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Distracted driving is any activity that could divert a person’s attention away from the primary task of driving.  There are three types of distracted driving – Visual: taking your eyes off the road, Manual: taking your hands off the wheel and Cognitive: taking your mind off what you are doing.  The technology in our vehicles allows us to make phone calls, dictate texts or emails and update social media all behind the wheel.  We are multitasking when we ought to be paying attention to driving and safety.  Please commit to distraction free driving and you may save a life.

Click here to go to the U Risk & Insurance Services website, where you can find out more about distracted driving.

On Thursday, April 20, all Apple products will be available tax-free at the main University Campus Store and the University Campus Store in HSEB. Faculty and staff will save an additional 8 percent off of already reduced academic prices on all MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, iMacs, iPad Air 2s and iPad Pros. This semi-annual sale is exclusively for University of Utah faculty and staff and all are invited to save hundreds on a new computer or iPad.

All discounted items are limited to the stock on hand on April 20, so U faculty and staff are encouraged to reserve Apple products in advance at CampusStore.utah.edu/AppleEvent. Those who reserve their Apple products prior to Friday, April 14 at 3 p.m. will ensure they will be in store and ready for pickup on event day.

Full-time faculty and staff are also eligible for zero-interest payroll deduction on their new Apple products. Those who use payroll deduction pay only $20 on April 20 and the rest is taken automatically out of their paycheck for up to 12 pay periods.

For more information about the University Campus Store’s Apple One Day Event, please visit the store or call its Apple certified sales experts at 801-581-4776.

The Office of the Registrar is excited to announce that electronic wait listing will be available beginning with the Fall 2017 registration cycle. That means that when students attempt to register for a class that is full, wait listing will allow them to add their name to an electronic list to potentially be added to the class, if space opens up and they meet all the class requirements.

Wait listing does not guarantee a seat in the class if it remains full, and it is only available through departments who have decided to activate this new functionality. We look forward to bringing this new technology to the campus community.

For a full list of departments who currently allow wait listing, information about launching wait listing for your department and answers to many frequently asked questions, please visit registrar.utah.edu/register/waitlisting.php.

The latest version of MATLAB – R2017a—has been released and includes a number of new features. Remember, the MATLAB Total Academic Headcount (TAH) Academic Annual License is available to students, faculty, and staff. This license is for academic (which includes both research and teaching) use purposes. Learn more about purchasing the MATLAB TAH Academic Annual License.

Pricing for each MATLAB license, which includes Simulink and the 48 products:

 

• MATLAB TAH Academic Annual License:
  • Student – $20 per individual use license
  • Academic – $90 per license/seat for Individual, Group, and Concurrent Use licenses
• MATLAB TAH Classroom Annual License
  • Classroom – $20.00 per seat for Concurrent Use licenses

New features for version R2017a include:

• Regression learner app
• Big data algorithms
• Code generation
• Bayesian statistics
• Feature extraction

We need your help, the university has almost 50 university-wide committees that need the active and engaged participation of our faculty (both tenure and career-line), as well as staff and students. Committee service not only benefits the university, but also provides an excellent opportunity for faculty members to get a glimpse of how the university works as a whole, meet new colleagues and further the progress toward reappointment and promotion.

Whether you want to advance the cause and practice of academic freedom, you are concerned about health and safety on campus, you want to work to increase diversity among our students and faculty, you want to be heard on matters of budget and planning, or you think parking on campus needs to be restructured and reorganized, there is an opportunity for you to learn about issues and to have an impact on how the matter is handled in our university.

Click here to begin the survey.

You can find a complete list of university committees here. You can find a complete list of senate committees here.

If you have any questions or want additional information, please feel free to email or talk to any of us. Our contact information is located here.

This week’s Red & White Fridays winner is Madelyn Carter! Madelyn is a University of Utah student from Castle Dale, Utah who is studying Hospitality and Tourism with a minor in Spanish. By entering to win on Instagram using #RedWhiteFriday Madelyn has won $100 to Utah Red Zone and has also been entered for the Red & White Fridays grand prize – a $1,000 shopping spree at Utah Red Zone.

