UMass Amherst Honors Outreach Scholarship and Community Impact

Outreach Highlights

UMass Amherst Honors Outreach Scholarship and Community Impact

Provost Seymour, James Manwell, Daniel Gerber, Vice Provost Fross, Imre Kepes and Chancellor Lombardi.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is once again honoring outstanding scholarship that has a direct impact on the external community as Provost Charlena Seymour and Vice Provost for University Outreach Sharon Fross present the 2007 Distinguished Academic Outreach Awards.

The ceremonies, held on April 25 in the Campus Center, recognize and encourage superlative individual achievement in academic outreach and community engagement.

UMass Amherst Chancellor John Lombardi was on hand to greet the award recipients. In addition, Commonwealth College dean Priscilla Clarkson presented awards to nine Community Service Learning Faculty Fellows.

The Distinguished Academic Outreach Awards were established in 1997. This year’s awards reflect the growing depth and importance of Outreach Scholarship on campus, according to Vice Provost Fross. The university is honoring outstanding outreach achievement individually in Research and Teaching. In addition, an outstanding Community Partner is being honored.

Fross noted that the award recipients, selected by the Outreach Academic Outreach Award Review Committee, were chosen from an unusually diverse and accomplished list of nominees.

“Each honoree has charted new territory in outreach, exploring new ways to link UMass Amherst and communities,” said the vice provost. “Each awardee has made longstanding professional and personal commitments to the social, economic, cultural and environmental betterment of the communities they serve.”

“This reflects your commitment – the commitment we have made together – to the outreach mission of the university,” Vice Provost Fross told the recipients. It reminds us that our commitment to engagement is nothing less than what the public, business and industry, our partners and our legislature expect of us. It is what we expect of ourselves.”

The 2007 Distinguished Academic Outreach Award recipients are:

FOR RESEARCH: James F. Manwell

James F. Manwell
Professor Manwell is a pioneer in wind power generation, advancing the design and demonstration of utility scale wind turbines and controllers. By providing key technical expertise to the installation of community-owned utility scale wind power systems, he has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to the sustainability of local energy supplies.

As director of the university’s Renewable Energy Research Laboratory, he provided valuable learning opportunities for students; at the same time he has helped establish Massachusetts as a world leader in wind power generation.

FOR TEACHING: Daniel Gerber

Daniel Gerber
Professor Gerber, of the Department of Public Health, has succeeded in integrating a profoundly valuable classroom experience for his students with an intensely rewarding service experience that has a lasting impact on the public health of area communities.

The mutual respect that he fosters in his relationships with students has become a vehicle for building understanding, skills, commitment and effectiveness in dealing with pressing public health issues, and continues to attract scores of talented undergraduate and graduate students to the field.

FOR COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP: Imre Kepes

Imre Kepes
Imre Kepes has worked tirelessly to foster economic development in the city of Holyoke by empowering its most valuable resource – its youth. He has been instrumental in helping to build college and career competence and confidence among the city’s low-income youth, and has broadened their vision and expectation of the possible.

As co-director of El Arco Iris, he has helped to mobilize the resources of university faculty and staff to address needs of the central city, and has inspired dozens of Holyoke youth to complete their high school education and pursue higher education at UMass Amherst and other area colleges.