Name:

What groups or organizations are you involved with on campus? My current involvement includes Panhellenic Council, where I serve as the philanthropy director and my sorority, Alpha Chi Omega, where I serve as the social chair. In addition, I am a part of Mortar Board Senior Honor Society as well as Order of Omega Greek Honor Society. Lastly, I served this year as a welcome leader and an Ignite team leader.

Why did you choose UT? I initially chose UT because it was a college where I can get a good education and pay in-state tuition. Little did it know, good ole Rocky Top is now home sweet home to me and I love every moment spent at Big Orange Country! GO VOLS!

What is your favorite part of being a UT Vol?  One of my favorite parts about being a Tennessee Vol is how much pride my fellow Volunteers have in our school. There is so much to love about UT and it always brings me joy to hear someone scream GO VOLS!!

Best class you’ve taken at UT so far and why? Anatomy and physiology are by far my favorite. As a pre-pharmacy student, it is only in my nature to enjoy learning about the human body and how it runs as a biological system.

Favorite UT memory? As a senior, I have lived through many great memories in the past three years and it is hard to select a specific one. However, I would say that attending the Ignite Summit as a team leader was one of the best times that I have had at UT. It was amazing seeing incoming students so passionate about the University of Tennessee and excited to come in and make a difference on campus. While I was leading a couple of groups of incoming freshmen, I learned just as much from them as they did from me and those memories will stick with me forever.

What’s your best piece of advice for other UT students? Get inVOLved! There are so many different student organizations on campus that each and every student at UT can relate or find interest in at least one. College is not only about what you learn in the classroom; it is also a time to grow as an individual and establish your identity, and being involved on campus allows you to do so!

What’s your dream job? My dream is to make an impact in whatever I do because it is not the job title that matters, rather what you do with that job.

Collaborating with the Knoxville News Sentinel, the UT faculty and students have published an electronic book titled Butch: The First Year of the Butch Jones Era at the University of Tennessee. It’s available in three formats—print, iPad, and e-reader.

The idea came about when the editors of the student-run news site the Tennessee Journalist, working with Professor James Stovall, wanted to put their skills to work in a new way. They teamed up with Evan Woodbery, a former student of Stovall’s who is now a News Sentinel reporter covering Vols football. It was perfect timing for the News Sentinel, because it provided another venue for the paper to expand its reach into the digital world.

The book covers all aspects of Jones’s first months at UT and includes stories from the Knoxville News Sentinel and the Tennessee Journalist.

The multimedia version of the book includes interviews, interactive trivia, photos, and links to Twitter and Instagram posts.

“We thought that this would be interesting and exciting for people to read, and something that no other school, to my knowledge, has done,” Stovall said.

There are no monetary expectations to be reached with this book. Rather, Stovall said, the payoff is the experience it provided for the students. Any proceeds will be split equally between the School of Journalism and Electronic Media and the News Sentinel.

The News Sentinel will put its share into a fund for future UT journalism students to hold internships at the paper.

Other e-books are now under consideration, including one that would look at the heralded rivalry between UT and Alabama.

To the video  below about the e-books.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky3J-nRa6ss

The printed version of Butch is eighty-nine pages with more than fifty color photos. It sells for $19.99 and can be ordered on Amazon.com. The iPad version is 124 pages. It can be ordered for $7.99 from the Apple iBooks store. The e-reader edition can be ordered for $4.99 from Amazon’s eBooks store.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

Kickoff is set for 3:30 p.m. EDT for the Volunteers’ game against the Bulldogs of the University of Georgia. Gates open at 1:30 p.m. CBS Sports will televise the game.

The university reminds fans of new security rules that prohibit backpacks of any kind or size from entering Neyland Stadium. All items, including purses, are subject to search at the gates. Purses or other bags larger than twelve inches by twelve inches by twelve inches cannot be brought into the stadium.

The UT Police Department encourages all fans to come to the stadium carrying as little as possible with them to expedite their entry into the stadium.

