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UVM Impact
Graduate Education and Research News March 2022
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| Welcome
Welcome to the March 2022 issue of IMPACT, an e-newsletter highlighting research, scholarship, and graduate education at the University of Vermont. The spring semester has proven to be a busy one for both the Graduate College and the Office of the Vice President for Research. At the beginning of the semester, the Graduate College co-sponsored a faculty development seminar and workshop on inclusive and culturally responsive mentoring. It's also award season, so the Graduate College has been busy accepting applications for numerous student awards. This spring has seen a record number of international graduate students, spurring the Graduate College to start a new initiative that includes offering a series of English language workshops. OVPR continues set records as they actively support student and faculty in their research. A recent article announced that UVM now ranks among the top 100 public research universities in the United States (National Science Foundation).
Dean Cindy Forehand and Vice President for Research Kirk Dombrowski welcome you to read on and discover what else has been happening.
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Featured Grad Student: Kate Porterfield, M.S.
The common thread in Kate's research is nutrient cycling. That is, how elements move through the biosphere and how human activities alter both their movement and the places they're stored. She explains that these alterations are the cause of various environmental issues. Ecological engineering can help address some of these issues, and Kate's research involves finding ways to optimize biogeochemical cycling through agroecosystems in order to enhance the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of food systems. Basically, she looks at a food waste stream and thinks about how it can be used as a resource rather than something to be disposed of.
Her current focus is food waste, and an emerging sub issue in this area is microplastics. This is of growing concern because Vermont has one of the most progressive food diversion programs in the nation, which means that a lot of food waste is now being redirected to composting and anaerobic digestion, including significant quantities of food still in packaging. The result is microplastics in compost and digestate. The potential dangers of this are unclear, and the studies are both scant and difficult to compare. Kate and her mentor, Professor Eric Roy, did a literature review to establish what is currently known in the area of microplastics in food waste. We recently spoke with Kate about her research. See more>>
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Graduate Student Senate The Graduate Student Senate (GSS) started the year by hosting their annual GSS Spring Retreat, which was held virtually due to COVID-19. At the retreat, senators shared their accomplishments from the fall semester and discussed GSS committee goals and expectations for the current semester. Senators formed collaborations and planned new projects for the semester as well. Last semester, the Graduate Student Advocacy and Experience Committee, which is led by MBA candidate Tate Moeller and Ph.D. student Atoosa Parsa and includes 7 other GSS senators, helped 200+ graduate students with food insecurity issues, incorporated a mental health resource section in the GSS newsletter, and organized airport pickups for incoming international students.
The Graduate Student Senate (GSS) and the Graduate College welcomed back students by organizing the annual Graduate Student Hockey Night. Students received two free tickets for the UVM’s men’s hockey game against the Alaska Nanooks on January 28th. The game ended with a 2-0 win for the Catamounts. The graduate students enjoyed the match, which, for some, was their first time watching an ice hockey match. Recently, on March 1, GSS held a bowling event where graduate students displayed their skills and took some time off to relax. GSS is planning several other social events this semester in hopes of countering the feelings of isolation caused by the pandemic. These events will include snowshoeing, trivia night, and regular coffee breaks. Please watch the GSS calendar for updates (By Irfan Tahir and Rosie Chapina)
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University Scholar Lecture: Joseph Acquisto, Ph.D.
Dr. Acquisto specializes in nineteenth and twentieth-century French literature, with particular emphasis on lyric poetry and the novel. His research interests include the relations between music and literature, the notion of modernity in intellectual history and the arts, and philosophical approaches to poetry, with particular attention to the work of Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Marcel Proust, and Emil Cioran.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy Dr. Acquisto's inaugural University Scholar lecture: Living Well with Pessimism, Then and Now.
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Postdoctoral Association The UVM Postdoctoral Association (PDA) continues to provide professional development and community integration programming for postdocs on campus. A hiking event held in Jericho last fall provided a much-needed respite for members who engaged in some relaxation and leaf peeping at the Old Mill Park. It was followed by a coffee and crafting hour later in the semester, which was held at the Davis Center and gave postdocs a chance to decompress and gear up for the holidays. Coffee hours and outdoor social events will continue throughout the semester, and dedicated events have been planned to support and promote psychological health among postdocs and researchers at UVM. Many PDA officers serve on University committees and advocate on behalf of postdocs in a variety of ways. The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) continues to help find ways for postdocs to advance and promote their scholarly work. Currently, planning is underway for a Postdoctoral Research Showcase Session to be held as a part of OVPR’s "Week of Research." This will provide an opportunity for postdocs to attend professional talks and showcase their scholarship to the wider UVM community. PDA welcomes input from fellow postdocs or anyone with ideas on how to make the Postdoctoral Association an informative, inclusive, and engaging space for all. Please consider joining the PDA Slack channel if you haven’t already! (By Brandon Bensel)
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Postdoc Spotlight: Christopher Kojzar
Christopher Kojzar came to UVM as an Andrew Harris Fellow in the fall of 2021 and is involved in numerous projects at UVM and beyond. He teaches Digital Arts 144 and 196 - 3D Digital Model Creation.
