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Welcome to TGIF News. This e-mail newsletter is provided weekly, except during the summer and scheduled academic breaks, to subscribers who include students, alumni, employees and friends of The University of Montana.
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Commencement on UM Oval, Online
UM will hold its 113th Commencement ceremony Saturday, May 15, on the Oval in front of Main Hall.
More than 3,000 graduates are invited to participate in the ceremony, which begins at 10 a.m. Graduates who plan to take part will line up at 8:45 a.m. near the Lommason Center. Guests and family members are asked to be seated by 9:20 a.m. The faculty and graduate processional begins at 9:30 a.m.
This year's Commencement speaker is the University's longest-serving president, George M. Dennison.
Large video screens will flank the main stage, and an additional video screen will be placed at the center of the Oval for better viewing of the central Commencement ceremony. A concert sound system will provide high-quality audio.
The central Commencement ceremony also will be simulcast via the Internet on large screens in the following campus locations: North Underground Lecture Hall, Urey Lecture Hall, Clapp Building Room 131, Chemistry Building Room 123, Liberal Arts Building Room 11, McGill Hall Room 210 and Social Science Building Rooms 352 and 356. The central ceremony also will be streaming live online.
Individual ceremonies for professional schools will begin at 11:30 a.m. Individual ceremonies for the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Technology will begin at 1:30 p.m.
Continuous bus service to campus from Park-N-Ride lots on East Broadway and at Dornblaser Field will begin at 7:25 a.m. Saturday. Information about services for guests with disabilities or mobility concerns is available by calling UM Disability Services for Students at 406-243-2243. UM's Access Map has information about physical accessibility on campus.
More details about Commencement are on the UM Registrar's Office website.
UM Map
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Students Award $10,000 to Nonprofits
School of Business Administration students at UM recently learned about philanthropy firsthand when they awarded $10,000 to five local nonprofit organizations.
The Individual and Corporate Philanthropy class is an opportunity for students to take part in a philanthropic experience funded by the Learning by Giving program. With a generous grant from the Sunshine Lady Foundation, students learned about the importance and practice of philanthropy by disbursing grants to Missoula-area nonprofits.
The students issued a request for proposals in April and received 25 submissions from local nonprofits requesting $83,384 in funding to support a variety of programs and services. With only $10,000 to award, the students implemented a rigorous in-class review and scoring process to determine which projects to fund.
In the end, five Missoula nonprofit organizations received funding: Garden City Harvest, Missoula Aging Services, Watson Children's Shelter, Missoula Food Bank and Friends to Youth. Grants ranged from $1,000 to $3,500.
Doris Buffett, sister of Warren Buffett, is the benefactor of the Sunshine Lady Foundation, which provides the grant money for this opportunity to integrate curriculum focused on philanthropy.
Bambi Douma, a UM business professor, and Andrea Vernon, director of the University's Office for Civic Engagement, wrote the grant to bring the Learning by Giving program to UM.
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College Leaders Endorse Policy Overhaul
UM President George M. Dennison co-chairs Second Nature's National Transportation Policy Task Force, a group of 15 college and university presidents that recently made recommendations urging Congress and the Obama administration to overhaul the nation's transportation policy to make reducing greenhouse gas emissions a top priority.
"As leaders of colleges and universities committed to sustainability, we understand the practical challenges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and other sources," Dennison said. "We think the evidence clearly shows our nation's transportation system does not currently have a sustainable course in any sense."
In the coming months, the task force will reach out to other higher education leaders to engage their support and expertise to advance the recommendations and elevate the national dialogue about transportation policy, energy and climate goals.
Second Nature is a national, Boston-based nonprofit organization that serves and supports senior college and university leaders in making sustainability the foundation of all learning and practice in higher education.
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University Opens New Bus Garage
The Associated Students of UM celebrated the opening of a bus garage May 5 that houses the Park-N-Ride and UDASH buses for the ASUM Office of Transportation.
The buses offer service to three Park-N-Ride lots, a shuttle between the main campus and the College of Technology, and a late-night bus to downtown Missoula.
Bus service on campus has grown from a single van to a seven-bus fleet in 10 years. Before the new garage, buses were parked outside and were plagued with cold-weather start problems. The garage will help buses get started and rolling in time and will protect them during the summer months when they are not in service.
The bus service makes campus more accessible and sustainable. Last academic year the service saved 44,000 pounds of carbon monoxide from being released into Missoula's atmosphere. The bus service provided 343,593 rides in the 2008-09 academic year and is projected to give 375,000 rides in the 2009-10 academic year.
The bus service is free and open to the public. For more information, visit the ASUM Office of Transportation website.
ASUM Office of Transportation
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Center for Ethics Presents Lecture Series
The Center for Ethics at UM will sponsor the "The Morality of Animal and Human Relationships" summer lecture series in June. All lectures in the series are free and open to the public, and discussion sessions will follow.
The series will feature scientist and author Marc Bekoff, who will present "The Moral and Emotional Lives of Animals and Why They Matter" at 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 16, in Gallagher Business Building Room 123.
A professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Bekoff will discuss the moral and emotional behavior of animals, such as cooperation, empathy, love and grief, which he observed during his 32 years of scientific inquiry. He will argue that humans need to expand their "compassion footprint" to include animals.
Other lectures in the series will take place in Don Anderson Hall Room 316. They are:
- Noon, Tuesday, June 15: "Walk on the Wild Side: The Use of Animal Images in Advertising" by Deni Elliott, Poynter Jamison Chair in media ethics and press policy at the University of South Florida.