These items also are prohibited:

• alcoholic beverages, cans, bottles, or coolers
• radios without headphones
• open umbrellas
• video cameras
• stadium seats with arms
• weapons of any kind, including pocket knives

No items can be left or stored at stadium gates. Fans can bring the following items inside the stadium, provided they meet the size requirement:

• cushions and seats without arms
• small diaper bags that accompany infants
• small cameras, pagers, cell phones, and binoculars

UT also reminds fans to report any suspicious activity to law enforcement. All fans are asked to call 865-974-3111 or 911. From their cell phones, fans can send an anonymous report of suspicious activity by texting the letters “UTPD” followed by the location and details pertaining to an incident to Tip411 (847411).

Fans are encouraged to follow @UTGameday on Twitter for the latest updates on traffic, weather, gate information, and game day events such as the Vol Walk and band march.

Season tickets and select individual game tickets are available at uttix.com.

Game Day Activities

The annual Tim Kerin Memorial Food Drive will be held outside Neyland Stadium to benefit Knoxville’s Second Harvest Food Bank. Financial donations can be made at various locations around the stadium prior to the game. Kerin, the long-time head trainer at Tennessee, died in 1992. The food drive has been held in his honor ever since.

The traditional Vol Walk will start at 1:15 p.m. on Volunteer Boulevard near Circle Park, as the members of the football team proceed down Volunteer Boulevard and then continue down Peyton Manning Pass to the stadium.

The Pride of the Southland Marching Band will begin marching at 1:50 p.m. from their new home at the Natalie L. Haslam Music Center on Volunteer Boulevard and will then follow the same path as the Vol Walk.

The UT Institute of Agriculture will hold its annual Ag Day event on Saturday, beginning at 11:30 a.m. in the newly renovated Brehm Animal Science Arena. Activities include live music, informational displays, a visit from Smokey, and an insect petting zoo. For more information, visit their website. 

Fans also can attend the College of Arts and Sciences Pregame Showcase. Held two hours before each home game kickoff in the University Center Ballroom, the showcase is a free thirty-minute presentation by a UT faculty member. This week, at 1:30 p.m., Theresa Lee, dean of the college and professor of psychology, will present a talk titled “Tick Tock: Sleep Across the Lifespan and the Role of the Internal Clock.”

Parking and Traffic

Due to campus construction, fans are encouraged to arrive early. For complete information on game day parking, stadium regulations and activities, visit the athletic department website. The latest information on campus construction can be found at the Cone Zone.

Only fans with permits can park on campus. UT encourages others to use shuttle buses from the Old City, the Knoxville Civic Coliseum and the Market Square area of downtown Knoxville, and Farragut High School in west Knoxville. Many area hotels also offer shuttle service to the game.

Under state law, no smoking is allowed anywhere inside the stadium. Fans cannot leave the stadium and be readmitted.

Commercial solicitation in front of Neyland Stadium from Middle Way Drive to Gate 10 is prohibited starting four hours before kickoff and continuing until the game is over.

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C O N T A C T :

Charles Primm (865-974-5180, charles.primm@tennessee.edu)

The event is free and open to the public. Parking is available in the Volunteer Hall parking garage on White Avenue.

During the event, commissioners from state government will discuss sustainable transportation, agriculture, environment, and business development.

Panelists include John Schroer, Tennessee commissioner of transportation; Jai Templeton, Tennessee deputy commissioner of agriculture; and Shari Meghreblian, Tennessee deputy commissioner of environment and conservation.

“The Leadership Summit will allow representatives of government, businesses, higher education, and nonprofit organizations, as well as interested citizens, to share insights and experiences that support sustainable development, environment, and quality of life for our region,” said Rachel Chen, director of the Center for Sustainable Business and Development and the organizer of the event.

For more information on the summit, visit  the event website.

