PresRelease

UConn’s Office of Technology Commercialization’s Tech-Knowledge Portal is a Silver Award winner for the 2009 Connecticut Quality Improvement Award’s Innovation Prize. Special congratulations to John Hanson, who is working on development and ongoing delivery of OTC’s strong industry program.  You might want to read OTC’s newsletter to find out about some of the initiatives they are working with.
CQIA, based in Stamford, is a group of active business people, educators, health care executives, and government officials concerned with improving the economic vitality of our state using the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria for Performance Excellence.  The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was created by the US Congress in 1987 as a public-private partnership.
Malcolm Baldrige
The Award is named for Malcolm Baldrige, who was appointed Secretary of Commerce in 1981 by President Reagan.  He was a forceful advocate for efficiency in and effectiveness in management, especially in government.

UConn grad student Kathryn Theiss is among twenty graduate students in environmental studies chosen from universities in California and New England to receive this year’s Switzer Fellowship from the Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation, one of the nation’s most prestigious awards for early‐career environmental leaders.  The award will help fund Kathryn’s doctoral research in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.  Her research has taken her to Madagascar six times and involves local stakeholders in the creation of conservation strategies for the native orchids. To gain a complete understanding of the threats to the native orchids, Kathryn combines field techniques such as demographic measurements and reproductive studies with genetic techniques in the lab. She is also involved in surveying orchid sellers in Madagascar to assess the economic incentives for harvesting orchids.
Erasanthe henrici
Before coming to UConn, Kathryn earned a B.A. at Willamette University in French and Biology where she studied abroad for a semester in Madagascar.  She also worked as a research intern at the Chicago Botanic Garden monitoring rare plants, including two species of federally threatened orchids, around the Midwest.
You can read more about Kathryn’s work in a recent CLAS web post.  Here’s a photo of Kathryn with some of her fellow researchers on one of her recent visits to Madagascar.

Working with orchids in Madagascar isn’t all fun and games.  UConn Professor Kent Holsinger commented on the political situation in Madagascar – and how it has been hindering Kathryn’s visits – in a March 2009 entry on his blog Uncommon Ground.

Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Cheryl Beck in the School of Nursing has received the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN) 2009 Distinguished Professional Service Award for her “unparalleled dedication to improving the health of women and infants” around the world. Dr. Beck received the award June 28 at the association’s annual convention in San Diego, CA.

She was recognized for her internationally renowned research and expertise in perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. Her special area of expertise is postpartum depression and post traumatic stress disorders as they relate to the birth experience.  Professor Beck’s contributions to the field of postpartum mood and anxiety disorders include the widely used Postpartum Depression Screening Scale (PDSS), which she developed with Robert K. Gable, an emeritus professor in UConn’s Neag School of Education and now affiliated with Johnson & Wales University. The scale is currently used in 14 countries worldwide. There’s a 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal about Professor Beck’s and other’s recent work in this important area.

UConn’s Maya Moore was named as the winner of “Best Female Collegiate Athlete” at the 2009 ESPY Awards last week in Los Angeles.  Maya was the consensus National Player of the Year in 2009 and also was recognized as the BIG EAST Player of the Year for the second consecutive season.   She also was honored as a First Team Academic All-America choice.  There’s a great story on Maya in the April 16 Sports Illustrated.  She will be a junior at UConn this coming year.

I got to meet the Stamford campus UPALS group that visited Storrs last Friday.  We got together right after lunch to rub Jonathan’s nose outside Gampel Pavilion.  This program on the Stamford campus is designed to provide first-generation college-bound students from Stamford and Norwalk an introduction to the significance of pursuing higher education.  You should check out the UPALS web page.

UPALS students take required courses in English, math, science, and college preparation, and can choose from a variety of elective classes, including history, communication sciences, human development and family studies, and psychology. Courses are taught by UConn Stamford faculty and also by community members.

The program is a blend of college courses, co-curricular activities, and kids getting a chance to visit and interact with local community and business leaders directly related to possible career paths.  A number of businesses in the Stamford community partner with the University to provide significant opportunities for these kids.  Perhaps the most important part of the experience is the requirement of parental participation. Parents of each student attend a one-day orientation before classes begin and a parental meeting two weeks into the program. Since the parents did not attend college themselves, these sessions provide them with information about how to prepare their children for high school and college.

Current UConn students act as mentors and group leaders for the middle-schoolers, who will return for enrichment activities in subsequent summers, until they enter college.  Good things are happening here.