Happy Bloomsday to all James Joyce enthusiasts! Today in the U.S. and around the world are celebrations of Leopold Bloom's figmental journey around Dublin highlighted through marathon public readings of Ulysses, Irish music concerts, and other cultural activities.

Are you afflicted with World Cup fever as soccer teams from 32 countries assemble in Brazil for the world's largest sporting event? Will you root for Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo or Brazil's Neymar da Silva Santos? Last Friday, we welcomed a visit by Representative Tony Cabral and the Futebol Clube de Madalena (FCM), a soccer team from the Azores, to our campus and the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives.

Also on Friday, we commemorated another page from our history, the June 14, 1964, groundbreaking of the UMass Dartmouth campus (click here for 1964 picture and June 13, 2014 picture with all of us behind the 50th birthday cake), which we celebrated in the lobby of the Claire T. Carney Library with a huge 50th birthday cake! Town of Dartmouth Administrator David Cressman and SouthCoast Development Partnership Co-Chairs Nick Christ and Peter Kavanaugh joined us, along with many of you. Earlier that morning, I also presented our strategic plan UMassDTransform2020 to the SouthCoast Development Partnership. What an auspicious beginning to launch our strategic plan on the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking of the campus, envisioned by architect Paul Rudolph as an "academic utopia."

Congratulations to Professor Nikolay Anguelov, who just completed his first year at UMass Dartmouth, on his new book Policy and Political Theory in Trade Practice, recently published by Palgrave MacMillan!

Hats off to Professors Mazdak Tootkaboni and Mehdi Raessi who are recipients of a $136,000 award from the UMass President's 2015 Science and Technology Fund for their project titled "UMass Center for Advanced Coatings"!

Kudos to Nicole Tremblay, a BS Nursing graduate in May, 2014, who won the First Place Poster Award at the Eastern Nursing Research Society Annual Meeting in Philadelphia! Nicole's poster presentation, based on her honors thesis, was titled "A Comparison of Knowledge of Heart Failure Education Principles Between Nursing Students and Practicing Nurses."

Last Thursday, our Cabinet members and I toured downtown Fall River, led by Representative Carol Fiola. It was an eye-opening journey from the Diman Regional Vocational Technical School to the Narrows Center for the Arts, Commonwealth Landing, Fall River Industrial Park, Fall River Historical Society, and the Cherry & Webb Building. During our visit to Two Square Science, a company that manufactures automated test and monitoring systems for laboratories, we met CEO Martin Schwalm, a UMassD Mechanical Engineering alum. At the Brian Fox Studio, specializing in paintings of sports figures, Brian Fox declared that he, too, is a UMassD alum. At Dunny's Saloon, we had a small reception joined by Representatives Paul Schmid and Alan Silvia, former Senator Joan Menard, Fall River Schools Superintendent Meg Mayo Brown, and Robert Beatty from the Atlantis Charter School.

Congratulations to Professor Brian Howes, who delivered the first annual John Wylde Lecture at the Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust! Prof. Howes is overseeing the restoration of the Nonquitt Marsh, and is reestablishing about 75 acres of damaged salt marsh as a habitat for birds and marine life.

Have a good week everyone,