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CONTACT:

Rachel Chen (865-974-0505, rchen@utk.edu)

UT’s fellows are Susan M. Benner, associate dean in the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences; Joanne M. Hall, professor in the College of Nursing; Veerle Keppens, associate dean for faculty affairs in the College of Engineering; and Annette L. Ranft, associate dean in the College of Business Administration.

They are among the forty-nine faculty and administrators from SEC schools who were chosen to participate in the program, a professional development initiative that seeks to identify, prepare, and advance academic leaders for roles within SEC institutions and beyond.

The program has two components: a university-level development curriculum designed by each institution for its own participants, and two three-day SEC-wide workshops held on specified campuses for all program participants.

The first workshop is to be held October 14 through 16, at the University of Georgia in Athens. The next will be February 5 through 7, 2014, at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

The fellows program, established in 2008, fosters academic leadership among SEC faculty by allowing them the unique opportunity to address the challenges of academic administration at major research universities.

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CONTACT:

Karen Simsen (865-974-5186, karen.simsen@tennessee.edu)

Sepetys will be at UT on Tuesday, October 8, to talk about her two best-selling books for young adults. The event, at 7:00 p.m. in the Lindsay Young Auditorium in Hodges Library, is sponsored by UT’s Center for Children’s and Young Adult Literature and the Knox County Public Library. It is free and open to the public.

Sepetys’s first published novel, Between Shades of Gray was inspired by her father, who escaped Lithuania when he was a young boy. The novel—in which fictional characters are involved in actual events—depicts what happened when the Soviet Union occupied the country in 1941.

“There are millions of people whose lives were taken or affected during the Soviet occupation. Yet very few people know the story,” Sepetys said. “I wanted to write a novel to honor the people of the Baltics and also to illustrate the power of love and patriotism.”

In June 2013, Sepetys was awarded Lithuania’s Cross of the Knight of the Order. The honor of “knight” was bestowed by the president of Lithuania in a formal ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Vilnius. This was in honor of her contributions to education and culture with her global efforts to share the history of totalitarianism in the Baltics.

Between Shades of Gray, a New York Times best-seller, was winner of the Golden Kite Award for Fiction and was named a Publisher’s Weekly Best Children’s Book of 2011 and an Amazon Top Ten Teen Book of 2011.

Also a New York Times best-seller, her second novel is Out of the Easy. The book is set in New Orleans in the 1950s. Its characters are fictional but inspired by actual people. The story involves a seventeen-year old girl, the daughter of a brothel prostitute, who gets entangled in a mysterious death and ensuing investigation.

Sepetys was born and raised in Michigan and graduated with a degree in international finance from Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. She worked in the music industry in Los Angeles for nearly fifteen years. She later moved to Nashville to continue her career in the music industry but found that the relaxed lifestyle and scenery caused her to slow down and just read. Her adventures to more than forty-two countries on six continents left her with many stories, so she wrote a novel.

The Center for Children’s and Young Adult Literature is part of UT’s School of Information Sciences. It promotes literature as essential to the literacy, learning, social, emotional, and aesthetic development of young people.

For more information about the CCYAL, please visit their website.

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CONTACT:

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

The 7:30 p.m. concert will be held in the Sandra Powell Recital Hall of the Natalie L. Haslam Music Center, 1741 Volunteer Boulevard. It is free and open to the public.

Earlier that day, from 11:10 a.m. to 12:25 p.m., Alash will host a workshop/master class in the band room. This event is open to students, faculty, and community members.

Tuvan throat singing is a unique practice where multiple pitches emanate simultaneously from a single performer’s voice.

Alash’s visit to Knoxville is part of the Distinguished Lecture Series in Musicology. The group is from the Republic of Tuva, a tiny Central Asian nation. Since its first tour of the United States in 2006, the group has appeared on dozens of college campuses. It has performed at major music festivals, including Bonnaroo and South by Southwest, and collaborated with a wide range of prominent artists, from the Sun Ra Arkestra to Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.

