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Join the University of Utah team for the Clear the Air Challenge, a statewide competition to reduce emissions from vehicles throughout the month of February.

Mobile sources, including our personal cars, contribute significantly to fine particulate matter that dirties our winter air. Ride transit, walk, bike, carpool or even skip the trip. Then, log it into the online tracker. The top five individuals from the University of Utah team win dinner with Ruth Watkins, senior vice president and incoming president, and Amy Wildermuth, chief sustainability officer.

Help the U take first place overall, and remember, with cleaner air, we all win.

Find more information at cleartheairchallenge.org.

The Office for Global Engagement (OGE) has established this award to recognize faculty and staff contributions to the university’s global dimension and those who have demonstrated excellence in facilitating student global learning and intercultural understanding. This may include international partnership development that engages students, curriculum revision to include global learning outcomes, advancement of the learning of languages and other initiatives that provide significant opportunities for global learning either on campus or abroad. It may also include providing exceptional support or mentoring to international students and students participating in learning abroad programs.

One faculty member and one staff member will be awarded (two awards). This is an annual award for which OGE seeks nominations each spring semester.

The award selection and ceremony is held in early April each year.

Click here for submission information.

University Marketing & Communications took home 10 awards (the most UCDA awards than any other university or college in the nation for the year) from the UCDA Design Competition for 2017.

The UCDA Design Competition recognizes the best of the exceptional design work done by communication professionals to promote educational institutions (secondary, vocational or higher education) and supports the exchange of ideas and information relating to the unique role of these designers.

UMC has grown an internal agency at the U, which rivals any advertising agency. All of UMC’s work, including the award-winning videos, were produced in-house. UMC thanks all their clients for collaborating with them on these excellent projects. To see UMC’s UCDA and other awards, click here.

Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah has been awarded a $2.4 million, two-year grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to help continue its research in breast cancer. Alana Welm, Ph.D. and Bryan Welm, Ph.D., investigators at HCI, along with Michael Lewis, Ph.D., a colleague at Baylor College of Medicine, will use this new funding to serve as a Breast Cancer Patient-derived xenograft Development and Trials Center (PDTC) to research and test new drugs for breast cancer. This new Center is only one of four such Centers in the nation.

The Breast Cancer PDTC is based on cutting-edge research conducted over the past 10 years at HCI. The Welms and their colleagues established methods that allow samples of tumors from breast cancer patients taken during biopsies or surgeries to be grown in the laboratory in ways closely resemble tumor growth in humans. Not only can the models of patient-derived tumors represent a diverse array of human breast cancers, the models can also be used to test new drugs and drug combinations to identify treatments that will best target the tumor.

The goal of the new center is to provide data that can be used to help prioritize breast cancer clinical trials at HCI and NCI. Toward this goal, the center will focus on testing new drugs that are already available through NCI’s Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network (ETCTN).

“This new grant will be used to test many different experimental cancer drugs available,” said Alana Welm. “This funding is critical to help us determine why certain drugs work for some people and why others do not. We then hope to turn these findings into new clinical trials as quickly as possible.”

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women in the United States, with one in eight women diagnosed in their lifetime. HCI provides comprehensive services for individuals throughout the Mountain West who are diagnosed with breast cancer.

The grant is supported by the NCI of the National Institutes of Health U54 CA224076 and can be extended up to five years.

The Research Reproducibility Conference will bring together researchers, students and administrators for a frank discussion on how to build research integrity through reproducibility.

Presenting a poster is a great opportunity, especially for students and new researchers, to obtain interesting and valuable feedback on ongoing research for conference attendees.

The conference will be held June 15, 2018. Click here for more information.

Contact: UtahRR@lists.utah.edu.

In 2013, the U’s Board of Trustees approved changes to a policy that enhances safety for pedestrians across campus. The changes aim to make sidewalks safer by increasing fines and other consequences for safety violations, such as speeding or not yielding to pedestrians.

The policy applies to non-motorized riding devices, such as bicycles, skateboards, roller skates, rollerblades and scooters, but does not include wheelchairs or strollers.

 

The policy enforces a 10-mph speed limit for all motorized and non-motorized vehicles, prohibits skateboarders from riding in parking lots or roadways, requires riders to yield to pedestrians, bans non-motorized vehicles from stairways, grass, benches, etc., among other precautionary measures.

The university’s policy for non-motorized riding devices is available here.

Do you know an academic advisor who has made a positive impact on campus and for students?  Nominations are now being accepted from students, staff and faculty for the Outstanding Advisor Award and Outstanding New Advisor Award. Nominations are quick and easy. The deadline to nominate is Feb. 9, 2018.

The awards recognize U academic advisors who have demonstrated qualities associated with outstanding advising of students such as:

• Approaches advising as teaching
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Available to advisees
• Reaches out and supports underserved populations
• Makes appropriate referrals
• Uses and disseminates appropriate information sources
• Caring, helpful attitude toward advisees, faculty and staff
• Works with students outside of office in formal university-related activities
• Monitors advisee progress toward academic and career goals
• Mastery of institutional regulations, policies, and procedures
• Participates in and supports advisor development programs
• Proactive; builds relationships with advisees and follows up
• Practices developmental advising

It only takes a few moments to complete the nomination process. Click here to nominate your favorite advisor.

Additional questions can be addressed to Nicole O’Shea (nicole.oshea@utah.edu) or Michelle Brooks (michelle.brooks@utah.edu). Consider recognizing an outstanding advisor at the U by submitting a nomination today.

The Office for Global Engagement is requesting pre-proposals for the Global Learning Across the Disciplines (GLAD) Grants offering up to $10,000 for faculty teams to internationalize the curriculum by developing global learning outcomes and an assessment process. Global Learning is defined as “the knowledge, skills and attitudes students acquire through a variety of experiences that enable them to understand world cultures and events; analyze global systems; appreciate cultural differences; and apply this knowledge and appreciation to their lives as citizens and workers” (Olson, Green and Hill, 2006).

Instructions and background information for the pre-proposals can be found here. Please carefully review the purpose of the GLAD Grants and the instructions. If you have any questions or would like to receive feedback on your proposal idea, please contact Sabine Klahr, acting chief global officer, at 7-8888 or s.klahr@utah.edu.

DEADLINE: Feb. 9.

The Beehive Honor Society was established at the University of Utah in 1913 and is the oldest and most prestigious honor society on campus today. The Beehive Honor Society is looking to acknowledge and honor graduating University of Utah seniors who have excelled in scholarship, leadership and service to the university and the community.

The application is due Feb. 12 and can be found here.