About Campus

About Campus

Itasca Turns 100
The U’s Itasca Biological Station and Laboratories, established at the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Itasca State Park in 1909, celebrates its centennial in September. The station has offered undergraduate field biology courses since 1935. Home to rare plant and animal species, Itasca hosts an annual immersion program for incoming College of Biological Sciences (CBS) students, as well as orientation sessions for new graduates in neuroscience, plant biology, and genetics. Last year alone, 850 students visited the Itasca station, located 270 miles northwest of the Twin Cities. Researchers are also frequent guests; one study being conducted there is the Mississippi Metagenome Project, which is developing a DNA database of aquatic microorganisms.

Most of the rustic, 60-plus buildings that comprise Itasca were built just after World War II and are in need of upgrading. In 2007, the University developed a $25 million master plan to regrade the land and build modern facilities. But now, says CBS Dean Robert Elde, the master plan is being revisited. “We are working hard to re-vision the master plan because of new economic reality, especially focusing on cost savings and efficiencies resulting from near zero-energy construction. We need funding to renovate and modernize our buildings. Otherwise, we won’t get to the next 100 years.”

Photographs: Itasca’s unique ecology has provided generations of students with opportunities for study and research. Above right, Nature of Life students cross the Mississippi River headwaters; photograph by Tracy Anderson. Above left, the woman at a microscope was a student at Itasca in the 1950s; photograph courtesy of University Archives


For the Love of Latin
“If there is good teaching going on there must, ipso facto—that’s Latin—ex hypothesi, be good learning,” Oliver Nicholson told graduating students in the College of Liberal Arts this spring. “Learning no less than teaching is an activity which exercises the imagination.”

An associate professor in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies, Nicholson (pictured at right) received the 2008-09 Arthur “Red” Motley Exemplary Teaching Award. Here are a few excerpts from his speech:

“To learn is not simply to absorb ideas and notions, it is quietly and purposefully to reimagine, to reenact them. Teaching, therefore, is something more subtle than the downloading of information from the mind of the lecturer into that of the pupil. The mind of the learner is less like a box waiting to be filled than a muscle aching to be trained. . . . My concern with Latin and Late Antiquity is not simple antiquarianism. . . . I teach Latin and Late Antiquity to come to grips with two intricate matters of fundamental importance, human language and human mentalities. . . .

“When I went to college, I was told that I was going not in order to learn how to make 10,000 pounds a year but in order to learn how to spend it. . . . An education in the liberal arts is generally not vocational. But the serious study of human mentality and language is not mere entertainment; it enables one to come to terms more seriously with all that it means to be human. The only worthwhile learner outcome of liberal studies is the acquisition of virtue and that is not something measurable by any amount of bureaucracy—indeed Socrates told Protagoras long ago that virtue could not even be taught.”

Photograph by Patrick O'Leary


Tuition Rises and Falls
Some undergraduates will see a tuition increase next fall, but others could see a reduction under the $2.98 billion budget approved by the Board of Regents in June. The creation of a new middle-income scholarship program will result in a smaller tuition bill for 60 percent of resident undergrads, with the rest seeing an increase of 3 percent, or about $300 a year. Nonresident undergraduates and graduate students will pay 7.5 percent more a year.

The $2.98 billion budget reflects an $81.8 million reduction in state appropriation for the fiscal year, and makes more than $90 million in budget reductions and reallocations. The reductions include 1,240 fewer jobs, most eliminated through attrition and early retirement. About 370 are layoffs. Patricia Simmons, outgoing chair of the board, noted that a combination of federal stimulus dollars and spending reductions allowed the U to hold tuition increases to a minimum.

Purls of Wisdom
It’s hard in August to imagine the bitter cold of winter, but in a few short months Minnesotans will be donning layers of clothing to stay warm. Three times a month a group of University of Minnesota faculty, staff, and students meets during the lunch hour to make sure that there will be plenty of hats, scarves, and mittens to go around. Members of Bufandas by Yolanda, the group’s name, knit warm clothing items and donate them to the Tubman Family Alliance, a nonprofit organization that provides shelter, legal advocacy, and counseling services in the Twin Cities.

