Generations of UVM students have learned about reporting and editing, photography and layout, late nights and immovable deadlines and the thrill of a byline at the Vermont Cynic.

The university's student-run newspaper is 130 years old and still going strong. For two years in a row, the paper has received a Pacemaker Award, placing it in the top rank of college journalism.

Watch the video for a glimpse behind the scenes on deadline night.

While UVM has been collecting food waste from the dining halls since 1997 and diverts nine tons of food each week from the landfill, a new bicycle-based program is the first centralized effort to provide a composting alternative within departmental and program offices. Learn more in this video.

Just two years out from graduation, alumna Sasha Fisher '10 has wasted no time putting her self-designed major to use. If "human security" sounds abstract and philosophical (just the sort of lofty, idealistic concept that bright, optimistic undergraduates might enjoy probing during their four years in college), Fisher has found a way to bring her choice of study back down to Earth.

Spark MicroGrants, the non-profit she's co-founded, has already helped humans in eastern Africa achieve security of one kind or another, by funding projects to improve access to education, clean water, healthcare, food and more.

Before college, Fisher "was very interested in global development and all these efforts to eradicate poverty, but," she says, "I, like a lot of people in my generation, didn't feel like they were going well."

When she arrived at UVM from New York City, her plan was to investigate aid work with a multidisciplinary approach. "I ended up realizing that in economics, the goal is to have poverty reduction -- that's not actually my goal. In political science, it's about the state -- that's not actually my goal either," she says. "What I want to do is to enable all the humans on Earth, even if they're in an illegitimate state or a corrupt state, to meet all their basic needs. And that doesn't necessarily mean money -- that means that they have food, that they have health care, that they have a house, that they have access to clean water. And so while that sounds very obvious, it's a whole other paradigm and a whole new way of thinking about aid and about what our goals are in the world."

Enter the "human security" major (one half of her double-major; Fisher also studied studio art), a term introduced to her by Ted McMahon, research associate professor of community development and applied economics. "It's a way of addressing those needs and addressing them in a non-state-based way and accepting there's a rising legitimacy in non-state actors such as NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and communities," she explains.

"Sasha's engagement and focus on real-world problems is always what struck me about her," says Peter VonDoepp, associate professor of political science, who this spring invited Fisher back to campus to speak to his students. "When she was a student, she took my African policies class, and what continued to strike me was not just her level of intellectual engagement and real enthusiasm for the material but also her applied understanding of the material and capability for thinking about real-world problems. Sasha's not stuck in the abstract, it's all about this world for her."

After finishing her senior thesis on the topic and graduating, Fisher, inspired and educated by her work as an undergrad with the New Sudan Education Initiative, another non-profit created by UVM alumni, co-founded Spark MicroGrants with Georgetown and Columbia University graduate Teddy Svoronos, who conceived of the organization as a Fulbright Scholar in Tanzania, and computer scientist Neal Lesh, who specializes in using information technology to address poverty. With an initial $10,000 investment, Fisher moved to Rwanda two months after graduating and began putting the model into action.

What is the model? It's simple, she says: let community members drive development in their villages. Rather than NGOs and other outside groups dictating what a community needs, Spark MicroGrants offers a sum of money (typically $5,000 or less) and works with the community to identify their needs and draft a proposal that ensures sustainability of the chosen project. (Watch the audio slideshow above to learn how a group of women in Uganda turned $1,600 into a school for their vilage's children.)

Don't confuse microgranting with microlending. While the latter has received a good amount of attention from the media, not all of it has been favorable. That concept, which enables individuals to loan money to help impoverished people fund a small business, has drawn criticism for failing to reach the poorest of the developing world, leading more people into the debt cycle and lacking sustainability. Spark's model of microgranting, on the other hand, erases debt from the equation, and focuses on improving quality of life for a community, rather than earning money for a single entrepreneur.

