Awards & Recognition

Faculty Fulbrights Span Disciplines, Continents in 2022-23

An impressive, perhaps unprecedented, number of UVM faculty were awarded Fulbright Scholarships by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board in the 2022-23 cycle. Extending from research to develop small, biodegradable sensors, to supporting elderly as they age, to exploring racialized religious identity, UVM professors are digging in at universities and places of study across the globe. UVM writer Josh Brown dropped in on each of these distinguished researchers and teachers to learn a bit more about their Fulbright plans and how their time abroad will contribute to the creation of useful knowledge—and a better, more beautiful, and safer world.

Learn More: go.uvm.edu/facfulbright22

Three Students Awarded Fulbrights

This year’s student Fulbright Program winners, Ben Will ’22, master's candidate in community development and applied economics Carina Isbell ’20, and Paige Roussell ’22 are headed to Germany, Uruguay, and South Korea respectively to pursue their passions in virology, agroecology, and linguistics—an ideal trio for the country’s flagship international academic exchange program, aimed at strengthening global connections in a complex and changing world.

“Our university has a storied history of connecting the state of Vermont to countries and cultures around the globe,” said UVM President Suresh Garimella. “This year’s Fulbright fellows show just how well UVM students combine the values of global citizenship with their academic accomplishments.”

Considered one of the most prestigious international exchange programs in the world, the Fulbright Program is unique in its multinationalism involving more than 140 countries and is noted for its merit-based selection process.

Learn More: go.uvm.edu/studentfullbright22

Guggenheim Winner Explores Ideas and Concepts, not Stories

Artist and filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax explores sex and death—and what happens “when you put them in the same place,” he says.

Minax—an associate professor of time-based media in UVM’s Department of Art and Art History—was recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship that will support development of his work and extend its reach. “Getting this award is a huge honor, one of the best recognitions you can get as an artist or academic in the United States, and I’m pretty stoked about it,” he says. “It will help move my work forward in the world.”

Minax was selected in April by the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation from among a diverse group of 180 exceptional artists, scholars, scientists, writers, and other highly creative people—out of almost 2,500 applicants.

Learn More: go.uvm.edu/guggenheim22

Gilliam Fellows at Gund

Gund Graduate Fellow Aura M. Alonso-Rodríguez and her advisor, Taylor Ricketts, Ph.D., professor in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources (RSENR) and director of UVM's Gund Institute for the Environment, have been awarded a 2022 Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). The prestigious fellowship recognizes exceptional doctoral students who are on track to be leaders in their fields and who are supported by a faculty mentor possessing a shared commitment to advancing diversity and inclusion in the sciences.

It is a rare accomplishment to be named a Gilliam Fellow. In fact, Alonso-Rodríguez and Ricketts are only the second UVM student-advisor pair to receive the fellowship. They join doctoral candidate Erika Bueno (plant and soil science) and Professor Yolanda Chen, who received the fellowship in 2020.

Learn More: go.uvm.edu/gilliam22

Agrotopias: An American Literary History of Sustainability

By Abby L. Goode '08 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press

In this book, Abby L. Goode reveals the foundations of American environmentalism and the enduring partnership between racism, eugenics, and agrarian ideals in the United States. Throughout the 19th century, writers as diverse as Martin Delany, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Walt Whitman worried about unsustainable conditions such as population growth and plantation slavery. In response, they imagined agrotopias—sustainable societies unaffected by the nation's agricultural and population crises—elsewhere. Though seemingly progressive, these agrotopian visions depicted selective breeding and racial “improvement” as the path to environmental stability. In this fascinating study, Goode uncovers an early sustainability rhetoric interested in shaping, just as much as sustaining, the American population.

Showing how ideas about race and reproduction were central to early sustainability thinking, Goode unearths an alternative environmental archive that ranges from gothic novels to Black nationalist manifestos, from Waco, Texas, to the West Indies, from city tenements to White House kitchen gardens. Exposing the eugenic foundations of some of our most well-regarded environmental traditions, this book compels us to reexamine the benevolence of American environmental thought.

Free Speech: From Core Values to Current Debates

By E. Thomas Sullivan & Len Niehoff Publisher: University Press

Often invoked but rarely fully understood, free speech is the keystone of United States liberties. From New York Times articles, campus protests, and arguments before the Supreme Court, the fundamental right to free speech is entrenched in the history and culture of the United States. But why is it so important? What value has it served throughout the nation's history? How has the Supreme Court interpreted free speech? What did they get right and what did they get wrong? These are just a few questions former UVM president Tom Sullivan answers in his newest book, “Free Speech: From Core Values to Current Debates,” published May 2022. Through artful prose and a slim, one-volume approach, Sullivan and his coauthor—Len Niehoff the from University of Michigan Law School—trace the history of free speech in the U.S. through Supreme Court cases, incorporating the right mix of case description, historical context, critique, and storytelling.

Though written for the classroom, “Free Speech” is an accessible introduction into the breadth and depth of a fundamental right in the United States.

| BOOKS + MEDIA

The Maine Lobster Boat

By Daniel Sheldon Lee '88 Publisher: Down East Books

Frost. Beal. Lunt. Stanley. Rich. If these names don’t bring an image of a lobster boat sliding up alongside a brightly colored buoy, or racing in heats past cheering fans in Jonesport, Stonington, or Rockland for the title of fastest lobster boat, you are in for a treat.

Author Dan Lee ’88 has written a thoughtful and well-researched anthology of the history of the Maine lobster boat in his recent book by the same name. Locals to Maine and the boat-building industry, as well as those from away, will find equal enjoyment reading personal accounts from those who knew the original boat designers and builders, to the modern-day families who continue the tradition in wood and fiberglass. A selection of images of boats and boat builders contextualize the chapters. And for those who appreciate technical details, Lee has included line drawings of the evolved keel and rudder design.

If you have yet to visit a harbor east of the Cheese House, this account will make you feel like you have met many of the most recognized names in lobstering and boat building.