That savings comes from everyone doing their part to eliminate wasted energy — that means turning off lights when a room is empty, shutting off computers at the end of the day, using a power strip and unplugging it at night and other simple energy-saving steps.

Thanks to help from all members of the campus community, our electricity usage per square foot on campus is down nearly 10 percent in that time frame. That reduced usage doesn’t just affect energy costs, but it also has a positive effect on the environment. Less power means less pollution created as a result of power plants.

Another key to the success of Switch Your Thinking is the campus energy conservation policy, which went into effect last year around this time. The policy formalizes a number of energy-saving efforts that were already taking place on campus and makes them consistent and easy to follow.

One major part of the policy is the establishment of target indoor air temperatures in campus buildings. In the heating season, the target temperature is 68 degrees Fahrenheit, while in the cooling season, it’s 76. With colder weather arriving, it’s a good time to remember ways to beat the cooler temperatures. On chilly days, dress in layers appropriate to the temperature, or keep a sweater or jacket at your desk. If your work area has windows, open your blinds when the sun is out and soak up some solar heat.

If you feel your work area is outside the established temperature range, contact Facilities Services at 974-5346. For both safety and energy conservation reasons, employees are not permitted to use personal space heaters in their work area. Not only do they present a fire hazard, but they are massive energy hogs. In fact, just one personal space heater uses as much energy as a chandelier with 25 60-watt light bulbs!

Facilities Services is dedicated to making sure campus resources operate as efficiently as possible while maintaining the comfort of students, faculty and staff. They will be happy to measure the temperature in your work space, and will ensure that it meets the minimum standards laid out in the conservation policy. Facilities staff also can conduct an energy audit if you have concerns about energy waste in your work space. In extreme circumstances, a Facilities Services-approved heater may be provided.

In the coming months, more energy upgrades are planned for campus, including the addition of more automatic light switches, energy efficient bulbs and upgrades to other infrastructure. Even with those upgrades, the success of Switch Your Thinking rests with people around campus continuing to take the simple steps necessary to reduce energy consumption.

For more information on UT Knoxville’s energy conservation policy, visit the Make Orange Green Web site.

KNOXVILLE — The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will receive as much as $1.8 million from the state of Tennessee to launch VolsTeach, a new program to improve the quantity and quality of mathematics and science teachers.

The grant will allow the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences to replicate UTeach, a proven model developed by the University of Texas, Austin.

Through VolsTeach, UT will convert its current teacher training program in math and science from a five to a four-year program and integrate field experiences into all four years.

UT Knoxville will receive the funds over five years. The Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) and the Tennessee State Department of Education (TDOE) allocated funds to support the UTeach replication. The university has committed to invest $2 million over the same time period.

“We are pleased to take the leading role in bringing this successful national model to the state of Tennessee,” said Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek. “With our well-qualified faculty and staff, we will help solve a serious problem, not just for Tennessee, but for our nation.”

VolsTeach students will earn a bachelor’s degree in a math or science field as well as a teaching certificate. UT’s teacher training for all other subjects will remain on the five-year program.

“The state of Tennessee is in desperate need of more well-qualified math and science teachers,” said UT Education Professor Susan Benner, who is a co-director of the grant. “At UT, we currently have a very excellent teacher training program in these areas, but we are producing a very small number of STEM teachers.”

The program will begin for new students in fall 2010, with the goal of enrolling 200 students in four years. Currently, UT Knoxville graduates an average of 14 students who receive licenses in the math or science disciplines per academic year.

Students will have access to paid internships and unique opportunities for community outreach. To spark additional interest, freshmen in math and science will be invited to take two, one-credit teacher education courses at no cost. The courses will combine classroom learning with field experience — all meant to bring teaching to the forefront as a viable and rewarding career option.

The successful model — developed by the University of Texas in 1997 — involves early classroom experiences and support from experienced master teachers, as well as peers. The grant provides for social and educational programming and opportunities for networking through new VolsTeach program quarters in Greve Hall, complete with study lounge, workroom and resource library.

“They will be well supported through this process, through advising and mentoring, because that component is critical to their success,” said Susan Riechert, professor of biology and developer of the popular “biology in a box” program for K-12 teachers and their classes. She serves in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology and is a Distinguished Service Professor.

As the other grant co-director, Riechert will help students develop their lessons. Partnerships with Knox County, Anderson County and Roane County schools will support the students’ mentoring and field experience.

