Preeminent on the coast.
With a mint-new
Marine Sciences Research Center on its Avery Point campus, UConn
has charted a course for preeminence -- to become one of the
nation's leading centers of coastal marine studies. While the
5-year plan is ambitious, the focus on coastal studies carries star
potential to advance knowledge and understanding of this
historically understudied area where the land and the ocean
intersect. UConn's Avery Point campus, along Long Island Sound,
is an ideal real-world lab for plumbing those depths.
University Medal goes to born
survivor.
Sam Gejdenson was the first child of Holocaust survivors to be
elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. As Connecticut's
Second District Congressman, his record spanned 20 years. Defeated
in 2000, he left a trailblazer's legacy, including advocacy for
working families and legislation to make college more affordable. A
1970 UConn graduate, Gejdenson was a recipient of the University
Medal this year. President Austin lauds Gejdenson as "an
example to our students and alumni of how success can follow
determination and hard work."
BioBlitz uncovers urban menagerie.
For
four years running, the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History
at UConn has co-sponsored an annual BioBlitz. Part quest, part fun,
in May it drew more than 100 scientists from UConn and beyond to
the 400-acre Mohegan Park in Norwich, Connecticut, a mosaic of
gardens, forest and wetlands. The mission: to identify as many
plant and animal species as possible over a 24-hour span. Rare
finds included a species of fairy moth and two fungi the attendant
research mycologists had never seen. The count came to 1,898
species -- "an amazing amount of biodiversity," says
Ellen Censky, museum director.
Joint venture: new ambulatory surgery
center.
A new day-surgery center is coming 
to UConn's Health Center -- a joint venture in
more ways than one. It's a team effort of UConn and Health
Resources International of West Hartford, a company that will
finance construction of the five-story building. The
"surgicenter" will make room for day surgeries that
UConn's John Dempsey Hospital can't accommodate. It will
also house UConn's bone and joint research center, one of the
medical school's signature programs. Because half of the
one-day surgeries currently performed at the UConn Health Center
are orthopedic cases, this arrangement makes perfect sense, says
Steven Strongwater, director of clinical operations. Scheduled for
completion by 2004, the facility will permit UConn physicians to
extend a much-needed patient service.
Fortified snack could be brain food for
babies.
DHA is short for docosahexanoic acid, a fatty acid essential to
infant development. Supplementing an infant's diet with DHA
after birth may improve cognitive performance. Could additional
benefits be reaped if pregnant mothers consumed more DHA? UConn
nutritionist Carol Lammi-Keefe was awarded a $1.2 million grant
from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to find out. She recruited
140 pregnant women to eat DHA-fortified snack bars during the last
half of their pregnancies. Their babies will be followed to see
whether pre-natal DHA makes a difference in brain function -- and
perhaps even school readiness.
Mellon grant once again funds anti-apartheid
archives.
The African National Congress (ANC), the leading 
organization in the struggle to
end apartheid, possesses archives that stretch back to 1912. Once
scattered across more than 30 countries, the documents of
anti-apartheid leaders now have a home in Johannesburg and at the
University of Fort Hare, thanks to the University of
Connecticut-ANC partnership. This year, the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation awarded a three-year, $700,000 grant to the
organization, the second made by Mellon in two years. It will be
used to organize the ANC's extensive archival materials. UConn
is now the official North American repository of ANC archival
materials, providing invaluable access to researchers studying the
decades-long struggle for freedom.