, Samuel Hoadley and Brittany Jean.

Also: Anne Kaufman, Douglas Klein, Erika Kline, Alyssa Kropp, Victoria Kulwicki, Hannah Lachance, Michele Langone, Aliya Lapp, Meredith Louko, Catherine Meredith, Jennifer Moltz, Ethan Morehouse, Sarah Morrison, Sean O’Neill, Mark Paulsen, Jackson Renshaw, Rebecca Reusch, Megan Rosen, Caroline Schwer, Julia Simpson, Daniel Smith, Brent Summers and Gabrielle Tetschner.                                                                                   

Finally, one faculty member and one staff person from the College’s departments and programs received top awards. Brian Stowe was named 2012 Outstanding Staff. Patricia Fobare Erickson received the Joseph E. Carrigan Teaching Award For Excellence In Undergraduate Teaching. See related stories.

Josie Davis, associate dean for academic programs, Rose Laba and Ja Yung Lee of student services organized this event. Flowers were on loan from UVM Greenhouses.

Why USA Today?

In the summer of 2011, she interned for the paper. Not only did DiBlasio land the prestigious and hard-to-get internship in the heart of the national paper’s newsroom, she broke records while there. Just four days after arriving, DiBlasio scored a front-page story on the dampening effect of drought and budget cuts on firework displays around the country -- the fastest, in the memory of her editor Dennis Lyons, any intern had achieved A1 placement. The next week, she landed another front-page spot with her article on a national trend toward implementing flashing, left-turn signals to improve traffic safety -- a trend she discovered through her own reporting. By the end of the summer, DiBlasio earned 18 bylines for USA Today, six of which were printed on page one.

The internship wasn't DiBlasio's first time in a newsroom. That came three years earlier, when, by chance, she enrolled in student media adviser Chris Evans' course, "News Writing Across Media." "I had no idea I wanted to go into journalism when I came to UVM," says DiBlasio, who took the class to fulfill a requirement for her public communications major. To earn extra credit, she submitted one of her stories to UVM's student newspaper, the Vermont Cynic.

"What happens at the Cynic is if you're really good, you advance through the ranks quickly," Evans says. And that is the story of DiBlasio's tenure at the paper, where she started as a reporter, became news editor and served as editor-in-chief her senior year.

How did the experience shape her time at UVM? "It changed everything. It was, really, my education at UVM," DiBlasio says. "I learned so much through everything you can do at the Cynic -- from the writing experience, from the editing experience and from our adviser."

With DiBlasio back at the helm in the fall of 2011, the Cynic, bolstered by its leadership's experience at a national paper, was awarded a Newspaper Pacemaker, college journalism's top prize and a first for the Cynic.

It was a busy fall for DiBlasio. Along with her responsibilities at the paper and finishing the coursework for her public communications major her final semester, she was selected to continue her relationship with USA Today via its collegiate correspondent program, for which she submitted one story a week to the USA Today College website. On top of that, she freelanced for the paper on stories about Occupy Wall Street, school bullying, volunteerism and more.

And, like many college seniors, DiBlasio was entrenched in a job search, as well.

The searched ended happily in January 2012, when she was offered a position back in the USA Today newsroom in D.C., working a general assignment reporting job. And two weeks after starting in March, she was on page A1 again, this time with a story about schools' leftover snow days from the year's mild winter.

"This is the job I've been wanting for so long," DiBlasio says. "I'm so excited."

Public Meltdown: The Story of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, written by Research Associate Professor Richard Watts, Ph.D., examines the debate between the federal government, Entergy and the State of Vermont in the case of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear power plant.

"I wrote this story because I think its an awfully good story," says Watts, who grew up in Putney, Vermont, near Vermont Yankee.

"This book is not meant to be pro or against nuclear power, it’s a story of a story. I try and be transparent. Let readers take whatever meaning they want from the story. Hence all the footnotes," Watts reflects.

In rich, well-researched detail, Dr. Watts tells a story that spotlights the role of state governments, citizens and activists in decisions about the nation’s aging nuclear power fleet.  A story that continues today as both Entergy, the nation’s second largest nuclear operator, and the state of Vermont have appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Public Meltdown details a series of missteps by the Louisiana-based Entergy Corporation which owns Vermont Yankee, from inadequate follow-up after one of the plant’s cooling towers collapsed to misleading statements to state regulators about tritium leaks from underground pipes.