So far, Spark has funded more than 24 projects in Rwanda and Uganda, and has expanded from a full-time staff of just Fisher, then Fisher and fellow UVM alumnus Eamon Penney '09, to now employing seven full-timers and a team of part-time staff from universities in both countries. In August, Fisher says, the full-time ranks will increase to 12.

"It is so exciting to think about Spark in the long run, because one of the things we're doing is we're building a model for microgranting, and this model could be used everywhere in the world," Fisher says. "Hopefully we'll have proven that this model is the model we should be using for development."

To learn more about Spark MicroGrants and to donate, visit its website: sparkmicrogrants.org.

Read the video's transcript.

The digester, located at an award-winning dairy farm in Sheldon, Vt. called Green Mountain Dairy, is the subject of an experiment St. Pierre, a postdoctoral scientist in UVM’s Department of Animal Science, is conducting with his mentor, department chair Andre-Denis Wright. Using DNA sequencing and other sophisticated techniques, the scientists are exploring the microbial ecology of the digester’s contents to see if its population of methanogens -- methane-producing microorganisms that live in the gut of most herbivores -- can be coaxed into higher productivity. More productive methanogens mean more methane, which the farm siphons off the digester and burns in a generator to produce electricity it sells back to the power grid, and more income for the farm.

Wright’s and St. Pierre’s work is also part of another experiment, one that colleges of agriculture across the country are watching carefully. This year, UVM abandoned the traditional model of conducting dairy research via a centralized, on-campus herd, moving instead to one where UVM faculty like Wright work directly on dairy farms.

Loss to leader

The Dairy Center of Excellence, as the new on-farm program is called, was conceived in a climate of mounting financial pressure. With cutbacks in federal funding, fluctuating milk prices, and astronomically rising prices for feed and bedding, the university’s herd of 300 cows was losing UVM up to $90,000 annually and cost several hundred thousand dollars a year to maintain. 

“There had to be a better way to utilize these funds,” says Tom Vogelmann, dean of UVM’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.   

Two summers ago, the college sold its research herd, maintaining a small number of cows for teaching purposes. It now uses the portion of its annual federal appropriation that had gone to herd maintenance to directly support research that will take place at a growing number of best-practices partner farms located within an hour of UVM’s campus -- six currently, including Green Mountain Dairy. Vogelmann works closely with Wright, who is also director of the Dairy Center of Excellence, to allocate the funds to faculty through a competitive grant process. 

The new arrangement isn’t only a good business decision, it also makes for better, more relevant science, Vogelmann says.

“Centralized research facilities are fine for certain kinds of research,” which require rigorous controls, he says.  “But really to solve a lot of the issues that are ongoing out in the state, you have to be out in the state.” 

The university will also maintain elements of the traditional research model.  Plans for the upgraded Miller Research Complex, UVM's on-campus farm, call for a 50-stall research barn. But animals will be brought in only for the duration of a research project, not maintained permanently at the facilty.

The new program targets eight focus areas -- chosen by the industry representatives, farmers, public officials and UVM faculty on its advisory council -- vital to Vermont agriculture, ranging from forage research to disease prevention and treatment to innovative technologies, Wright’s area. Three new projects, in addition to Wright’s, were funded this year.

Public attention

If all goes as planned, Vogelmann hopes to supplement his budget with industry funding, faculty-won research grants from external sources, and foundation support, eventually bankrolling up to six new multi-year projects annually with a million dollars in play in any given year. 

That’s a model that has caught the attention of other public universities, all of whose agricultural colleges are being squeezed financially. 

“It’s a fact that all land grants are going through hard times … and we are all looking at innovative ways of doing programming,” says Bob Harmon, chair of the Department of Animal and Food Sciences at the University of Kentucky.  “Dairy Center of Excellence may be one type of approach that land grants take to continue to do valid animal research. “

The model is working just fine at Green Mountain Dairy.  Central Vermont Public Service, the utility that buys back the electricity the dairy produces, is keenly interested in Wright’s work. In just the way Vogelmann hopes, it recently awarded him a grant through its Cow Power program. 

