More than 200 viewers tuned in to hear from five College of Management panelists for the third “Chat with the Dean” webinar earlier this month.

AMHERST, Mass. – The University of Massachusetts Amherst has named Mike Drish its new Director of First-Year Admissions. He comes to UMass Amherst from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), where he served for the past five years as deputy director of undergraduate admissions.

Professor Brenda K. Bushouse of the School of Public Policy and department of political science has been awarded a two-year Learning Sciences Exchange fellowship for her work on early childhood policy.

The Mass Cultural Council has announced recipients of the first round of gaming mitigation grants. In total, 52 non-profit and municipally-owned performing arts centers across Massachusetts will receive $3.34M to help mitigate the challenges they face when directly competing with resort casinos to book touring artists. The UMass Fine Arts Center (FAC) received an award of $31,909.

The UMass Amherst Libraries, in collaboration with the College of Natural Science and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, recently received an Interdisciplinary Faculty Research Award for georectifying, analyzing, and distributing historical remotely-sensed images from the William P. MacConnell Aerial Photograph Collection, Special Collections and University Archives, UMass Amherst (SCUA).

After a long career as a professor, educator, researcher and film documentarian, Sut Jhally, professor and chair of the Department of Communication, has retired.

Jhally began teaching at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1985. His scholarly interests include popular culture and media from the interdependent perspectives of critical cultural studies and political economy. While his focus is on advertising and consumer culture, Jhally is broadly concerned with ideology, consciousness, and politics.

Teresa Ramsby, associate professor of classics, recently received the annual award for Excellence in College Teaching from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS).

AMHERST, Mass. – Better data on marijuana use in the U.S. is needed to support critical public health research, according to a review of relevant surveys conducted by University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers.

AMHERST, Mass. – Nearly 100 colleagues recently joined an online celebration to honor Professor Hava T. Siegelmann of the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) as she received the rarely awarded Meritorious Public Service Medal from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD).

AMHERST, Mass. – University of Massachusetts Amherst microbiologist Derek Lovley has been awarded the Mahoney Life Sciences Prize for his research on protein nanowires, a new electronic material with unique properties that is produced with bacteria to avoid the harmful environmental effects associated with man-made materials.