Faculty News

Shining a Light on his Heritage

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Jeremy Bui
Jeremy Bui, ’13 (BUS) (Photo: Derek Dudek)

By Lauren Lalancette

For most students, completing forms, such as the financial aid application for college, is a daunting task. But Jeremy Bui ’13 (BUS) coped with a mountain of paperwork before he even completed high school, when he and his two brothers established an educational foundation to benefit children in Vietnam.

Together with his twin Zachary ’13 (ENG) and older brother Timothy ’10 (CLAS), Jeremy established the Viet-Sun Foundation Inc., a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide educational opportunities through academic scholarships and other resources to impoverished village children in Vietnam, where his parents lived until they immigrated to the United States. Continue reading →

UConn Students Win Goldwaters, Truman Scholarship

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David Lindsay, Kathleen Carey, Colin Carlson; and Anna Green
Goldwater Scholarship winners (left) David Lindsay ’12, Kathleen Carey ’12, and Colin Carlson ’12, all juniors, and sophomore Anna Green ’13, who received an honorable mention.

By Christine Buckley and Sheila Foran

Four UConn students have been honored by two prestigious scholarship organizations: the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship Program and the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.

Juniors Colin Carlson and W. David Lindsay in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Kathleen Carey in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, also a junior, have been awarded Goldwater scholarships, which are given for academic merit in the sciences, engineering, mathematics, and computer science. Anna Green, a sophomore, received an honorable mention for the award. The scholarship grants $7,500 toward the completion of the recipient’s undergraduate degree. Continue reading →

Nursing School Honors Dr. Jack Rowe

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By Martha Miller and Jenni Saunders (CLAS ’11)

The School of Nursing has named Dr. John “Jack” W. Rowe as the recipient of its Josephine A. Dolan Award for Distinguished Service. Rowe, who is immediate past chairman of UConn’s Board of Trustees, was honored at the school’s annual Reflections of Excellence awards ceremony on Oct. 23.

The Dolan Award, named for the school’s first faculty member, is the nursing school’s highest recognition for distinguished service. Continue reading →

Rowe Researcher: Fibroblast Growth Factor 2

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John Zyzo conducting research in the lab
John Zyzo conducting research in the lab

Summer 2010: Fibroblast Growth Factor 2 Regulations of Microvascular Pericytes Differentiation into Osteoblast and Adipocyte

By John Zyzo and Ruth Washington, Ph.D., in collaboration with Marja Hurley, M.D.

Fibroblast Growth Factor 2 has been known to play a role in osteogenesis and adipogenesis of pericyte cells. Although vascular pericytes

can differentiate into osteoblast and adipocyte, the involvement of signaling pathways and molecular mechanisms were the main focus of our experiments. Continue reading →

Rowe Researcher: Oral Health in Honduras

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Patrick Cooper travels to Honduras to help with dental work.
Patrick Cooper travels to Honduras to help with dental work.

Summer 2010: Oral Health in Honduras: Comparing the Decayed, Missing, and Filled Teeth (DMF) Score to the Age, BMI, and Gender of the Honduran People

By Patrick Cooper and Merrill Singer, Ph.D.

I used my Rowe Research Award to conduct research in Honduras while on a medical missionary trip. I interviewed 600 participants to collect data comparing their oral health to their diet as well as to their geographic region, age, and gender.

Read Pat’s thesis.

Former Scholarship Student Now a Scholarship Donor

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By Jane Gordon

Jack Rowe M.D. has had many titles in his life: professor at Harvard and Columbia, CEO and chairman of Aetna, CEO of Mount Sinai Medical Center and School of Medicine in New York City, chair of the Board of Trustees at the University of Connecticut, and one last title that actually came first: scholarship student.

“I only had the benefit of higher education because I had full academic scholarships to college,” he says. “My family otherwise would not have been able to send me to school.” Continue reading →

2009-10 Faculty Member of the Year Award Recipient: Lawrence Gramling

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Dr. Lawrence Gramling, Ph.D, C.P.A. is the assistant head of the accounting department in the School of Business. He has actively participated as a faculty member in the Honors Program for many years. He served on the Board of Associate Honors Directors since 1988. In 1995, he spent eight months as the interim director of the Honors Program.

Dr. Gramling has been the accounting department’s Honors advisor for more than 20 years and recently developed a pre-thesis seminar series of workshops for Accounting majors. He also has taught an Honors section of the Principles of Managerial Accounting course and has directed numerous honors theses for Accounting Honors graduates over the years. Continue reading →

2009-10 Faculty Member of the Year Award: Robert Thorson

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Dr. Robert Thorson earned his B.S. from Bemidji State College, his M.S. from the University of Alaska, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. He is a professor of geology in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Anthropology, specializing in integrated geoscience, kettle lakes, and stone walls. He has been heavily involved with the Honors Program since the Spring of 2001, when he was a candidate for the Directorship of the Honors Program. That fall, he created an elective science course for Honors students, Current Issues in Environmental Science, one that is still being taught today. In 2004, he became fully invested with developing and teaching a new breed of interdisciplinary honors courses, creating Geoscience Through American Studies, the first course for what would later become the Honors Core curriculum. Continue reading →

Rowe Researcher: On-Line Certified Professional Food Manager Course

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Summer 2009: The Evaluation of an On-line Certified Professional Food Manager Course to Reduce/Eliminate Food Born Illnesses in the Food Service Industry

By Wenhui Sun, Ellen Shanley M.B.A., R.D. and Colleen Thompson M.S., R.D., The University of Connecticut, Storrs, Conn.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 76 million people suffer from foodborne illnesses each year in the United States. Food service is the second largest employer in the United States with a large number of immigrants and individuals having limited skills. The food service industry has an extremely high turnover. Continue reading →

Rowe Researcher: Soldier Systems Center

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Summer 2009: Biological Science Aid, Military Performance Division, U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Natick Soldier Systems Center

By James Alvarez, POC: Edward J. Zambraski, Ph.D., Jeffery S. Staab, M.S.

My summer was spent as an Intern with the United States Army in Natick, MA, at the Soldier Systems Center. My division’s mission is stated as “conducting biomedical research to improve and sustain Warfighter health and performance under all conditions”. My role in this mission was acting as a general lab technician, processing human blood and tissue samples collected from numerous ongoing studies. I also had the opportunity to observe, and in some cases implement, a number of experimental protocols. Continue reading →