During the fall semester of their freshman year, VolsTeach students will develop and practice one lesson and then go out into an elementary school classroom and teach it. During the spring semester, they’ll do the same thing at the middle school level.

Thirteen universities have replicated the UTeach model, including the University of Florida, University of Colorado, University of California, Berkeley, and Louisiana State University.

In addition to the current shortage, state Department of Education officials have projected needing a significant number of additional math and science teachers in the future. The Tennessee Board of Education added to the high school graduation an additional math and laboratory science credit, bringing the total to four and three units, respectively, among other changes. The change took effect for this year’s freshmen.

UT’s teacher preparation is currently a five-year process, regardless of subject area. Students first earn a bachelor’s degree in their chosen discipline from the College of Arts and Sciences, along with a minor in teacher education. After graduating, they complete the requirements for teacher licensure, which involves additional coursework and a full school year teaching internship through the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences.

The UT proposal began with Education Health and Human Sciences Dean Bob Rider and Arts and Sciences Dean Bruce Bursten, who serve as co-principal investigators on the grant.

Through this grant program, four Tennessee institutions of higher learning were invited to submit proposals to replicate UTeach. UT Knoxville and Middle Tennessee State University were selected. The two other universities — UT Chattanooga and the University of Memphis — may be funded at a later date, state officials said.

For more information, visit http://uteach.utexas.edu/ or http://www.uteach-institute.org.

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C O N T A C T :

Karen Collins (865-974-5186, karen.collins@tennessee.edu)

Kraken supercomputer

KNOXVILLE – East Tennessee is now home to two of the world’s three fastest computers, according to new rankings released today.

The Top500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers places University of Tennessee supercomputer Kraken in third place, where it also holds the title of world’s fastest academic supercomputer, while Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Jaguar computer took first place overall.

“This is just the latest in a series of successes for the University of Tennessee as it progresses toward achieving world-class research status,” said Governor Phil Bredesen. “The combined resources of UT and its partners in Oak Ridge are positioning Tennessee as a global epicenter for supercomputing. I’m very proud of the state’s role in supporting UT’s drive to compete and succeed in this very select arena.”

Kraken, the result of a $65 million grant to UT from the National Science Foundation, recently became only the fourth computer in history to perform more than 1,000 trillion calculations per second, known as a petaflop.

“Winning a $65 million NSF award put the University of Tennessee among the supercomputing elite, and now we have reached the pinnacle in having the world’s fastest academic supercomputer,” said Jan Simek, interim UT president. “This is a phenomenal achievement and is among growing distinctions that enable us to continue attracting the best faculty and the best students we have ever had, and to make our university the best it has ever been.”

The twice-yearly Top500 is published by Jack Dongarra, a UT Knoxville distinguished professor of computer science and the director of the Innovative Computing Laboratory along with colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Mannheim.

Since its creation in 2007, Kraken has been used for nearly 300 scientific projects addressing vital questions in areas from climate and weather modeling to applications in genetics and medicine.

“The beauty of Kraken is not just its computing power, but its problem-solving power,” said UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek. “Scientists from universities around the country, including many here at UT Knoxville, have put Kraken to use to attack humanity’s most pressing problems. It is an invaluable resource to this university to be home to such a powerful asset.”

With the combined computing power of UT and ORNL, East Tennessee is now firmly ensconced as a center for supercomputing activities, a fact which is continuing to draw even more resources to the area.

“Kraken is the result of a powerful and expanding partnership between the University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to advance the frontier of scientific discovery and innovation from climate change to energy technologies and from basic to applied sciences,” said Thomas Zacharia, deputy director for science and technology at ORNL and a UT Knoxville professor.

“When NSF made the award to UT Knoxville to develop Kraken just over a year ago I said that ‘like the gargantuan sea monster Kraken, which inspired the naming of this supercomputer, the possibilities in scientific and engineering advances it enables are enormous, limited only by the confines of human imagination and vision beyond the frontiers of science,’” said NSF Director Arden L. Bement. “Today, Kraken is working to realize that vision. Consistent with ORNL’s leadership in building what many would consider to be one of the most diverse and valuable computation centers in the world, Kraken will address some of the most complex problems of our era.”

In October, the NSF awarded UT Knoxville an additional $10 million grant to create a new computer called Nautilus designed to help analyze and process the complex data created by massive computers like Kraken and Jaguar. Nautilus and its accompanying research center will be part of UT’s National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS), which also manages Kraken.

Both Kraken and Jaguar are Cray XT5 supercomputers. Kraken alone has 100,000 processors that work simultaneously to produce the high speeds at which the computer is capable to address major scientific questions.