- Noon, Thursday, June 17: "Highways, Wildlife, and the Cultural Politics of Road Ecology" by Sandra Koelle, doctoral candidate in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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UM Hosts International Advisers in June
UM, in collaboration with Montana Tech of UM in Butte and Carroll College in Helena, will host four EducationUSA international advisers in early June.
The advisers -- Margaret Anyigbo of Nigeria, Aleksandra Augustyniak of Poland, Tetiana Kotko of Ukraine and Sudarrshan Saha of India -- will meet with various academic departments, faculty and international students while touring UM's campus on Monday, June 7.
The advisers also will tour Montana Tech, Carroll College, Salish Kootenai College in Pablo and UM's Flathead Lake Biological Station during their weeklong visit to Montana. While in Helena, they will meet Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger.
Out of 20 applications, the proposal submitted by UM, Montana Tech and Carroll College was one of eight chosen to host the EducationUSA advisers.
EducationUSA is a global network of advising centers supported by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Each year, EducationUSA collaborates with the College Board to sponsor adviser visits to colleges and universities around the nation following the Association of International Educators annual conference in late May.
For more information, call Julie Cahill, UM international admissions counselor, at 406-243-5844 or e-mail julie.cahill@mso.umt.edu.
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Montana Digital Academy Offers Classes
Montana Digital Academy invites state high school students to enroll in its online learning program. Located in UM's Phyllis J. Washington Education Center, MTDA is the state's publicly supported K-12 online school and is specifically designed to offer flexible education options to Montana students. Courses are offered free of charge for the 2010-11 school year only.
MTDA courses are delivered via the Web, and students can access them whenever and wherever they want. Content is taught by qualified Montana-licensed instructors and aligned with state educational standards, including Indian Education for All. MTDA teachers provide the final course grades, and credit is granted by the schools where the students are enrolled.
Students receive their assignments and submit their homework online. Courses are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. MTDA can help reduce or eliminate the course conflicts that many students experience, allowing them to build a schedule that is right for them.
This fall, MTDA will offer more than 45 high school courses. Students looking for a new academic challenge can take Advanced Placement courses, and a wide variety of elective courses expose students to subjects that may not be available in local schools. In the future, courses will be offered for middle and elementary school students.
For more information, including a list of fall courses, visit the academy's website. To enroll a student in MTDA course work, contact the student's high school counselor or a school administrator.
Montana Digital Academy
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Artist to Donate to Bee Research at UM
Billings artist Victoria Franck Wetsch announced she will donate 10 percent of the proceeds from sales of her encaustics, or hot wax paintings, to Bee Alert Technology, a research company affiliated with UM.
The donation will support research of Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious malady that has been depopulating beehives around the world for the past several years. Researchers at UM, led by biology Professor Jerry Bromenshenk, are working to discover the cause of the disappearance of one of Earth's major pollinators.
Encaustic artworks consist of beeswax, fossilized resin and pigments that are painted onto a surface substrate while in their molten state. The pollen in the wax gives paintings a golden luster, and over time the surface cures to form enduring works of art.
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UM Hosts 'Air Toxics' Symposium
Hundreds of high school and tribal college students and teachers from around the Northwest will converge on the UM campus for the sixth annual "Air Toxics Under the Big Sky" science symposium from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday, May 19, in the North Underground Lecture Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
The symposium, hosted by the UM Center for Environmental Health Sciences and the Department of Chemistry, is a regional gathering for students, educators and community groups interested in raising public awareness about environmental health issues. It will feature oral and poster presentations prepared by students to showcase their indoor air quality research findings from the past year.
The event also will provide opportunities for students to work alongside UM scientists to examine components of air pollution, giving them real-world experience on problems relevant to their communities and encouraging them to seek further education in environmental and biomedical sciences.
For more information, visit the symposium website.
"Air Toxics Under the Big Sky"
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Track Team Heads to Championships
The UM track and field team wrapped up its 2010 home meet schedule when the Grizzlies hosted the Tom Gage Classic on May 7 at Dornblaser Field in Missoula.
Six athletes who were previously qualified in other events added new qualifying events, and the two teams combined for 10 improved marks upon previous qualifications.
Senior Chris Hellekson threw a season-best 182-0 in the hammer to finish second to former teammate Curtis Bean, who threw 185-4 while competing unattached. Hellekson's hammer mark moved him up to fourth on the Big Sky performance list. He moved to third in the shot put and became a contender in that event for an NCAA West Region Preliminary Round spot when he went a career-best 55-0.75. That tied him for 47th in the West Region. The top 48 athletes will compete the regional meet May 27-29 in Austin, Texas.
Hellekson also threw 157-3 in the discus to place second to redshirt teammate Joey Frank, who went 159-4.
On the women's side, senior Erin Clark ran 400 meters in 56.58 seconds to win by more than two seconds.
Montana's best group showing came in the men's javelin, where junior Richard Brumbaugh, freshman Justin Graff and junior Jason Flemmer all broke 211 feet and established themselves as the top three throwers in the Big Sky.
The 2010 Big Sky Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championships began Wednesday, May 12, and runs through Saturday in Ogden, Utah.
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TGIF Takes a Break
This is the last issue of TGIF for spring semester 2010.
Thanks for reading and have a great summer!
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Jennifer Sauer, TGIF editor
The University of Montana
e-mail: jennifer.sauer@umontana.edu
phone: 406-243-4878
web: http://www.umt.edu
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