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Though his multicultural origins already provided him a unique vantage point from which to view the world, Christopher Kojzar has cultivated situations that would allow him to experience creativity and multi-ethnicity beyond himself and his family—family that includes a mother who is also an artist and a father who emigrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia. By way of universities, artist residencies, service missions, and traveling abroad, Kojzar has shaped his craft. His extensive travels have allowed him to associate with people on five different continents and learn multiple languages, broadening his view of the world in general and the art world in particular. Kojzar's work is as diverse as his experiences. A multidisciplinary artist, Kojzar is currently working on projects that include sculpture, mixed media, and immersive video. He is presently involved in two large public works art projects in Maryland and is part of the upcoming exhibit, SUSPENDED INTER-SPACES, at VisArts Center outside of Washington, DC. For Baltimore's Lexington Market Project, the artist is teaming up with his mother, Oletha DeVane, to create a large outdoor sculpture, which will be unveiled in September of this year. Plainclothes Agenda is an ongoing project that puts Christopher Kojzar in public spaces where he creates art in response to the interactions he has with the people in those spaces. Through this project, he explores the "increasingly troubled phenomenon of observing and being observed in an era of escalating surveillance and mistrust…" See more>> (Photos and video content: Christopher Kojzar)
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| Graduate Program Spotlight
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Program Spotlight: SI-MBAUVM’s Sustainable Innovation MBA (SI-MBA) is a 1-year intensive graduate program that has been getting a lot of good press recently. Not only has it been ranked in Princeton Review’s Top Green MBA List for the past 5 years (taking the #1 spot in 2018, 2019, and 2020), the program garnered similar accolades from Corporate Knights’ Better World MBA rankings, listing in the top 10 globally in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.
The success of the program is due in part to the fact that it is continually growing in progressive ways by offering students a variety of hands-on learning opportunities, new track options, and unique opportunities to connect with businesses and business leaders, including SI-MBA's executives-in-residence.
The current class is a diverse group students from across the U.S. as well as Columbia, Argentina, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and India. A member of the Class of 2022 cohort, Taylor R. Smith, explains that the vast majority of this year's class came to the program with professional experience, which enhances the program. People in the current cohort arrived with backgrounds in marketing, engineering, sustainability, education, the non-profit sector, the performing arts, food systems, and a variety of other areas. Taylor, who is also one of this year's Thomas J. Votta scholarship winners, provides some insights into the program... See more>>
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Research Spotlight
Recently, Professor Bongard and three other scientists, including UVM alumnus Sam Kriegman, Ph.D., made world headlines again after an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America showed xenobots to be the first created organisms to reproduce.
Since then, the world has been abuzz with talk of this discovery. The coverage, which includes articles in UVM News, The Smithsonian, Seven Days, and Nautilus, has highlighted this momentous discovery from a variety of angles and has helped people digest the implications of this research that has elicited much awe but also some misunderstanding and fear. The potential benefits are undeniable and include diverse medical and environmental applications. As for the uneasiness, stemming from various metaphysical and ethical questions brought about by the idea of "creating new life," Professor Bongard and his team hope to cultivate a deeper understanding of the "innate creativity in life." As Bongard explains in the Nautilus article, “Humans tend to break things up into pieces and categorize them, because it’s the only way we can build and understand them, but nature isn’t hobbled as we are.” Dr. Bongard hopes that xenobots will help do away with dichotomous thinking in this area ( video link). "Embodied Energy" is a term Dr. Bongard and his fellow researchers have used to explain this new paradigm for autonomous robots, a concept explained in a new Nature article. See more >>
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Alumni NewsChristina Fabrey, M.Ed., (G' 2001 Master of Education) completed both her undergraduate and graduate work at UVM. When we asked her if she would consider being featured in our "Alumni Spotlight" section of the newsletter, she enthusiastically agreed.
She credits UVM with helping her find her love of learning and her passion for mentoring and education. Christina says it was the strong advising relationships and close connections with faculty at UVM that inspired her to cultivate deep learning and engage in a variety of immersive learning experiences. These varied experiences exposed her to education from a variety of angles and solidified her desire to spend her career making a difference in the lives of others through education. This past fall, Christina was named Director of the Student Success Center (SSC) at Virginia Tech.
Christina has been working in student success services for a number of years and is well known in the field for her coaching, mentoring, and leadership in this area. When COVID-19 first appeared in the US, she and her former colleague, Heather Keith, began thinking about the unique circumstance that we all found ourselves in and started focusing on the essential practices in higher education that needed to be embedded in teaching in order to help both students and faculty thrive in the COVID environment. They conceptualized and wrote about what they call "Resilient and Flexible Teaching," or RAFT, which is a holistic student-centered pedagogy that engages best practices in remote teaching while supporting students as they navigate turbulent times. We had the opportunity to ask Christina about RAFT and other student support topics. She generously shared her time and knowledge as well as some great resources. See more>>
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