Jaguar clocked in at a sustained speed of 1.759 petaflops, while Kraken registered 831 teraflops.

In the most recent version of the list, Kraken ranked sixth while Jaguar was in second place. In addition to Kraken and Jaguar, East Tennessee also is home to two more machines ranked in the world’s top 30, with ORNL’s original Jaguar Cray XT4 system at 16th and UT’s Athena in 30th.

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C O N T A C T :

Jay Mayfield, UT Knoxville, (865-974-9409, jay.mayfield@tennessee.edu)

Lisa-Joy Zgorski, NSF, (202-292-8311, lisajoy@nsf.gov)

Professor Carol Tenopir is serving on the U.S. Congressional roundtable to study how the results of federally funded research can be more widely disseminated.

Tenopir is a professor of information sciences and the director of the Center for Information and Communication Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is a Chancellor’s Professor, the highest lifetime honor accorded to UT faculty members who have extraordinary, nationally or internationally recognized scholarly achievements as well as records of excellence in teaching and service.

The House Committee on Science and Technology (HCST) Scholarly Publishing Roundtable, established by the U.S. House of Representatives, has been charged with developing a compromise to the long-running debate about whether there should be free and open access to published scientific journal articles resulting from federally funded research.

The publishers of scholarly journals — a growing number of which are online — typically recover their costs by charging fees to users, such as libraries.

Traditionally, subscribing institutions have paid for access to e-journals while authors publish at little or no cost.

“In the last decade this traditional payment scheme has been challenged for several reasons,” Tenopir said. Those reasons include increasing subscription prices combined with an increasing number of journals; budget pressures in universities; and e-access capabilities that make it easy and quick to find articles via the Internet.

Other models of paying for publishing costs have emerged, Tenopir said. The most notable, perhaps, is “author-pays open access,” where an author or an author’s institution or grant pays for publishing an article and then readers and their institutions get access without further payment. Open access is either immediate or after an embargo period, usually six to 12 months. In other cases, publishing costs are subsidized by organizations or agencies.

“There is a growing call in the U.S. and other countries for the results of publicly funded research to be made available in open access either with or without an embargo,” Tenopir said.

The issue is further complicated by the fact that many publishers allow the author’s final version of a manuscript — not the final published version — to be made available in open access on the author’s Web site or in an institutional or subject e-article repository, she said. “And this has led to a multitude of versions of the same article found during a Web search.”

In its charge to the roundtable, House officials noted that there is a “prevailing public belief that all Web-based content should be available for free.

“Given the importance of peer review, scholarly publication and long-term data preservation and archiving to the scientific enterprise, it is in the interest of all parties to reach consensus on a path forward for scientific communication,” they said.

Roundtable members include university administrators, librarians, commercial publishers, scholarly society publishers and researchers. The group is to outline the roles that should be played by the federal government, libraries, institutional repositories and the scholarly publishers.

The goal, Tenopir said, is “to find a solution that will further access to

government-funded scholarly articles without dictating one particular economic model or one single legislated embargo period.

“We started our discussions this summer and have continued to work together discussing many difficult issues, all keeping open minds to hear all points of view,” Tenopir said. “A white paper, including a recommendation, will be issued soon.”

Serving on the roundtable with Tenopir are: David Campbell, provost, Boston University; Y.S. Chi, vice chairman and managing director of global academic and customer relations, Elsevier; Paul Courant, university librarian and dean of libraries, University of Michigan; Philip Davis, doctoral student in scientific publishing and former librarian, Cornell University; Fred Dylla, executive director and CEO, American Institute of Physics; Donald W. King, distinguished research professor, University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science; Richard McCarty, provost, Vanderbilt University; James O’Donnell, provost, Georgetown University; Ann Okerson, associate university librarian, Yale University; Mark Patterson, director of publishing, Public Library of Science (PLoS); Scott Plutchak, director of the Lister Hill Library of Health Sciences, University of Alabama, Birmingham; Crispin Taylor, executive director, American Society of Plant Biologists; and John Vaughn, executive vice president, Association of American Universities.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)

Frank Loeffler

KNOXVILLE – Frank Loeffler, a leading expert in environmental microbiology and the use of bacteria to clean and protect environmental resources, has been named the sixth University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair.

Loeffler will serve in the departments of microbiology and civil and environmental engineering at UT Knoxville and in ORNL’s biological and environmental sciences directorate.

