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Shelburne Pond: a study in progress - Shelburne News
Shelburne News
Lisa Borre came all the way from Annapolis, MD to visit Vermont with a University of Vermont college friend who had rented a house on Lake Champlain for the 4th of July holiday. Her friend, Dr. Jason Stockwell, director of the Rubenstein Ecosystem ...

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Asim Zia, University of Vermont, discusses the background to his article in the latest issue of Policy & Politics, Scale and intensity of collaboration as determinants of performance management gaps in polycentric governance networks: Evidence from a national survey of metropolitan planning organisations (MPOs)

The VT EPSCoR Center for Workforce Development and Diversity (CWDD) held a Macroinvertebrate Identification Workshop for 12 middle and high school teachers on Thursday, July 16 from 10:00am to 2:00pm at Saint Michael’s College. The workshop was designed to assist teachers in the identification of macroinvertebrates with help from Dr. Declan McCabe (Professor of Biology at Saint Michael’s College).

On July 16th, the Center for Workforce Development and Diversity (CWDD) hosted a Data Presenting Seminar (and dinner!) on the Saint Michael's College campus. Professor Declan McCabe gave the undergraduate interns information on the different types of presentations that occur during our symposium in the Spring, and how to access resources to design a research poster. We are excited to see our interns' talks and posters!

Tables turned on Saint Michael’s College faculty mentors for the third and final summer research lunch in Dion Family Student Center on Tuesday, July 14, as their student understudies had a chance to question professors about how the projects they’ve been collaborating on for many weeks might bear on the younger scholars’ futures.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, Department of Geography, University of Vermont, co-authored inaugural journal article published in the American Meteorological Society Journal awarded the NOAA Department of Commerce Silver Medal.

On July 1, 2015, five RACC undergraduate interns, along with Professor Declan McCabe, hosted three elementary school students on the Saint Michael's College campus. Students visited the "bug lab" where they got some awesome bug tattoos, looked at pennies, plants, and macroinvertebrates under the microscope, explored some of the other interesting things you might find in a lab (like a cat skeleton), and made some souvenir science pins.

Traveling to a new place is an exciting opportunity to learn and grow as a person. As scientists, working in the field and collaborating with others are key components to building skill sets and making new discoveries. At East Boston High School, we hope to give students the opportunity to explore the world and develop as scientific thinkers.

In 2015, twenty-two new Fellows joined the Switzer Fellowship Network of over 570 Fellows located across the country and around the world. Read about them and their work below. To find information on Fellowship alumni, please go to the Find an Expert section of our website where you can search by name, region, and area of expertise.

The CWDD welcomed 19 high school student/teacher teams to the Saint Michael's College campus for a week of research education, stream sampling, and career exploration. Teams traveled from Puerto Rico, Delaware, Boston and from all around the state of Vermont. Students learned about the EPSCoR program, received hands-on experience with RACC faculty, and took a trip on UVM's research vessel, the Melosira.

They will spend the next year working on RACC research which will culminate in their presenting their individual projects at the Vermont EPSCoR Student Research Symposium next spring!

On June 16th, all Vermont EPSCoR interns participated in the "Intern Exchange" event - swapping research groups to learn about the various aspects of RACC and NEWRnet research. Interns spent the day visiting different labs at UVM, Saint Michael's College, Middlebury College and Johnson State College to discuss their own research projects and learn from other interns. Interns were encouraged to make connections between their own work and the work being done in their host lab, and to create an art/photography project to share with others.

RACC researchers have been working in the Mad River watershed this spring and summer installing time-integrating suspended sediment samplers, ISCO automated samplers, and tipping bucket rain gages. Graduate students Kristen Underwood, Scott Hamshaw and Jordan Duffy are mentoring students Nathalie Simoes and Wimara Rubia Sa Gomez through the 10-week RACC summer internship.

The third UN World Congress on Disaster Risk Reduction, held in Sendai, Japan in March 2015, agreed on a new framework to guide disaster risk reduction policy and practice for the next 15 years. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (SFDRR) leaves important implementation issues unspecified and potentially creates both problems and opportunities for complex, multilevel governance systems in coping with hazards and disastrous events. Early warning systems (EWS), if built into the mainstream of planning for development and disaster relief and recovery, could present a significant opportunity to realize many SFDRR goals. We explore the complexities of using hydrometeorological EWS to prepare for drought and flood disasters in the densely populated communities of Pakistan's Indus River Basin in contrast to the African Sahel's less densely settled grasslands. Multilevel governance systems are often dominated by a top-down, technocentric, centralized management bias and have great difficulty responding to the needs of peripheral and vulnerable populations. People-centered, bottom-up approaches that incorporate disaggregated communities with local knowledge into a balanced, multilevel disaster risk management and governance structure have a dramatically better chance of realizing the SFDRR goals for disaster risk reduction.

Dr. Judith Van Houten, Ph.D., Director VGN, (center) with Senator Patrick Lehay, UVM President Tom Sullivan, and Vice President for Research, Richard Galbraith at press announcement for $17.8M award for biomedical research efforts through the Vermont Genetics Network on June 12, 2015 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The award will benefit Vermont Colleges across the state. Representatives from Saint Michael's College, Middlebury College, Johnson State College, Norwich University and Castleton State College

Dr. Barbara Murphy, President of Johnson State College, honored for leadership in the partnerships of Johnson State College with Vermont EPSCoR and Vermont Genetics Network.

vtdigger.org
Vermont colleges receive $17.8 million for biomedical research
vtdigger.org
Judith Van Houten, director of Vermont Genetics Network, said the grants are only available for small states such as Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire because they need the resources and it's a competitive process among the states to win the NIH grants.
Vermont educators get grant for biomedical researchBelleville News-Democrat

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Presented here is the third of three 2015 Watershed Moments Scholarly Conversations Videos.

"Watershed Moments", features brief, informal discussions between faculty and graduate students or post doctoral associates, sharing and learning about a recent accomplishment in the faculty member's field of expertise with a colleague or student from outside their field of expertise.

This video features:
"Major Research Instrumentation [MRI] Award" with Dr. Mandar Dewoolkar, Associate Professor, College of Engineering & Mathematical Sciences,UVM and Gabriela Bucini, Post-doctoral Associate, UVM.

RACC intern Meg Leduc with Graduate Research Assistant Peter Isles with first successful core sample!

On June 3rd and 4th, eighteen NEWRnet interns visited the University of Vermont for the second annual NEWRnet short course. The 2015 short course included presentations by NEWRnet faculty introducing students to climate change in the northeast, experimental economics, and water quality issues in the region.
Students played an experimental economics game where they examined human impacts on the environment and toured the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory by the Burlington Waterfront. Field excursions included a boat trip on the Melosira RSV to explore Lake Champlain, and a hike up Mt Philo to see the Lake Champlain Basin from a different perspective.
NEWRnet interns will spend 10 weeks studying topics related to water quality and agent based modeling in three EPSCoR states: Delaware, Vermont and Rhode Island. Students will reconvene at Saint Michael's College in Vermont in August to present their research.

On June 1st, the VT EPSCoR CWDD welcomed 45 new interns to the RACC program! The 2015 Intern Orientation included presentations by RACC faculty and partners introducing interns to climate change and water quality issues in Vermont, as well as outlining the RACC research program questions. Interns will spend the next 10 weeks conducting research on a range of topics related to Research on Adaptation to Climate Change (RACC). Good luck and have fun this summer!