“The Tuvan throat-singing style was rarely heard in the West before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but has since become popular among aficionados of traditional music and first-time listeners alike,” said Rachel May Golden, UT associate professor and coordinator of musicology. “The ensemble’s visit to UT offers students, faculty, and members of the Knoxville community the opportunity to experience this music firsthand. Listeners new to this practice often describe the sound of Tuvan throat singing as eerie, haunting, meditative, or supernatural.”

The School of Music and the Ready for the World initiative are sponsoring the event.

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CONTACT:

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lalapo@utk.edu)

The Fulbright Program is a prestigious international exchange initiative that awards about 1,100 grants to American scholars each year. Funded by the U.S. government, Fulbright Scholars are chosen based on their leadership and academic merits and their abilities to teach, conduct research, and contribute to solutions for shared international concerns.

Wanda Costen, associate professor in Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant for the 2013 –2014 academic year. She is studying gender inequality, specifically the social closure barriers that prevent women’s upward career mobility, in the resort industry in Jamaica. In addition to her research, Costen is teaching in the Department of Management Studies within the Mona School of Business and Management at the University of West Indies –Mona. Upon her return, Costen plans to write a book explaining how the barriers to women’s career progression are socially constructed.

Scott Frey, professor of sociology and co-director of the Center for the Study of Social Justice, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant for the fall term of 2013. He is studying the adverse environmental, health, and socioeconomic consequences of pesticide use under export-focused rice production in Vietnam. In addition to his research, Frey is lecturing at the Vietnam National University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City on issues related to the environment and development. Frey is currently working on a book examining how and why hazardous products and wastes are displaced to the peripheral zones of the world economy.

Rebecca Klenk, lecturer in interdisciplinary programs and affiliated faculty member with the Anthropology Department and the Disaster, Displacement, and Human Rights Program, has been awarded a Fulbright grant for the spring term of 2014. She will lecture and work with graduate students in the Anthropology Department at the University of Delhi in India. Along with teaching, she will develop new research on global educational restructuring, and collaborate with colleagues in India to plan a project on community experiences of, and educational responses to, Himalayan climate change.

Timothy Young, a professor in the Forest Products Center at the Institute of Agriculture, also received an award for the fall term. Young is in Austria conducting research on cross-laminated timber and teaching graduate courses in design of experiments and statistical process control at Salzburg University of Applied Sciences.

Melanie Eldridge, formerly a research assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology,  received an award to carry out a research project in Brazil for the fall term of 2013. She recently accepted a position at another university.

Since its establishment in 1946, the Fulbright Program has given approximately 310,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and scientists the opportunity to study, teach, and conduct research; exchange ideas; and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. The Fulbright US Scholar Program is administered by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, a division of the Institute of International Education.

For more information, visit the Fulbright program’s website.

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CONTACT:

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)

The UT–Pro2Serve Math Contest, hosted by UT will award ten lucky and bright students $4,000 annual scholarships to UT.

In its fifteenth year, the contest allows Tennessee high school students—public, private and home-schooled—to compete for awards and honors based on their mathematics skills. Students will compete on Thursday, November 14, on the UT campus.

Early registration for the competition has already begun and ends October 4. The cost is $10 per student. General registration is open through October 30 and is $15 per student. Participants must register before the event, and all fees must be received by November 1.

“The Pro2Serve Math Contest is important to fostering students’ interest in mathematics and encouraging them to pursue careers and education in science, mathematics, engineering, finance, and other fields,” said Conrad Plaut, mathematics department head. “The contest is also an opportunity to showcase UT and increase the likelihood that these talented students will attend the university.”

The contest has two parts. The first is the two-stage FERMAT. All participants take a multiple-choice test on algebra and geometry, called the Fundamental Exams of Remarkable Mathematical Ability and Talent (FERMAT I). The top fifty students move on to the next level of testing, called FERMAT II. This test has eight essay questions, requiring creative and original thinking. The ten students with the highest scores will each receive an annual $4,000 scholarship for four years of undergraduate study at UT Knoxville. FERMAT II exams are hand-graded by faculty members from UT’s Department of Mathematics.