Watts also highlights the role of activists and plant opponents in re-framing the debate from one of jobs and low-priced electricity to a story of an aging nuclear plant run by an out-of-state and untrustworthy owner.

The book puts these two stories into the context of the debate about adding twenty years to the original 40-year nuclear plant licenses. Some 15 nuclear plants are presently requesting license renewals and another 17 are expected. Governments in states such as New York, California and Vermont are engaged in contesting these license renewals concerned about the role of states in overseeing the non-safety aspects of nuclear power plants within their state borders.

In 2002, Entergy bought the Vermont Yankee power plant from a group of Vermont utilities, agreeing at the time to seek state oversight for a twenty-year license extension. Entergy applied for that permit to the NRC in 2006 and to Vermont regulators in 2008. In 2010, the Vermont legislature voted to close the plant. The following year, after receiving a permit from the NRC, Entergy sued the state. In January 2012, Entergy won the first round when the U.S. District Court voided the Legislature’s action but also reaffirmed the role of state regulators in issuing a permit. In March, both Entergy and the state appealed the District Court’s action, requesting action from the U.S. Court of Appeals. 

Watts will be giving a public talk with Attorney General Bill Sorrell on March 21st at 7:30 p.m. in Billings North Lounge, University of Vermont Center for Research on Vermont Energy Series
with a book signing and reception to follow.

The effort, begun in 2009 when UVM received a USDA Higher Education Challenge Grant for the creation of the program, gained steam in 2010 when Food Systems was chosen as one of UVM’s Transdisciplinary Research Initiatives (TRI). Along with complex systems and neuroscience, behavior and health, food systems has been identified as a key area of research investment across the disciplines.

“I am heartened by the success and send kudos to those who developed it and stuck with it,” Naomi Fukagawa, co-chair of the Food Systems Steering Committee, said. “And I praise the trustees and administration for understanding the importance of this to UVM, its land grant status, and the TRI process.”

“This is a vehicle in which numerous partners … can really engage, and put UVM and the state of Vermont in the forefront of how we actually create a change in the local and regional food system,” John Bramley, interim president, said at the board meeting.

The program has already begun the work of connecting with partners external to the university. Community Development and Applied Economics professor Jane Kolodinsky and Nutrition and Food Sciences professor Amy Trubek, co-authors of the program’s proposal, consulted with more than 400 organizations outside of UVM during the writing process.

Rachel Johnson, professor of nutrition and food sciences and a member of the program’s steering committee, believes that its approval will help UVM gain ground in the academic food systems community. “The approval of this masters program is very exciting and puts UVM at the leading edge of the emerging field of food systems,” she said.

Now that the program has been approved, next steps include accepting students’ applications for the fall 2012 semester and furthering the research. “Now, the real work begins,” Kolodinsky said.

This article may also be found on UVM Today. Edited by Amanda Waite and Jeff Wakefield.

Maddison began pursuing a Masters in Public Administration at the University of Vermont in September 2009 after completing a bachelor’s degree in Community and International Development. During his studies, Maddison worked as research assistant at the Transportation Research Center. “The TRC provided an engaging interdisciplinary environment in which I regularly gained insight and ideas from staff researchers, affiliated professors, invited guests and students with a diversity of perspectives,” he said. In addition to this work, he independently partnered with the American Pain Foundation on a policy project to study traffic safety and the use of pain medications.  The study focused on obstacles and solutions for driving dependency for those requiring medication due to severe pain.

Maddison is currently living in Ithaca, NY where he is working part-time for the Americorp and American Red Cross helping communities in New York become more prepared for disasters. He also is continuing to conduct research as an independent research consultant.

The Fall 2011 issue of the CDAE newsletter, the Compass has been published.  Click above to read!

Inside:

Proponent Loraine Ronchi of the World Bank characterized fair trade as a way to counter the market’s tendency to “mark down” the price of premium coffee, grown largely in Central America, and help farmers acquire the resources needed to make the rest of their non-fair trade supported operation successful. She called the practice a textbook example of sustainable development. 

Opponent Colleen Haight of San Diego State and George Mason universities, disagreed, saying that the practice supported coffee bean crops in marginal areas that would not be profitable without the fair trade subsidy and yielded a bad product, to boot.

She added that the money generated by the fair trade premium was targeting the wrong people. The fair trade collectives and the farmers they represent are land-owing members of the middle class. The migrants who pick the coffee beans, left out of fair trade agreements, would be much more appropriate recipients of the charitable support, she said.

