On Monday, Aug. 27, the University of Vermont will begin the academic year with record-breaking total enrollment numbers, an accomplishment UVM has achieved every year for the past three years. Nearly 12,300 total students will attend the university this fall, including approximately 9,450 undergraduates, 1,370 graduate students, 410 medical students and 1,050 non-degree students. Approximately 800 ALANA (Asian-American, Latino, African-American and Native American) students are enrolled this fall.

Before classes begin on Aug. 27, the campus community will celebrate the opening of its 217th year with a convocation ceremony on Sunday, Aug. 26 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the Patrick Gymnasium. This year’s featured speaker is Ishmael Beah, human rights activist and acclaimed author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The event is free and open to the public, however, tickets are required. Visit the convocation website to learn more about acquiring tickets: http://www.uvm.edu/~presdent/ceremonies/convocation/.

After convocation, which will also include remarks from campus leadership, participants are invited to process down Main Street to a candlelight induction ceremony for first-year students on the Campus Green. The candlelight induction ceremony is just one of the events the approximately 2,440 first-year students—a record high for UVM—will participate in over Opening Weekend, an annual program that helps acquaint new students to college life. First-year students, whose averaged combined SAT score for reading, math, and writing is 1757—a ten point increase over last year’s class—will arrive on campus for Opening Weekend on Friday, Aug. 24.

Greeting new and returning students this fall is the newly opened Dudley H. Davis Student Center, the $61 million campus centerpiece that boasts over 4.3 acres of building space. The student center was designed with environmental stewardship in mind, with efforts made to use recycled and locally manufactured materials whenever possible. Features like the building’s green roof, computerized energy management and lighting control system, automatic faucets, and radiant heat system will help save electricity by an estimated 52%, reduce water cost by an estimated 42% and manage stormwater run-off. The building will celebrate its opening with local vendors, free food samples and door prizes at a “green carpet” premiere on Sun. Aug. 26 at 8 p.m. Read more about the Davis Center on the building’s website: http://www.uvm.edu/~davis/.

This year’s incoming class will be the first to complete the university’s new six-credit diversity requirement before graduating. The requirement, which includes taking a three-credit course on race and racism in the United States as soon after matriculating to UVM as possible and completing a second three-credit course on either race and racism in the United States or human and social diversity, was created based on a recommendation made by the President’s Commission on Racial Diversity.

Also new to campus this year is a residential learning community focused on health and wellness located in the Christie-Wright-Patterson-Slade residential complex. The program, which begins this fall, will provide an opportunity for residents to live with other students dedicated to developing and maintaining healthy lifestyle choices.

In the spring, the university will offer its first five multi-disciplinary, problem-based, learning communities, in which students investigate complex problems from a variety of vantage points with professors from across the disciplines. The five approved learning communities for the spring semester are: “Globalization, Gender and Violence: The Women of Juarez, Mexico,” “The Obesity Pandemic: A National Problem with a Local Solution,” “Identity and Reconstruction of the Southern Sudan,” “Communicative Competence in a Multi-literate World” and “Health Challenges in the 21st Century.” Courses covering these topics will be taught by 16 faculty members from a variety of fields, including art and art history, economics, anthropology, nutrition and food science among others. Students will begin registering for the programs later this fall.