The second part of the contest is the Math Bowl. A three-member team from each high school faces an opposing high school team in a double-elimination tournament in the style of the old GE College Bowl competitions. Sixty-four high school teams compete head-to-head to be the fastest to correctly answer ten math questions.

The championship round will be held from 3:30-3:50 p.m.

A full schedule is available online.

The contest is presented by the College of Arts and Sciences Mathematics Department and UT alumnus Barry Goss and his company, Professional Project Services Inc. (Pro2Serve).

“It is so important to continue to feed these students’ talent so they can go on and make positive contributions to Tennessee’s future,” Goss said. “Our goal is to have the brightest math minds in Tennessee high schools to further their education in Tennessee, hopefully at UT, and remain here after graduation to live and work.”

Pro2Serve provides technical and engineering services that support the infrastructures of government and private industry and help ensure our nation’s security. The media sponsor is the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Scholarships are funded by UT and Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek.

To register, visit www.math.utk.edu/MathContest or call 865-974-2461.

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CONTACT:

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)

Bryan Self (865-974-2461, cself1@tennessee.edu)

Stacy Clark, a research forester with the US Forest Service, will present “American Chestnut Restoration: Can We Bring Back the Mighty Giant?”

The Science Forum is a weekly brown-bag lunch series that allows professors and area scientists to discuss their research with the general public in a conversational presentation.

The presentations begin at noon on Fridays in Room C-D of Thompson-Boling Arena. Attendees can bring lunch or purchase it at the arena. Each presentation is forty minutes long and is followed by a question-and-answer session. Science Forum presentations are free and open to the public.

The American chestnut was one of the most widely distributed and important tree species in eastern North America until decimated in the early part of the twentieth century by an exotic fungus from Asia, the chestnut blight.

“Planting trees that have been bred for blight resistance using Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) has led to some important discoveries,” Clark said. “The return of the American chestnut into forests of the eastern United States will face challenges from native and nonnative plants, animals, insects, and diseases, in addition to the chestnut blight.”

Future Science Forums will feature a variety of topics:

• October 11: Chad Duty, group leader of Deposition and Technology Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, discussing “3D Printing: The Next Generation of Manufacturing”
• October 25: Kasey Krouse, urban forester for the city of Knoxville, presenting “Knoxville Urban Forestry—Year One”
• November 1: Gerry Dinkins, curator of malacology and natural history at the McClung Museum, discussing “Rediscovery of the Nearly Extinct Alabama Lampmussel in the Emory River”
• November 8: Devin White, senior research scientist of geocomputation Oak Ridge National Laboratory and assistant professor of anthropology, discussing “Archaeological Discoveries from Space”
• November 15: Phil Colclough, director of animal collections and conservation at Knoxville Zoological Gardens, discussing “Eastern Hellbender Conservation and the New Role of Zoos”
• November 22: Nathan Schmidt, assistant professor of microbiology, discussing “Infection with the Malaria Parasite: Malaria Is Only Half the Problem”

The Science Forum is sponsored by the UT Office of Research and Quest, an initiative to raise awareness of UT’s research, scholarship, and creative activity.

For more information, visit scienceforum.utk.edu.

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CONTACT:

Amanda Womac (Amanda@HellbenderPress.org)

Mark Littmann (865-974-8156, littmann@utk.edu)

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

The first lecture will feature UT professors Erin Darby and Robert Darby, who will talk about their recent archaeological excavations at ‘Ayn Gharandal, Jordan.

The 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. event will be in the McClung Museum’s auditorium.

Robert Darby, a lecturer in art history in the UT School of Art, and Erin Darby, an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies, direct the ‘Ayn Gharandal archaeological project that has uncovered rare new details about an ancient Roman fort in southern Jordan.

The lecture series invites scholars from around the world to present the latest archaeological discoveries. It is free and open to the public.