“When we look at a digester now, we know we pump manure in, and something slightly different comes out, but it’s really a black box,” says David Dunn, manager of renewable energy projects at the utility. “If there’s a way to get a better understanding of how the system works and improve its economics, that’s a great benefit to Vermont and to Vermont agriculture.” 

So far, only extreme cold stops the hemlock woolly adelgid. But the University of Vermont’s Scott Costa may soon give forest managers and homeowners a tool to fight back.

Working with the U.S. Forest Service, the State of Vermont, and others, Costa, an entomologist in UVM’s Department of Plant and Soil Science, has been developing a novel method of putting an insect-killing fungus, lecanicillium muscarium, to work protecting hemlock trees.  

The entire range of eastern hemlock and the less common Carolina hemlock, from southern Canada to Georgia, is currently at risk from the adelgid, a bug native to Asia that arrived in the United States in the 1920s and made its way to the East Coast in the 1950s. The stakes are high: hemlock provides habitat for dozens of mammals and birds. Arching over streams, it creates deep shade critical for the survival of trout and other fish. Some scientists think hemlock is a so-called keystone species, holding up a whole ecosystem.

Nobody thinks the adelgid pest can be eliminated. But Costa has had success with field trials on one-acre forest plots in Tennessee, using helicopters to drop the fungus — mixed with his proprietary blend of growth-enhancing ingredients — into the epicenter of the adelgid’s devastating attack. These trials reduced the growth rate of adelgid by fifty percent — “that’s the first time that’s been demonstrated with an insect-killing fungus,” Costa says — and it seems likely to give trees a fighting chance of recovery.

Over the last year, Costa has been testing the same technology on single trees in Vermont to see if ground-based spray applications will work, too. UVM Today dropped in on Costa in the field at Townshend State Park, north of Brattleboro, Vt., and in his laboratory at Jeffords Hall on campus. We wanted to see if his latest experiment would succeed.

Reassurance in research

While making pancakes one morning years ago, Bill McDowell was intrigued by how the frying batter “looked like a celestial orb against the deep black of the griddle.” He set a few pancakes aside and later placed them on his scanner with the cover open and the contrast boosted. Sure enough, the pancakes resembled moons in the sky.

After his father's death in 2004, McDowell's interest in using the flatbed scanner as a tool for making images of the night sky met with the symbolic possibilities of using human ashes as a medium. In the months that passed between his father's cremation and when the family gathered to spread his remains, McDowell had time to think more about his ideas with the scanner and the night sky. His mother agreed to let him work with some of the ashes.

As for what his father would have thought — a question that begs to be asked and McDowell has heard before — he says, “He was very much a nuts-and-bolts kind of guy; he wasn’t terribly interested in the arts, much more interested in reading mystery novels than Susan Sontag. But especially toward the end of his life he grew to really respect the choices that his kids made. In that, I think he would have fully appreciated and supported this work.”

Through the initial awkwardness and search for direction, McDowell eventually found his footing in research. While he could see that his first scans of fine pieces of ash looked similar to stars, he had no knowledge of astronomy to inform his work. A trip to the library yielded, among a stack of volumes, the Carnegie Atlas of Galaxies, a catalog of all of the galaxies discovered and photographed between 1910 and 1975, and A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way by Edward Barnard, published in 1927.

“In these books I found images that attracted me in their ‘otherness’ and in their ability to be translated to ash,” McDowell said in the 2009 Dallas speech. “I chose these photographs to work from because, to me, they represented something else besides what they were. Not in a literal sense, but they conjured up a feeling in me.”

While it has never been McDowell’s intent to produce copies of the galaxies, he used the books as guides in working to create images that would “exist both as pictures of ashes and as celestial scenes.” His success in that is immediately evident with a visit to the BCA Center’s second floor gallery where the large, striking prints line three walls.

