UMass Places 13th at National Collegiate Landscape Competition

UMass Places 13th at National Collegiate Landscape Competition

UMass Students Attend National Collegiate Landscape Competition Over spring break, 11 students traveled to North Carolina State to compete in the National Collegiate Landscape Competition (NCLC). The National Collegiate Landscape Competition is an annual three-day event which brings together the top landscape and horticulture students, top industry companies, and dozens of the biggest industry manufacturers and suppliers. These top industry companies create and judge 31 different events that test students’ skills and knowledge. The UMass NCLC Team was made up of students from Landscape Contracting, Arboriculture, Urban Forestry, Landscape Architecture and Horticultural Science and supervised by Michael Davidsohn from LARP and Kristina Bezanson from NRC.   Overall, UMass placed 13th out of 43 Colleges and Universities. The top scoring three students in each event were recognized Saturday morning: First Place   -   3D Exterior Design   -   Andrew Reilly (BSLA) First Place   -   Hardscape Installation   -   Amanda Ramsdell & Joseph Contardo (both Landscape Contracting):  received an all-expense paid trip to the National Hardscape competition in Louisville this October to...
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UMass Students Place 11th in National Competition and BCT Program Receives $100k Grant

UMass Students Place 11th in National Competition and BCT Program Receives $100k Grant

Students Participate in Residential Construction Competition As in years past, a group of UMass students traveled to the International Builders Show (IBS), a national conference, which was held this year in Orlando, FL. There they competed in the "Production Homes" category of the Residential Construction Management Competition, which allows our students to practice many aspects of their coursework, such as estimating and budgeting, scheduling and various other pre-construction topics. Under the faculty supervision of BCT's Dr. Ho-Sung Kim, this group had been busy preparing for this competition for the entirety of the fall semester. The UMass team landed the 11th place spot this year out of 27 competing schools. Its members were Akira Ontsuka, Matthew Klingman, Mohamid Zabir, Lauren Nothe,  Oliver Pullin, and Samuel Khokhlan. See the gallery below for some impressions from the event. BCT Program Receives $100,000 Grant From NHE's HELP Program The Homebuilding Education Leadership Program (HELP), launched in 2006, establishes closer relationships with institutions of higher education by awarding major...
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BCT Students Start Construction on the “Hygge House” Design-Build Project

BCT Students Start Construction on the “Hygge House” Design-Build Project

The Hygge House1 is a portable, 350 sq. ft, Net Zero, Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) designed and built by students in a collaborative effort between UMass Building & Construction Technology, UMass Architecture, Five College Architectural Studies, & East Branch Studio. The semester-long design-build course that encapsulates this project is led by L. Carl Fiocchi (BCT), Robert Williams (Architecture), Naomi Darling (Five Colleges) and Kent Hicks (East Branch Studio). It offers learning opportunities in high performance construction, construction practices, low load mechanical systems selection and installation, performance verification, and carbon accounting. The project as well as the course helps students understand the climate impacts of carbon in the built environment and explores ways to design and build better structures, as the inefficiency of buildings is responsible for approximately forty percent of global carbon emissions. After the Build is completed, students will have the opportunity for teaching about the building when the Hygge House is used as an Auxiliary Stage at the Green...
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New Research Ends Debate on Antarctic Climate Change Mystery

New Research Ends Debate on Antarctic Climate Change Mystery

UMass Amherst study shows ice sheets vulnerable to small CO2 fluctuations New research led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst definitively resolves a long-standing discrepancy in the geologic record that pitted studies of marine ice-sheet behavior against those that reconstructed past conditions on land. The research, published recently in the journal Geology, and funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Environment Research Council, lends additional weight to evidence that the Antarctic Ice Sheet is sensitive to small changes in CO2 levels and that, in the past, large portions of the ice sheet could have disappeared under CO2 levels similar to today.   There has been a decades-long debate amongst scientists who study the history of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, and it revolves around the discrepancy between marine data from the Ross and data collected in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, an ice-free mountainous coastal region adjacent to the Ross Sea. In one corner stands marine records from the seafloor that have shown that the Antarctic Ice Sheet has...
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CNS Professors Among Public Engagement Project Faculty Fellows

CNS Professors Among Public Engagement Project Faculty Fellows

The honorees receive a stipend and training in communicating with non-academic audiences The UMass Amherst Public Engagement Project (PEP) has announced the 2022 Public Engagement Faculty Fellows, who will draw on their substantial research records to impact policy, the work of practitioners, and public debates. The eight faculty members from across seven departments comprising the eighth cohort of Public Engagement Faculty Fellows will receive a stipend and technical training in communicating with non-academic audiences.   The PEP Fellows Program facilitates connections between fellows and lawmakers in the U.S. Congress and Massachusetts State House, journalists, practitioners and others to share their research beyond the walls of academia. “Demand from the public to hear from academics about their research continues to increase,” says Lisa M. Troy, director of the Public Engagement Project and associate professor in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences and the Commonwealth Honors College. “The PEP Fellowship plays a critical role in helping to meet that demand by creating an interdisciplinary network of...
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