Upcoming lectures this fall include the following:

• November 7: “Cultural Interaction and Reaction in the Courtly Art of the Hellenistic World” by Kristen Seaman, Kennesaw State University, Georgia
• November 19: “The Neolithic Alepotrypa Cave: Past Findings and Present Research” by Anastasia Papathanasiou, Greek Archaeological Service.

The McClung Museum is located at 1327 Circle Park Drive. It is open Monday through Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Free parking is available on Circle Park Drive in front of the museum.

The Archaeological Institute of America is North America’s oldest and largest archaeological organization. The East Tennessee Society was founded in 1973 as the local chapter of the organization and aims to promote the knowledge, study of, and interest in archaeology and related subjects.

For more information about the McClung Museum and its collections and exhibits, visit the website.

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CONTACT:

Erin Darby (865-974-6977, edarby1@utk.edu)

Catherine Shteynberg (865-974-6921, cshteynb@utk.edu)

The university community is invited to attend. The dedication will take place at 10 a.m. on Friday, October 4 at the John D. Tickle Engineering Building on Neyland Drive.

Tickle and his wife, Ann, will join Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek, President Joe DiPietro, and other officials to celebrate the building.

The $23.1 million, five-story, 110,000-square-foot building houses the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and Industrial and Systems Engineering Department. The project began in December 2009. The building opened to students this semester.

The building contains 24 laboratories, three conventional classrooms, one lecture hall, three student work spaces, and 63 faculty and graduate student offices. The laboratories include a high-bay area for both structural testing and asphalt road surface testing. There is also a geotechnical laboratory. The three classrooms promote collaborative learning through the use of movable chairs and Smart Boards.

For more information on the building, visit www.engr.utk.edu/tickle. For more information about the college, visit www.engr.utk.edu/175.

Their patent-pending design is for an ultra-light, high-efficiency solar fiber, with the aim of creating fabric and clothing that would convert light into energy.

To read the full story, visit the College of Engineering’s website.

Sigma Chi is on probation due to hazing activities involving food and garbage on August 27. The two-year probation bans the chapter from all social events and requires each member to perform community service. The chapter also must present a fraternity-wide hazing re-education and prevention program and pay to install security cameras in the public areas and exterior of its house. The chapter accepted the sanctions and has agreed to comply with the terms.

Lambda Chi Alpha has been placed on interim suspension pending the outcome of an ongoing investigation involving hazing on September 10. The investigation surrounds reports of alleged forcing of pledges to perform a militaristic exercise regimen. One pledge sustained a minor injury.

The chapter may not engage in formal activities on or off campus. At the conclusion of the investigation, the university will recommend sanctions, which the chapter can accept or request a hearing on. The interim suspension will remain intact until the process is complete.

“We will not tolerate hazing of any kind. We take immediate action to investigate any reports and take the appropriate action,” said Jeff Cathey, associate dean of students.

In April, a UT task force released a report with recommendations for improving fraternity and sorority life and culture on campus. The group of alumni, students, faculty, and staff recommended several changes that have resulted in more mandatory member and chapter education and increased communication among chapters as well as with the dean of students. The task force’s work also led to changes in the judicial process involving fraternity and sorority organizations to resolve cases sooner.

Additionally, all on-campus fraternities are required to have security Thursday through Saturday evening at the houses. The Dean of Students’ Office has also expanded its Standards of Excellence program to make all activities, positive and negative, of each fraternity and sorority chapter public on its website.

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CONTACT:

Karen Simsen (865-974-5186, karen.simsen@tennessee.edu)

The luncheons will be held at 11:30 a.m. on Thursdays through December 5 in the UT Visitors Center on Neyland Drive.

The cafe is a full-service international dining experience. Lunch consists of intermezzo or small appetizer, salad, entrée, and dessert.

Cost is $12 and the faculty-staff discount does not apply. Advance tickets are required. For tickets, see Marcia Johnson in 110 Jessie Harris Building, call 865-974-6645, or email rhtm@utk.edu. Cash, checks, and credit cards are accepted.