Grounding his work in research is a common thread through most of McDowell’s past projects, tracing back to “Banner of Light,” a series of photographs taken at Lily Dale, a Spiritualist camp on she shore of Western New York’s Cassadaga Lake. Extensive research into the history of the Spiritualism religious movement, which is rooted in the mid-nineteenth century, greatly influenced the formal decisions he made in his photographs. “The same thing with this (“Ashes in the Night Sky”), McDowell says. “From the beginning I tempered my formalistic tendencies by using astronomical photographs as models to work from — that tremendously influenced the decisions that I made.”

And the influence, both of his research and the art he’s created, continue to find their way into McDowell’s life, even when he just steps out the door in the evening for some fresh air. “Anytime I go outside, I look up, I take account of what I can see,” he says. “It has subtly, but profoundly, changed the way that I think about the night.”

Connolly's sports science columns in Runner’s World, Prevention Magazine, Health magazine, SELF and other high-profile publications have attracted the attention of professional hockey, soccer and football players and Olympic-caliber runners, bikers, swimmers and rowers seeking training advice and evaluation at UVM's Human Performance Lab.

Connolly draws on his 20-plus years of experience working with these athletes in his new book Heart Rate Training, co-written with world-renowned running coach and exercise scientist Roy Benson, who coached 1972 USA Olympic team members Frank Shorter, winner of the gold medal in the marathon, ninth-place marathon finisher Jack Batchelor, and legendary runners Jeff Galloway and Ron Jourdan.

The book is designed to provide recreational athletes with the same heart-rate training information as elite athletes in a way that is easily accessible and applicable to their own training needs. “Roy Benson has more specific coaching experience for every age and competitive level than anyone I know,” writes Jonathan Beverly, editor and chief of Running Times magazine. “Combining that practical knowledge with the scientific expertise of Declan Connolly, this book is an unparalleled guide to maximizing your training using a heart rate monitor, providing both the how and why for each element, and putting it all together in an accessible easy-to-apply package.”

Connolly’s heart rate training techniques have been proven on both collegiate and professional levels. In 1994, the New York Rangers sought help from Connolly, who determined that many of the players were too aerobically fit but not strong enough from a strength and speed perspective. The team altered its training methods accordingly and won the Stanley Cup that season.

“Since my arrival at the University of Vermont, Dr. Connolly has had a major impact on the resurgence of our hockey program, both from a strength and conditioning perspective as well as educating our student-athletes on sports nutrition," says Kevin Sneddon, head coach of the UVM men’s hockey team. Jesse Cormier, UVM men’s soccer coach, says Connolly’s “unique gift to deliver this level of understanding and scientific data with such clarity and ease” has allowed his players to utilize information that has played a major role in the success of his team.

During their collaboration Connolly and Benson, who also serves as president and executive director of the world-famous Florida Track Club, learned they had something else in common.

“It turns out that we were both influenced by a legendary professor and exercise physiologist named Christian Zauner, albeit 30 years apart at different universities,” says Connolly, who dedicated the book along with Benson to Zauner. “I’m honored to have been able to collaborate with someone as well respected and knowledgeable as Roy Benson. It gives the book instant credibility.”

On Saturday, Feb. 26, the current Top Cats will welcome back alumni for a 30^th Anniversary Concert at Ira Allen Chapel. In addition to the performance by today’s Top Cats, alumni groups will also perform favorites from their eras, and all of the Top Cats present will join in at one point during the evening. Tickets available at the door beginning at 7 p.m.; doors open at 7:30; show at 8.

So she’s bemused, at best, that while we understand a lot about sexuality in men, this topic that’s integral to developing and maintaining healthy relationships as well as general wellbeing is largely out of bounds for study in women.

“Women are left untouched, a mystery,” says Rellini, “because it’s not appropriate to study them. It’s a taboo topic.”

She runs, in fact, one of only three laboratories in the U.S. that conducts sex research on women and her funding is almost nonexistent. That’s why she agreed to take part in the Discovery Channel’s documentary, The Science of Lust, to emphasize science in the conversation about sex.