He currently is the Carlton Wilder associate professor of environmental engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he has served since 1999.

“These scientists are raising the bar for the level and quality of UT research, and they are helping attract people and expertise and new economic opportunity to Tennessee,” said Interim UT President Jan Simek. “They are going to be game-changers.”

Loeffler will serve as the Governor’s Chair for microbiology and civil and environmental engineering.

Funded by the state of Tennessee and ORNL, the program attracts top scientists to broaden and enhance the unique research partnership that exists between the state’s flagship university and the nation’s largest multi-program laboratory.

“With the appointment of a fifth Governor’s Chair this year alone, it’s becoming increasingly obvious the program is helping the University of Tennessee attract top scientists at a high level even in these tough economic times,” said Gov. Phil Bredesen. “Taking advantage of the opportunity to bring world class scholars and scientists to Tennessee will help us continue to build in these key scientific areas.”

Loeffler’s research centers on discovering new ways to clean the environment, counter damage done to ecosystems by human activity, and improve environmental health. At the heart of his research are microbes, and he has examined ways how naturally occurring bacteria can either break down or reduce the risk from pollutants including chlorinated solvents, radioactive waste and greenhouse gases. In addition, Loeffler and his research team characterize new kinds of bacteria in an effort to develop innovative technologies from environmental protection to medical applications.

“Frank Loeffler’s work is tremendously important to our future in a world of exploding population where environmental cleanup is vital,” said UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek. “His appointment as a Governor’s Chair will not only give him important resources to conduct that work, but it will enhance UT Knoxville’s role as a leader in environmental research.”

Innovative scientific discoveries in Loeffler’s work form the basis for successful collaborations with engineers aimed at designing and implementing technologies that benefit the environment, promote sustainable development, and protect human health.

As a Governor’s Chair, Loeffler will have the opportunity to further his research by taking advantage of the exceptional resources and expertise available at both UT Knoxville and ORNL.

“ORNL has a strong tradition of finding scientific solutions to environmental problems associated with energy production,” said ORNL Director Thom Mason. “Frank Loeffler will strengthen our capabilities in that area. We are very excited to have him as part of the UT-ORNL team.”

Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Loeffler was a Feodor-Lynen fellow and research associate at Michigan State University. He received his bachelor’s biology and agricultural sciences and master’s degree in microbiology at the University of Hohenheim in Germany. He received his doctorate in microbiology and technical biochemistry from the University of Hohenheim/Technical University Harburg.

About the Governor’s Chair program:

The UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair program is designed to attract exceptionally accomplished researchers from around the world to boost joint research efforts that position the partnership as a leader in the fields of biological science, computational science, advanced materials and neutron science.

Other UT-ORNL Governor’s Chairs include:

• Jeremy Smith, a computational biologist who came to UT Knoxville and ORNL from the University of Heidelberg in Germany. He was appointed in 2006.
• Howard Hall, an expert in nuclear security who came to UT Knoxville and ORNL from Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He was appointed this year.
• Alexei Sokolov, a polymer scientist who came to UT Knoxville and ORNL from the University of Akron. He was appointed this year.
• Yilu Liu, an electric grid researcher who came to UT Knoxville and ORNL from Virginia Tech. She was appointed this year.
• Thomas Zawodzinski, an energy storage researcher who came to UT Knoxville and ORNL from Case Western Reserve University. He was appointed this year.

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C O N T A C T :

Jay Mayfield, UT Knoxville (865-974-9409, jay.mayfield@tennessee.edu)

Mike Bradley, ORNL (865-576-9553, bradleymk@ornl.gov)

KNOXVILLE — Legal help is expensive for most people. For those with lower income, it can be a huge problem.

The College of Law at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, addresses that problem with its legal clinics.

Among the longest-running clinics in the nation, UT’s clinics help students learn how to practice law while providing a low-cost legal alternative for students, faculty and staff, and low-income people in Knoxville.

The College of Law’s legal clinics are examples of how UT encourages students to learn more about the issue of poverty this year and reach out to those in need. Ready for the World, the campus’ international and intercultural initiative, is spending this year focusing on “Our World in Need” with a particular emphasis on poverty.

Ben Barton, associate professor and director of the clinical programs, said the clinics serve an important role in the college and in the community.

“People who can’t afford a lawyer come to us,” said Barton, who works primarily with the advocacy clinic. “Students interview a person and appear in court with them. They take it the whole nine yards.

“Our clinics are one of the very best things about the law school. We’re thrilled about them and the work we do.”