Ronchi didn't buy that, saying farmers with few hectares of land could hardly be characterized as middle class.

The debaters, who disagreed on nearly every point, were neverthelss cordial and respectiful of the other's views, a shocking style of disourse in today's political climate. 

Loraine Ronchi is a senior economist for African Agriculture and Rural Development at the World Bank. Colleen Haight is an assistant professor of economics at San Jose State University and economics program officer at the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. 

The debate was moderated by Marselis Parsons, longtime former news director and evening news anchor at WCAX. 

The goal of the Janus Forum debate series, launched in 2008, is to stimulate reasoned discussion on important social and economic issues facing society. The debates stress the contrast and relative effectiveness of solutions that rely on freedom of individual choice as opposed to governmental or regulatory-based approaches to problems.

Many of the presenters posed the question, “where does money come from?” with Ben Braaten, CDAE MS candidate telling the audience that for every $100 deposited in the bank, $900 is loaned out, or “created,” inflating prices and leading to a boom-bust economy where booms harm the environment with overuse of resources and busts harm families with tough economic times.

Associate Professor Josh Farley highlighted that, of our $50 trillion debt, only $800 billion circulates as hard currency.  The solution?  “Print and Spend,” he called it.  Print more money to be earned and used by the hands of Americans, with no interest rates associated.  This method, he said, would not “indebt our children,” like our current system.

 M.S. candidate Brian Kelly’s proposal was met with lively applause from the audience: curb the speculation in financial trading with “speed bumps for financial markets that are in overdrive.”  Although placing a 0.25% tax on securities trading and a 0.1% tax on currency transactions, Kelly said, might cut in half the number of transactions that occur, the taxes would still generate $150 billion, money that might help battle our deficit, or enhance our communities.

Overall the teach-in “instructors” were calling for a more community-based economy that respects citizens of all income levels as well as our ecological limits to economic growth—a tenet of ecological economics.

CDAE M.S. candidate Chloe Wieland concluded the sessions with a simple, but poignant question: “Are we calling for radical change?  Well, we have been undergoing radical change for 40 years,” citing the shrinking middle class and the rise of a plutocratic economy.  She offered a three-part solution to the teaching sessions: 1. Change the rules that guide the system; 2. Make genuine progress the goal (Measure What Matters); 3. Recognize what is physically and ecologically possible.

Some residents like Glenn French, a Navy veteran whose mobile home and everything in it was destroyed, just wanted someone to talk to about his loss and get some advice on what to do next. “We lost everything,” says French standing in the middle of a row of decimated mobile homes. “It’s not the furniture or material things you miss, it’s the old photos and other personal memories you can’t replace. My wife cries all the time. She’s sad about losing old photos and pictures of our grandchildren. I’m just grateful for all the help we’ve received. It means a lot to us.”   

Listening to flood victims and finding ways to meet their needs were among the primary goals of Carrie Williams Howe, director of UVM’s Community-University Partnerships & Service-Learning, and co-instructor Kelly Hamshaw, a research specialist in community development and applied economics, when they created “Rebuilding Vermont: Community Engagement in Disaster Preparation and Relief” in less than a week.

“We wanted to create this course so that our response would last beyond the initial clean-up, making a commitment to long-term recovery,” says Howe, who was pleased to see 26 students from a wide variety of disciplines juggle their class schedules to add the course. “In addition, we wanted to give our students the opportunity to contribute to recovery while also thinking critically about what that engagement means.”

More than just volunteers

Characteristic of the record number (35) of service-learning courses being taught this fall at UVM, students have combined their classroom study with volunteer work in the field and reflection on that experience. In the first weeks of the course, partially based on a course created at Canterbury University in New Zealand after a series of earthquakes, students traveled to flood-damaged areas of the state and took a trip to Berlin to help distribute Carhartt clothing donated through the Williston, Vt. store Lenny’s Shoe and Apparel.

Kelsea Kuvaja, a junior human services and family development major from Maine, spent part of her day cleaning up debris outside the mobile home of Bernie Corliss, a longtime resident of the park who was rescued along with his wife by a boat whose driver happened to see the light on his cell phone. “I instantly wanted to take this course when I heard about it, because I was looking for ways to help,” says Kuvaja. “It’s my favorite class even though it’s been difficult to see what people are going through. Some of the homes had signs on the door that said, ‘Take everything.’ I think it was too much for some people to handle.”