Rellini and her students, both graduate and undergraduate, volunteer time for this work (Rellini’s research necessarily extends into other areas) because they see a real need in women, evidenced in part by the fact that study volunteers come to them regularly seeking help.

Body and Brain

UVM’s lab is known in particular for a series of studies with female survivors of sexual abuse, a population with a higher likelihood of experiencing sexual dysfunction than other women. Integral to her work is studying how both the mind and the body respond to sexual stimuli. How the two correlate is key to sexual function.

“Subjective experiences of sexual arousal and physiological experiences of sexual arousal,” Rellini says, “are two independent events and while for some women they are intrinsically connected, for other women the two experiences are much more in dyssynchrony… a woman who has a problem with sexual desire (the motivation to engage in sexual activity) or sexual arousal (response to sexual stimuli) will show a stronger dyssynchrony in her physiological and subjective sexual responses compared to a woman who has no problems in those areas.”

The power of concordance between the two, according to Rellini, is demonstrated by the failure of the drug Viagra to improve sexual functioning in women as it has so successfully in men, whose bodies and minds are, on the whole, decidedly in sync in the presence of sexual stimuli. Viagra did, in fact, increase women’s physiological sexual responses but it had no effect on their subjective experience.

"Actually, women with a history of sexual abuse,” says Rellini, “will find themselves very upset by their responses to the Viagra pill. We think now that those results were coming up because the pill actually increased this dyssynchrony, so there was even more physiological response and even less subjective, so women were not feeling in tune with their bodies and that exacerbated their problem rather than improve it like it does for men.”

Sync in Progress

The part of her work that offered the tease for television, an inside look for Discovery viewers into how she measures these responses, for Rellini is just a means of collecting data to get to her end goal: treatment for a problem that is highly distressing for many women.

“I’m more interested in cognitive mechanisms and the interaction between cognition and biology, the neurotransmitters involved in desire or arousal,” she says.

Rellini is now in the early stages of a trial she is developing with an undergraduate student intended to help women experiencing problems integrate their emotional and physical responses to sexual stimuli. Participants will come to the lab, meet in groups and be given specific tasks and skills to practice at home. The intent is to increase positive experiences during sexual arousal and pay attention to physiological responses, creating connections that will enhance sexual experiences with a partner.

This is a psychological treatment that Rellini believes could pair nicely with new pharmacological approaches that are targeting dopamine and serotonin neurotransmitters, mechanisms that impact subjective sexual response. That begs Rellini’s response to recent documentaries such as Orgasm, Inc. that have targeted outrage at pharmaceutical companies. The suggestion is that “female sexual dysfunction” -- quotations are from the film’s marketing materials -- is the invention of an industry in pursuit of profits.

Rellini’s view is that the filmmakers, acting under a misguided framing of feminism, are oblivious to the fact that sexual dysfunction in women was identified decades ago by Alfred Kinsey as well as Masters and Johnson.

“They are claiming that it’s completely normal for a woman to feel no sexual desire, not be able to have an orgasm and have difficulty becoming sexually aroused,” says Rellini. “That’s just how women are and we should all accept it. That is telling a lot of women who are actually experiencing distress because of sexual dysfunction that it’s all in their heads and they just need to get over it. It doesn’t seem that different from when we were telling people the same thing about depression.”

The forest is contributing 125 sustainably harvested trees to the Aiken renovation, about 24,000 board feet in all. The project will showcase the color and grain of nine different tree species from the forest via extensive paneling throughout the newly renovated building.

While aesthetics are partly the goal -- vertical lengths of paneling will scale the building's three story atrium, for instance - planners also want the wood to remind students and visitors of its origins.

This educational objective will be achieved with a series of displays outlining the history of the forest, culminating in its new status as an officially certified green forestry operation. While Jericho has been sustainably managed since UVM acquired it, the forest received formal certification -- from the Forest Stewardship Council -- just this January.

UVM Today recently visited the forest to meet up with the person who's managing the Aiken timber harvest, Brendan Weiner, to learn more about the principles of sustainable forestry and watch the process in action.