“I’m doing my umpteenth scarf,” says facilitator Anitra Cottledge from the University of Minnesota Women’s Center. “Others are making afghans, sweaters, and washcloths. Next year, we’ll explore a group project, where everyone works on a piece of the same project.” New knitters are welcome. “We have yarn and needles to share, and there’s always someone here to help,” Cottledge says.

Bufanda is the Spanish word for scarf, and Yolanda is a term the group devised to describe any person who creates something warm and donates it to others. For more information, call 612-625-9837 or go to www.umn.edu/women.
Photographs: Above right, Therese Genis, left, learns how to cast on from Karen Kinoshita. Above left, Teaona Hasbrouck uses size-35 needles—what she calls “ogre needles”—to create a loose weave on a scarf. Photographs by Sher Stoneman


Road Scholars
With Gridlock Buster, a new online game developed by the University’s Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Institute, players can get a taste of traffic management—and maybe an appreciation of what goes into keeping traffic moving.

Originally developed as a tool for U engineering students, Gridlock Buster allows players to control the traffic signals on an urban grid. The game has eight levels of increasing difficulty—with more intersections, traffic signals, vehicles, and frustration in each. Delay too long in changing the light from red to green and cars back up and horns begin honking. Based on work by Chen-Fu Liao, an education systems engineer at the U, the game is visually similar to driving in downtown Minneapolis. “Traffic engineers work with simulations similar to this to help prevent congestion,” explains Shawn Haag, a program coordinator at ITS. “Hopefully, [teens who play the game] will pay more attention to stoplights and how they operate the next time they’re driving down the road.”

High school students from Leech Lake Tribal College, on campus for the National Summer Transportation Institute, stepped into the computer lab July 22 to try their hands at Gridlock Buster. The federally funded program is designed to interest students in engineering and transportation professions. “Yes!” yelled one boy, raising his arms in victory after conquering all eight levels of the game in under 20 minutes.
Says Haag: “I’ve played this game many times and I’ve not beat it.”

To try Gridlock Buster, go to www.its.umn.edu.

Photograph: Jacob Wiley, a high school student from Blackduck, Minnesota, tested Gridlock Buster while participating in the National Summer Transportation Institute on campus. Photograph by Erika Gratz



Powered by the Sun
More than 100 students at the University of Minnesota are building the school’s first-ever entry into the Solar Decathlon, held October 9 through 18 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The biennial event, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, pits 20 teams of college and university students from around the world in a contest to design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house.

The U’s entry is the 800-square-foot ICON Solar House, so-called because it uses a modified gable-shaped roof that maintains the familiar iconic house shape while maximizing the power of the sun. The house has a roof blanketed with 30 solar panels, each capable of producing about 200 watts of electricity; triple-paned windows and spray-foam insulation to minimize heat loss in the winter; radiant flooring for warmth; and a dehumidification system to cool indoor air during the summer.

“The house is a real house,” says Shengyin Xu, a graduate student in sustainable design and one of the project managers. “It’s not a science experiment. You can take a shower, do laundry, wash the dishes—you can live in this house day to day.”

After the competition, the ICON house will be displayed at the University of Minnesota Outreach, Research, and Education Park, or UMore Park, a 5,000-acre parcel of land near Rosemount, Minnesota. There, Xu says, “we can actually see how it performs in the bitter cold.”
Photograph: Sustainable design graduate student Shengyin Xu with a model of the ICON Solar House. Photograph by Patrick O’Leary


Reviving the Brickhouse
Generations of alumni remember when Memorial Stadium gave Stadium Village its name. Built in 1924, the “Brickhouse” stood for nearly 70 years, hosting not only Gopher football games but also track-and-field meets, commencements, research labs, and even an opera. University Libraries has created an interactive Web site that celebrates the rich history of Memorial Stadium with photos, game footage, and other material from University Archives. Members of the public are invited to share their Brickhouse memories and photos at http://brickhouse.lib.umn.edu.

Bookmark Courtesy of University Archives

Cool to Bottled Water
The University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum discontinued bottled water sales in its restaurant and on its grounds this June, opting instead to offer guests a free, compostable cup for filtered tap water. Environmental concerns were cited as the main reason for the change: Last year, the Arboretum restaurant sold 23,411 bottles of water whose manufacture required 3,092 gallons of oil, or just over a quart per bottle.