Chancellor's Monday Message
Monday, November 17, 2014    

Imagine how the Rosetta mission scientists felt, after 10 years of assiduous work, when Philae landed on the surface of the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet last Wednesday! The European Space Agency's Jean-Jacques Dordain characterized it as "a big step for human civilization." With curiosity about the genesis of our solar system, what questions can we pose for the geologists who will analyze the comet's composition?

 

Do you know that the personal savings rate for the millennial generation, adults below age 35, is now at -2%? After the recession, millennials saved at the rate of 4.2% just five years ago. In today's economic growth, a Wall Street Journal article (click here) reported savings rates of 5.6% overall for the U.S., 13% for those 55 and older, 6% for those aged 45 to 54, and 3% for those aged 35 to 44. The impact of student debt and unemployment may partly account for the savings deficit, but the failure to save will have an impact on a person's ability to live independently or own a home in the future. Dear students, while you are still in college, learn how to budget your money, squeeze in savings when possible, and search for paid internships to develop the foundation for personal financial health.  

 

On November first, Professors Kathryn Kavanagh and Ben Winslow, assisted by undergraduate student Carrie Winship, hosted on campus for the first time 90 scientists from Harvard, Brown, Tufts, Yale, BU, and others for the Annual Northeast Regional Meeting of Vertebrate Morphologists. Congratulations to our students who presented their research mentored by our faculty: Carrie Winship with Professor Kavanagh, Post-metamorphic ontogeny of Ranitomeya variabilis with focus on hind limb development; Vijay Boominathan with Professor Tracie Ferreira, Identification of the orofacial specific promoters of Tbx22 using transposon transgenics; Ashley Stoehr with Professor Diego Bernal, Thermal dependence of aerobic muscle function in a deep diving shark, Alopias superciliosus and teleost, Xiphias gladius; and Brian Leary with Professor Kavanagh, Estimating adult body size using theropod pedal phalanges proportions.

 

Plaudits to Professor Catherine Neto for presenting before Senate President Therese Murray and members of the Cranberry Oversight Committee -- including myself -- the research that she and Professor Maolin Guo and UMass Amherst colleagues have conducted under the auspices of the UMass Cranberry Health Research Program.

 

Kudos to Sofia Reppucci, SGA President Francis Ndicu, Student Trustee Jacob Miller, and all the SGA officers for effectively organizing the Shake the Ship forum between students and our leadership team on Thursday.

 

At last Friday's Blue and Gold reception, we unveiled the Leadership Walkway plaque honoring Chancellor Emeritus Jean MacCormack, which you will see when you walk between the Foster Building and the Claire T. Carney Library. Engraved on the plaque are her words, "Universities imagine possibilities by calling us to discover, to teach, to learn, and to innovatively and collaboratively serve. These explorations inevitably unleash the power by which education actually transforms the lives of individuals and communities." Congratulations, Jean!

 

Likewise, at the same event our alumnus Donald Wood - who graduated from Bradford Durfee College of Technology in 1960 and is now a faculty member at Bristol Community College, launched the video clip "UMass Dartmouth's 50 Transformative Moments," which we will be posting to our website in the near future. Profuse thanks to Lee Williams and her Advancement and Alumni teams, particularly Bob Saltzman and Meredith Rodrigues, for organizing this very successful event. A project like this is truly an institutional effort, and I'd like to acknowledge John Hoey, Robin Brow, Patrick Cotter and all the team members who worked hard to make it a glorious evening!

 

To our Indian community who celebrated Diwali, we convey wishes of peace, prosperity, and never-ending light! I was honored to attend the "festival of lights" celebration last Saturday at our Campus Center, hosted by our Indian Student Association. It was an opportunity to witness musical renditions by Professors Satya Parayitam, Anthony Baird, Timothy Shea, and Fred Jones; a vocal number by Professor Godwin Ariguzo's daughter Oguche, accompanied on the keyboard by her brother Tobe; and a multitude of our students who exuberantly displayed their abundant talent. Thank you to Professor Parayitam and the ISA officers and team for organizing the event.  

 

Hats off to our MBA students who won top prizes in the Boston's Got Talent show organized by the state-wide Vietnamese Students Association. Tran Thi Huynh won first place for the vocal performance of "Hurt," and Nguyen Phuong Thuy received the people's choice award for the song "I See the Light" after garnering the largest number of votes from the audience.

 

Have a great week!

Chancellor's Signature
UMass Dartmouth