The College of Law offers seven different clinics:

• Advocacy Clinic — handles civil, criminal matters and housing cases
• Domestic Violence Clinic — deals with victims of domestic violence
• Wills Clinic — new clinic, helps people write wills
• Wrongful Conviction Clinic — new clinic, aids those wrongfully convicted of a crime
• Business Clinic — works with nonprofit organizations and start-up businesses
• Externship Program — students prosecute cases on behalf of the state
• Mediation Clinic — students are trained to be mediators

All of the clinics are for core credit classes. Students participate in the clinics as part of their class requirements for the College of Law. Similar to the medical school model, where residents are overseen by attending physicians, students working in the legal clinics get real-world experience while being supervised by professors.

Also, the clinics are meant to encourage students to do pro bono work, Barton said. UT offers a nonprofit pro bono program, for which Barton twice won the Outstanding Faculty Adviser award.

“From the law school’s point of view, we’re trying to create good lawyers, and people,” Barton said. “We want to encourage them to do volunteer work or do pro bono work. Volunteering and clinics are critical for development as lawyers and people. Working with the poor broadens the students’ outlook. We share a lot in common with the poor, and it opens eyes to many difficulties people in East Tennessee face.”

“The students learn sympathy and empathy — the main part being empathy,” Barton said. “This is really helpful in representing them as a lawyer.”

Barton said that in addition to seeing how the clinics help students hone their skills, he enjoys seeing the reaction of clients.

“I get a lot of clients sending thank-you cards and telling me how pleased they are that students went the extra mile for them,” he said. “They just want to know that someone believes in them.”

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C O N T A C T :

Bridget Hardy, (865-974-2225, bhardy4@utk.edu)

Amy Blakely, (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)

The center — part of UT’s College of Business Administration — will conduct wage and benefit surveys of construction labor markets throughout the nation. The contract will require the center to add seven permanent wage analysts to its staff. In addition, the center will add six temporary employees to its staff to assist the Labor Department with implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Research Director William Schriver, who founded the center in the early 1980s, said the Department of Labor will use UT’s results to set local pay rates for local tradespersons and laborers. Schriver said the Davis-Bacon Act (1931) requires the payment of locally prevailing rates, established from surveys of contractors working on private projects in the area, to all mechanics and laborers performing construction work on federally funded projects.

“There is a common misconception that Davis-Bacon rates are merely union rates,” Schriver said. “But union rates are said to prevail only when more than 50 percent of local construction is performed by union workers. Otherwise, union and non-union rates are averaged to create the prevailing rate for as many as 30 trades and laborer categories. Based on the surveys conducted by the center, prevailing rates are established by the Department of Labor staff for every county in the U.S.”

Nancy Mason, a center coordinator, will supervise the wage survey activities, according to John Moore, acting director of the center.

Other UT research conducted under the Department of Labor contract includes:

Studying industry compliance with or violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which in 1938 established overtime wages for work exceeding 40 hours per week; a minimum wage; and laws prohibiting many forms of child labor.

Assisting the Department of Labor in implementing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

In 2007, the center was awarded a $7 million contract by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to design and operate OSHA’s construction targeting system. Each month the center randomly selects about 1,400 construction sites from their file of over 3 million active sites for safety inspections by OSHA compliance officers. This contract also requires the center to analyze fatal construction events, identify direct and related cause of each event, and suggest intervention strategies.

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C O N T A C T:

John Moore, (865-974-4955, jmoore10@utk.edu)

Jeremy Rifkin

KNOXVILLE — Jeremy Rifkin, president and founder of the Foundation on Economic Trends, will speak at the inaugural event for the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Center for the Study of Social Justice at 7 p.m. on Nov. 10 in the University Center Ballroom.

Rifkin — named by The National Journal as one of the 150 people in the U.S. who have the most influence in shaping federal government policy — has written 17 books on scientific and technological changes and their impact on the environment, the economy and society. His most recent best-selling book, “The European Dream,” was named the best economic book of the year in 2005. The book also won the Corine International Book Prize.

Rifkin’s lecture, “Leading the Way to the Third Industrial Revolution,” focuses on the argument that society needs to radically overhaul the way in which energy is consumed.

Rifkin’s Sustainable Development Team aids governments and global corporations in making decisions on the latest technology and the challenges of securing energy and climate change.

Rifkin currently advises Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the European Commission and the European Parliament.