Next week’s winner could be you – just follow these three steps:

1. Take a photo of yourself wearing Utes gear
2. Tag and follow @americafirst and @uredzone
3. Post your photo to Instagram using #RedWhiteFriday

Visit redandwhitefridays.com for more information about how to win a weekly $100 to Utah Red Zone, and don’t forget to wear red and white on Fridays.

James P. Keener, distinguished professor of mathematics, has been awarded the inaugural John Jungck Prize for Excellence in Education from the Society for Mathematical Biology. The prize is awarded for Keener’s 2008 textbook “Mathematical Physiology,” which has helped establish the field of mathematical biology. Mathematical biology applied math principles to organism functions, striving to understand how molecules move through a cell or how blood moves through a body. The prize, which is named for University of Delaware biologist John Jungck, will be awarded at the Society for Mathematical Biology’s annual meeting at the University of Utah in July.

Courtney Wagner, a graduate student in Geology and Geophysics, has been named an East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes for U.S. Graduate Students (EAPSI) fellow for summer 2017. EAPSI is a National Science Foundation program that enables fellows to conduct research in Asia and the Pacific and to learn about the culture and science policy of the host nation. Wagner will spend summer 2017 in Beijing, China at the Institute of Geology & Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She will work with Yongxin Pan to study how the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field affects biodiversity in bacteria that are sensitive to magnetism.

Did you know the University of Utah has access to car rental companies using state-negotiated contracts?  Contracts are available with Hertz (contract # 0198552) as well as National and Enterprise (contract #XZ47075).

Travelers or drivers who use these agencies while traveling on University of Utah business do not need to purchase extra insurance or pay U internal fee.  However, insurance must be purchased for 1) vehicles larger than a minivan, 2) when renting outside the state contracts or 3) renting in a foreign country.  Instructions for renting vehicles can be found at the Risk & Insurance Services website under the Vehicle section, or by calling 1-5590.

Registration for the 3rd Annual HIP Talks speech competition is now open! The event honors the public speaking skills of former Utah Congressman Wayne Owens. It is sponsored by the Hinckley Institute of Politics and ASUU.

Students will prepare and give a two-minute speech on any topic in front of a qualified panel of judges in one of three qualifying rounds. Speeches at last year’s competition were on topics ranging from emotional stories of sexual assault and losing a family member to lighthearted subjects such as alien abductions and the difficulties of business casual dress.

A student can attend more than one qualifying round if he or she wishes. Students selected during the qualifying rounds will give the same speech in front of a panel of celebrity judges in the final round.

The student with the best speech will be awarded a grand prize of $5,000. The first through fourth runners-up will receive $1,000 each. An audience favorite winner also will receive $1,000.

To register and read the rules, click here.

Utah Athletics and the University Campus Store have strengthened their long-standing partnership by designating UtahUtes.com as the official online store for Utah Athletics branded products.

Owned and operated by the University of Utah Campus Store, Utah Red Zone is the largest retailer for University of Utah apparel. With its new online partnership with UtahUtes.com, the University of Utah Campus Store plans to offer an even more robust selection of Utah products.

Online visitors to UtahUtes.com will receive free shipping on all orders of $100 or more and a portion of all sales go directly to University of Utah and Utah Athletics scholarships and programs.

Noticed a little white sticker on your recent campus food purchase? If you have eaten at Mom’s Café and Mom’s Pantry at the Marriott Library, or at the Counsel Café in the S.J. Quinney College of Law, you may have purchased an item with one of these Real Food labels. The Real Food labels are round icons on a white background, about the size of a quarter. The labels indicate whether your food is humane, eco-friendly, local, and fair, the four criteria needed for an item to be considered “real food.” The University has taken the Real Food Challenge, a commitment to offering 20 percent real food on campus by 2020. These labels help campus reach our goal by promoting the purchase of real food. Learn more about the Real Food Challenge and look for food with these stickers across campus.

Implementation of the labels is supported by the Real Food Challenge, the Sustainability Office, Chartwells, the Sustainable Campus Initiative Fund and the Office of Undergraduate Research.