The first luncheon Thursday will feature Italian fare. The menu is as follows:

First course: Traditional Italian antipasto with cured meats and cheeses from southern Italy served with homemade margherita pizza

Second course: Spinach and goat cheese ravioli with roasted garlic cream sauce

Third course: Chicken cacciatore served with creamy polenta

Dessert: Tiramisu

The dates and themes for the remaining luncheons are as follows:

• October 10—Italy
• October 24—France
• October 31—France
• November 7—Japan
• November 14—Japan
• November 21—Spain
• December 5—French-Japanese fusion

The luncheons are produced through a collaboration of HRT 445 (the Advanced Food Production and Service Management class), the UT Culinary Institute, and the Pellissippi Culinary Institute.

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CONTACT:

Marcia Johnson (for tickets): (865-974-6645, rhtm@utk.edu)

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lalapo@utk.edu)

Carilli is vice president for student affairs at the University of Scranton in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Before that, he worked on our campus and served as dean of students from 2000 to 2001 and as associate dean of students from 1998 to 2000. He has also held academic leadership positions at Southern Illinois University and East Stroudsburg University.

He has a doctorate in higher education from Southern Illinois University, a master’s degree in higher education from Kutztown University, and a bachelor’s degree in secondary education —biology from East Stroudsburg University.

Each of the candidates’ public sessions will be recorded and made available on the search website on October 3. The anonymous feedback link on the website will be available until noon on Tuesday, October 8.

For more information about Carilli and to share your feedback during the search, visit the search website.

Annette Engel, the Jones Associate Professor of Aqueous Geochemistry in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, at UT has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant for $794,000 to lead a research group to learn more about these clams, called lucinids, and the role they play in the ecosystem. The project is part of the NSAF’s Dimensions of Biodiversity program.

Findings could have implications for the recovery and management of fast-disappearing coastal environments.

Engel will collaborate with Laurie Anderson at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and Barbara Campbell at Clemson University on the project over the next five years, with a total project budget of $1.6 million.

Lucinids play a key role in detoxifying coastal environments for other creatures such as fish, crabs, and manatees. They do this through a process called chemosymbiosis, a form of symbiosis in which a bacterium provides chemically derived energy and nutrients to a higher organism. Lucinids have bacteria that live within their gills and allows them to convert toxic compounds such as hydrogen sulfide—a neurotoxin to humans—into less toxic versions such as sulfate.

“These clams show us how chemosymbiosis, a unique evolutionary adaptation, is very important to life on earth,” said Engel. “The lucinids clean up environments for other animals and allow them to live. Yet little is known about their chemosymbioses and how they are affected by environmental changes.”

Lucinids’ symbiotic relationship also has allowed them to survive millions of years of extinctions and disturbances. Researchers will tap into a 400-million-year-old fossil record of the lucinids’ past to reconstruct environments and relationships over time. They will collect modern-day lucinid data from biomes in Florida, California, and the Bahamas with varying degrees of disturbance.

Their findings will uncover the genetic, taxonomic, and functional diversity of modern lucinid chemosymbioses and ways to identify the distinctive features of lucinid-bacteria biodiversity through the past. The goals are to be able to predict future lucinid evolutionary adaptations and help save or recover seagrass beds being lost at tremendous rates due to climate change, pollution, sea level rise, and other disruptions.

“Environmental managers are working to save these lands, yet they do not know about all the living beings in the ecosystems,” said Engel. “We will look at how the effect of human activities is changing water chemistry, how this change in water is impacting the clams and how this change is impacting the whole ecosystem.”

This project will train graduate and undergraduate students in interdisciplinary research; involve students underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; and provide mentoring and outreach to the public on the topics of symbiosis and biodiversity.

The Dimensions of Biodiversity awards are supported by NSF’s Directorates for Biological Sciences and Geosciences along with NASA, which co-funds projects that use state-of-the-art remote sensing technologies. To learn more the program, visit http://1.usa.gov/1bMi7Bn.

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CONTACT:

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)