TGIF News will join UM students on Spring Break next week. Look for your next issue Friday, April 1. No foolin'.

If waiting until Sunday for the Easter Bunny is just too hard, come to the fifth annual Easter Eggstravaganza at 1 p.m. Saturday, March 26, on the UM Oval.

Sections will be designated for each age group, with age-appropriate candy and prizes for 0-3, 4-5, 6-7 and 8-9 year olds. Parents are welcome to assist children ages 0-3. Monte and the Easter Bunny will be on hand to meet kids and pose for photos. The event is free and open to the public.

This year's Easter egg hunt will surpass previous years with more than 12,000 prize eggs and 25,000 pieces of candy. That's bigger than three years ago when USA Today ranked it the third best Easter egg hunt in the United States -- behind only the White House and Central Park.

Maroon, silver and gold eggs will reward those who find them with top prizes. In addition, in honor of the hunt's fifth anniversary, a "grand gold" egg will be hidden on the field in each age group. Children finding those eggs will win bicycles.

The UM women's basketball team will face Vanderbilt University Saturday in the first round of the 2005 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship.

The Lady Griz (22-7), who earned a No. 12 seed after winning the Big Sky Conference tournament, will play the No. 5 seed Commodores (22-7) at Bank of America Arena in Seattle. Tip-off will be at approximately 8:30 p.m. MST.

The winner of the UM-VU game will face either No. 4 seed Kansas State (23-7) or No. 13 seed Bowling Green (23-7) Monday night.

A team of students from the UM School of Law will join students from 13 other U.S. law schools in representing their country at the 46th annual Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition.

The Sherman & Sterling International Rounds of the competition will be held March 27-April 3 in Washington, D.C., where U.S. teams will compete against 94 law schools from around the world.

The competition requires students to participate in a mock trial before the International Court of Justice, or "World Court." The students will argue a hypothetical case between two fictional countries, "The Case Concerning the Vessel 'The Mairi Maru,'" which concerns legal issues resulting from a pirate attack against a ship carrying nuclear materials.

The UM International Moot Court team includes third-year law students Jacey Messer, Matt Lowy, Eli Parker and Ryan McCarty, as well as second-year student Stephanie Happold. The team is coached by David Aronofsky, UM legal counsel, and Sally Cummins, a lawyer for the U.S. State Department. Both Aronofsky and Cummins teach public international law at UM.

UM has been named a "college with a conscience" by the Princeton Review and Campus Compact. UM is among 81 institutions of higher learning in 33 states to receive the designation.

As a result, Princeton Review will highlight UM in its forthcoming book "Colleges With a Conscience: 81 Great Schools With Outstanding Community Involvement." Available in bookstores June 21, the book offers two-page profiles on each college, as well as advice for applicants.

The Princeton Review, a publisher of college guides, partnered with National Campus Compact, which promotes the civic purposes of higher education, to develop the "Colleges With a Conscience" program. They worked together to select schools that exemplify the ideals of community service and civic engagement.

The two national organizations selected their "College With a Conscience" honorees from more than 900 colleges. They used the following criteria: admission practices and use of scholarships to reward community service; support for service-learning programs; student activism and student voice in student governance; and level of social engagement of its student body.

"The 2005 Clark Fork Symposium -- 20 Years of Conservation Science" will be held at The University of Montana March 31-April 2.

The symposium features lectures, slide shows, videos, workshops and more on watershed conservation, as well as information on restoration of the Upper Clark Fork basin.

The event begins with a tour of the remediation and restoration work in the basin, including the restoration of Silver Bow Creek. Events on April 1 include lectures and poster presentations, as well as a tour of the new Montana Natural History Center. The symposium ends April 2 with a tour of Missoula urban creek projects in Pattee Canyon and Grant Creek.

Registration costs $30 for the general public and $10 for students. Field trips cost $10 each day. Information and registration forms are available online.

So how did the skunk cross the road? Or the weasel, marmot, vole or porcupine?

A lot of times they didn't. These small animals get flattened on highways that fragment their habitat. But a new invention recently patented by UM aims to protect them from humanity's automotive hazards.

It's called the "critter crawl," and it's the brainchild of Kerry Foresman, a UM biology professor, and Cory Claussen, an employee of Roscoe Steel & Culvert Co. of Missoula.

The critter crawl is basically a shelf suspended inside a culvert to allow animals to move easily and safely under a highway -- even when the culvert contains water. The shelf floor is metal mesh with holes smaller than 1 inch to allow small animals to cross comfortably. The shelf also is removable so it doesn't impede water and debris movement during floods or high-water events.

Foresman, an animal ecologist, said four of the culvert shelves are now in use beneath U.S. Highway 93 in the Bitterroot Valley. Roscoe Steel, which made the shelves, has been licensed by UM to market and manufacture critter crawls.

There are more connections in the brain than stars in the universe, and Brain Awareness Week and UM volunteers are offering local junior high students a better understanding of how their minds work.

Brain Awareness Week began Monday and runs through Sunday, March 20. UM is sending four teams of graduate and undergraduate students to junior high science and health classes to teach students more about research and the brain. The teams are from UM's National Institutes of Health Center for Structural and Functional Neuroscience.

UM researchers received a grant from NIH, a Congress-funded program, to investigate brain damage that leads to disability and mental illness. Answers would help scientists develop more effective treatments.

Headwater News, an online daily news service for the Rocky Mountain West, has received a major grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

The grant will provide Headwaters with $200,000 over three years to continue and enhance its reporting of news and opinions that help shape the region.

Headwaters is a project of the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West, a policy center at UM.

The news service chronicles the current boom in oil, gas and coalbed methane development; the growing demand for water, growth and sprawl; New West and traditional economic developments; broad demographic changes; American Indian issues; and shifts in political structures. The site also tracks daily issues that underlie these dramatic changes.

Headwaters was founded in 1999 with a grant from the Hewlett Foundation.

UM students are needed to volunteer as tutors for the America Reads America Counts program. Volunteers will help elementary school children develop better reading and math skills. The program is operated by UM's Office for Civic Engagement.

Tutors will spend between two and 15 hours each week at their volunteer school and will attend two training sessions offered by the School of Education, Department of Mathematics and the Office for Civic Engagement. Students can volunteer after school or during specific schooltime hours.

The America Reads program was established in 1996, and the America Counts program began in 1999. Both programs were organized to strengthen elementary school students' abilities and to promote equality in education.

For more information about America Reads America Counts or to volunteer, visit the Office for Civic Engagement in Social Science Room 126 or call (406) 243-5531.

Sixteenth-seeded Montana wasn't able to pull off the big upset in the NCAA tournament yesterday in Boise, Idaho.

The No. 1-seeded University of Washington Huskies proved too much for the Griz, winning 88-77 and ending the Grizzlies' season. It was the UM men's first NCAA tournament since the 2001-02 season.

The Griz finish the season with an 18-13 record and can look forward to next season with a talented group of young players returning. Only one player, senior Kamarr Davis, is being lost to graduation.