As time passes and the needs of victims change, students will focus more on matching those needs of survivors with appropriate recovery services. At the end of a recent class, students signed up for projects involving the organization of fundraising events for farmers impacted by the flood; coordinating weekly clean-ups and staffing the volunteer center at the Waterbury Flood Recovery Center; and helping upgrade an economic development database that matches people with jobs.

“I signed up for the course because I wanted to help other people who were affected by the storm,” says junior Dylan Estabrooks, a community and international development major whose brother’s house in Northfield was damaged by the flood. “Even though federal aid has been helpful in other national disasters, local help is really needed and helps build community. We talked about the importance of asking what kind of help people need, not what we think they need. In some cases that means hauling things away, but for others it means listening to their stories.” 

Utilizing faculty expertise

In studying disaster preparation and relief, the course has drawn on existing faculty expertise. Hamshaw and Dan Baker, assistant professor in CDAE, landed a three-year, $400,000 grant in 2010 from the U.S Department of Agriculture’s Disaster Resilience for Rural Communities Program to improve disaster resilience for the 7,000 lots that are located in the state’s 245 mobile home parks (about one-third of the state’s 22,000 mobile homes) through hazard identification, community organization, emergency planning, and improved coordination between key stakeholders. Park residents will be able to access an online database featuring individual park profiles and a Building Resiliency Guide for Mobile Home Parks with best practices for improving disaster preparedness in parks.

Baker, along with former students Erin Makowsky and Kendall Kahl, developed a mobile home deconstruction project, a unique way to recycle about one-third of mobile home materials, saving the owner the bulk of the $3,000-plus cost of disposal. The State of Vermont is using this information to safely and economically recycle some of the mobile homes damaged in the flood.

Alice Fothergill, associate professor of sociology, added her experience studying the effect of disasters on  children and families to the discussion in the planning of the service-learning course, and brought students from her “Hazards, Risk and Vulnerability” course to the Weston Mobile Home Park. Fothergill says the experience of students helping family members clean up and remove personal belongings from their homes -- in some cases from rooms of teenagers not much younger than themselves -- really hit home for her students. “I think it put a face to the tragedy and got them thinking about the different ways something like this can affect families.”

By sponsoring the course, Cabot Creamery Cooperative is providing the opportunity for students in the course to gain hands-on marketing experience in a learning environment. Student groups will be teamed up with local businesses for the length of the semester.  Their task: to write a marketing plan, along with which comes the potential to receive funding for implementation of their plan during the spring 2012 semester. The course was designed after a proposal from Cabot after which, it was shaped to its current form with input from the Business School as well as the CDAE department in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, who offers the course.  

“This course exemplifies both the Land Grant mission and the reciprocity of Service-Learning: students will gain real-world, hands-on experience. Local businesses gain from the expertise of UVM and Cabot to improve their marketing practices and contribute even more to the state's sustainable community economic development. We have a great set of bright, motivated students and a great set of locally-owned, socially responsible firms,” said David Conner, Assistant Professor in the CDAE department and the course’s instructor. “I am very excited for the work we are doing for these students and for Vermont.”

Through this partnership, Cabot aims to enhance UVM’s role in the small business community in Vermont by leveraging its resources and networks with Cabot’s so that they can fundamentally improve businesses in the area.  The idea is for this program to be offered annually, each year expanding its reach to other regions and industry groups in Vermont.  “This is a valuable opportunity for the University and students to partner with us at Cabot and to leverage resources so that students obtain real-world marketing training.  The course should promote connections between students and local businesses, encouraging businesses to hire students after graduation and students to stay and work in Vermont,” reflects Roberta McDonald, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Cabot, who is involved with the course.

The Burlington area businesses selected to work with the Cabot Marketing Challenge class this fall are Sugarsnap, a caterer and bakery in Burlington, Brown Dog Gifts Books and Gifts of Hinesburg, Cynthea's Spa, in Burlington, Swiftwood Press, LLC, which creates financial reports for alternative energy, of Burlington, and Yogarama, a retail yoga store in Burlington.

Students and their community partners will be charged with understanding the current marketing practices of a Vermont business, and with working in teams (and with instructors, teaching assistants, and business people) to create a marketing plan for a the business.  “Service-learning experiences like this provide a great learning laboratory grounded in real-world decision-making for the students, as well as benefits to local business and our local economy,” says Jane Kolodinsky, Chair of the CDAE Department. "We hope that Cabot will continue this growing partnership in the future.”