Rifkin’s monthly column on global issues appears in many of the world’s leading newspapers and magazines, including The Los Angeles Times, and he is a frequent guest on television shows including “Larry King Live,” “Good Morning America” and “Face the Nation.” He has lectured at hundreds of the world’s leading corporations and more than 200 universities in more than 30 countries in the past 30 years.

Rifkin has an economics degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a degree in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

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Editors’ note: Please see accompanying release – UT Launches Center for the Study of Social Justice.

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C O N T A C T :

Stephanie Bohon, (865-974-7019, sbohon@utk.edu)

Kristi Hintz, (865-974-3993, khintz@utk.edu)

Based in UT’s Department of Sociology, the center provides a framework for scholars of sociology, psychology, education, social work, law, geography, political science and philosophy, among others, to collaborate on research and share insights about the conflicts, complexities and contradictions related to social justice.

The center aims to produce science-based solutions for everyday problems, explains Stephanie Bohon, associate professor of sociology. Bohon and Scott Frey, sociology department head, co-direct the new center.

“What are the facts about health care disparities? What are the facts about immigration and the many other issues facing our nation and the world?” Bohon said. “Our role is to provide the results of unbiased research and analyses to the people who make the policy decisions and create the programs to address the many needs of our society.”

The need for interdisciplinary social science research is growing, and support from private and public sectors is following suit.

“The world is changing and evolving at such a rapid pace, and our society’s problems become increasingly complex. We must inquire from an academic perspective about the state of humanity, as it relates to inequalities and the societal changes affecting all aspects of social, political, cultural and political life in our world,” Frey said.

The center is housed within the College of Arts and Sciences but represents 60 faculty fellows from 14 academic programs. The center enhances the university’s ability to compete for social science research funding by providing an interdisciplinary, organized research unit.

“We are very pleased that the Center for the Study of Social Justice has been established and is centered in the College of Arts and Sciences,” said Bruce Bursten, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “The center promises to be an intellectual and translational force in taking basic research in social justice and using it to make a difference in society. The multidisciplinary nature of the center will mirror the college’s goal of fostering critical thinking across disciplines to advance human knowledge and to make a difference in the human condition.”

As the nation experiences economic crisis, its impact on society and its ability to fulfill basic needs will only grow.

“Research informs us that in the tough economic times we’re experiencing, all social problems that exist will only worsen,” Bohon explained. “We can play a large role in collecting and analyzing data, and in providing science-based methods of evaluating resources and the effectiveness of specific approaches or proposed solutions.

“Through the center, the university can contribute to the body of knowledge that measures these impacts. Research is no longer from one discipline, and social justice issues require an increasingly complex and interdisciplinary approach to effectively weigh in on solutions to the persistent social problems that keep having detrimental effects on individuals and members of social groups,” said Bohon.

Faculty fellows of the center currently are involved in research relating to such urgent issues as immigration and criminal justice, environmental degradation and the fly ash release involving the Tennessee Valley Authority in Kingston, Tenn.

“This new center facilitates the sharing of resources among a unique group of scholars and also provides the university with a framework to attract support for new interdisciplinary projects that will ultimately benefit humankind,” said Brad Fenwick, vice chancellor for research.

While the center’s research and public policy work will engage primarily faculty and graduate students, undergraduate students and all members of the campus community will benefit from the center’s presence.

“We have the opportunity to engage our campus in many conversations through lectures, workshops, films and a variety of other ways to explore emerging issues that are of great concern to many people,” said Bohon.

The center will hold its inaugural event on Nov. 10, featuring Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the author of 17 best-selling books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society and the environment. The public lecture is set for 7 p.m. in the ballroom of the University Center and is free and open to the public.

For more information about center events or lectures, visit http://cssj.utk.edu.

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Editors’ note: Please see accompanying release – Jeremy Rifkin to Speak about Rebuilding World Economy at UT Center’s Opening.

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C O N T A C T :

Stephanie Bohon, (865-974-7019, sbohon@utk.edu)

Kristi Hintz, (865-974-3993, khintz@utk.edu)

The Campus Chest campaign has met or exceeded its goal every year for the last 18 years. UT Knoxville needs $36,000 to take the streak to 19 years.

Solicitors may bring their pledge totals to Andy Holt Tower room 405A this Thursday, Nov. 5, from 1 to 4 p.m.

Campus Chest is a comprehensive campaign to support public-service agencies including Community Shares, the Greater Knoxville United Way and many others. It’s important for employees to remember those less fortunate and give to a charitable organization.

For more information, visit the Campus Chest Web page. Thanks for your generosity!