Orlove is a senior business administration student concentrating in entrepreneurship. He says it's his passion for music that helped him create a website that combines social networking and music subscriptions with a live performance calendar. It's called Amplified.fm.

"We're really trying to be the one source where a band can get promoted, get revenue, and get exposure," says Ryan Orlove, of Amplified.fm. "We sign artists to a free non-exclusive contract that allows us to distribute their music and unleash their content on this subscription service in which they get compensated according to how many times their album has been downloaded in a given month."

Earlier this year, Orlove applied to be a contestant in an online contest for entrepreneurs. He was chosen from several hundred applicants to be part of "Second Chance," The six-part Web series features four entrepreneurs, all of whom attempted to start their own businesses but fell short of success, as they learn to compete against one another in business-specific challenges for $150,000 and a chance to successfully start their business.

"They brought me to Manhattan, they paid for my expenses, for my travel, they paid for every expense that I incurred there," he says.

The show consists of several challenges that test the four contestants on strategy, marketing and public relations, technology, building the right team, and creating a compelling "elevator pitch." The contestants receive advice from top business mentors and learn about new concepts that may help them in their next venture.

"I have experienced so much in regards to my business, not only do I know how to succeed, but I know every single step that I need to take in order to get there," he says.

Orlove credits the help he received from both his professors and his peers at the School of Business Administration for helping turn an idea into an actual business.

"Being in college, there are a huge amount of resources available to us as students that I don't think students understand are there," he says. "You have nothing to lose in emailing a professor or asking a student for help or anything like that. In addition to that, nine times out of ten, they'll probably help you."

Orlove is now asking his peers and professors to help him win the Second Chance competition by voting for him in early December. The winner walks away with $150,000 for his or her business, the runner-up will receive $25,000. But even if he doesn't win, Orlove is confident in his future.

"I know I'm going to be successful," he says.

You can watch Second Chance online at businessonmain.com. Voting begins in early December.

See photos from past excursions, and hear David Osgood, instructor and psychologist who team-teaches the course with his wife Carla, talk about the experience in this audio slideshow. Then, visit the course's website for the dates and times of upcoming information sessions and to reserve your spot.



But how much has time altered the nation's oldest long-distance hiking trail? A new collection available on the UVM Libraries' Center for Digital Initiatives (CDI) website helps answer that question. The site offers a glimpse into the early days of the trail created by the Green Mountain Club, an organization that celebrates its centennial this year.

Nine hundred images, dating from 1912-1937 have been scanned and uploaded, pulling them out of the depths of the library's Special Collections and making them available to anyone with internet access.

Most of the images, photographed by Green Mountain Club members Theron S. Dean and Herbert Wheaton Congdon, came to the library in the form of glass slides -- some black and white, some hand painted -- which were used as promotional materials in "magic lantern" slideshows around the state and the region in the early- to mid-1900s.

"These images are now available to everyone," says library staff member Dan DeSanto, who spent months describing the photos, preparing them for easy browsing on the site. "If you go to cdi.uvm.edu, the Center for Digital Initiatives website, you can click on Long Trail Collection, as well as any of the CDI collections, and browse or search."

Hear DeSanto and UVM librarian Chris Burns talk about the collection, and see examples of the slides in the video above.

In all, a record 229 students participated, almost a third more than last year, including 99 undergraduates. Among the noteworthy aspects of this year's event: more students than ever before from non-STEM disciplines (science, technology, math, and engineering) were represented.

"We made a serious effort to engage students in the social sciences and the fine arts, the humanities and the professions," said Honor College dean S. Abu Rizvi.

"The event was designed to emulate one that an association like the American Medical Association, the American Chemical Society, or the American Physical Society would put on," said Domenico Grasso, vice president for Research and dean of the Graduate College. "Any of the those conferences would be very similar to how we've organized this, so we can the give students a true, real-world experience. "

The event was co-sponsored by the Honors College and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Study.

Watch the video to see their moves, and visit the club's website to learn more.